LEHIGHTON
Joe Houser has been employed by the Lehighton Area School District for 25 years.
Lehighton’s supervisor of plant operations, Houser has seen the district transform the former Carbon County Fairgrounds into a expansive, 91-acre complex that features nearly a dozen athletic fields.
The centerpiece of that complex — a $6.4 million, artificial turf all-purpose stadium — is roughly a month from being completed. He can’t help but marvel at what the district has done.
“It’s more than impressive,” Houser said Monday as work on Lehighton’s stadium continued. “I didn’t think I’d see this happen in my time here in the district.”
Lehighton’s new stadium — which still does not have an official name — features an A-Turf artificial surface similar to that at Schuylkill Haven’s Rotary Field that’s lined for field hockey, soccer and football, and a six-lane, all-weather track with eight lanes for sprinting.
Located along the right side of Indian Lane as you enter the high school complex off Ninth Street, the new stadium is situated where the district’s track has been since 2002.
In addition to the field, included in the stadium project are:
• Bleachers on both sides with a total seating capacity of around 3,000 fans;
• An 11,000-square-foot fieldhouse that will include concession stands on each side, public restrooms, two locker rooms, two storage areas, an officials’ room and a training room;
• Four light standards featuring banks of Musco lighting;
• Two new parking areas, one by the administration building with 119 spaces, and another lot with around 200 spaces. These two parking areas are in addition to the current parking area in front of the high school, giving Lehighton about 500 available spaces for events;
• A large electronic scoreboard located at the south end of the field;
• A one-story press box that will be able to accommodate roughly 16-20 media members and staff with area on top for filming and coaches;
• Two new practice fields that will be built from the dirt used during excavation;
• And a new maintenance building along Indian Lane to house the district’s equipment.
CMG of Easton is the main contractor for the project, with various subcontractors used for different stages.
The complex will border the back end of the high school on the west end, the existing soccer field on the north end and the district administration building on the east end.
“Everybody’s excited,” Lehighton athletic director Kyle Spotts said. “Throughout the project, it’s been nothing but positive.
“With our softball, soccer, baseball and field hockey fields here, football was the only sport that wasn’t onsite. Now everything is within walking distance of the high school.”
The Master Plan
Houser said even before he arrived at Lehighton in 1990 that the district had talked about upgrading its athletic facilities.
Lehighton has played its football games at its current stadium, located near the old high school on Beaver Run Road — roughly 2-3 blocks from new stadium — since 1940. This is the 75th season the Indians have played there.
It’s dilapidated condition and lack of modern amenities forced the stadium to be shut down for one season, and has severely limited its usage since.
The district built its current high school in 1993 on a parcel of land it had owned off Mahoning Street, which is Route 902, then purchased the remainder of the complex from the Carbon County Fair Association in the early 1990s.
One by one, fields for Lehighton’s other sports teams were constructed around the complex, with the track installed in 2002.
The Carbon County Fair was held every September around Labor Day on the land on which Lehighton’s athletic fields currently sit.
“I’m with the district 25 years, and even before I was here, there were multiple times the district tried to look at upgrading our athletic facilities,” Houser said. “The real push started in the late ’90s and around 2002. They did the master plan for this facility, then they put the other athletic fields in — soccer, baseball, softball.
“This is the crown jewel of completing that master plan.”
Project funded
from reserve balance
The Lehighton Area School District paid for its new stadium complex out of a fund balance it had built up over time.
There was no tax increase, no major donation, no corporate sponsor.
In an era when local school districts are pinching pennies and cutting payroll, Lehighton had money to spend.
“We had a hefty fund balance. We’ve been saving for years to do this,” Lehighton district business administrator Joe Feick said. “We had a hefty fund balance that had to be used sometime. This was one of the projects they wanted to use it for.”
Feick said that the condition of Lehighton’s current stadium forced the district’s hand.
“The old stadium, it would cost more to renovate it, and it would only be a single-use stadium,” Feick said.
“We have bleachers that we can’t use the top five rows because there’s concern about the integrity of the foundation for the back of the bleachers. We can’t do any work on the bleachers because they have lead paint.
“It’s cheaper to tear them down than to repair them.”
Project Update
As of Monday, the field surface was the only major part of the stadium complex that was completed.
The bleachers will be installed next week, the track will be resurfaced in about two weeks and the fieldhouse is currently under construction.
Stadium entrances, sidewalks, parking areas and stormwater run-off areas also needed to be completed.
Installation of the scoreboard and the press box will be the final touches of the project. Spotts said the district is targeting a late November, mid-December date for completion, meaning Lehighton’s currently unbeaten football team won’t get to use the next facility until next season.
“It won’t be done in time,” Spotts said. “We’re targeting late November, early December.”
Big Plans
Spotts said the new stadium complex would house Lehighton’s boys’ and girls’ soccer, field hockey, football and track and field teams.
The track would be open daily for the community to utilize, and Spotts said an offer has been extended to the Lehighton youth football program to play its games there.
More importantly, it gives Spotts some flexibility for scheduling. Currently, Lehighton has no lighted fields for any of its fall sports except football, having to play all of its games during the day.
“It’s nice to have a central location where everybody knows where your games are going to be played at,” Spotts said. “It gives the students a material and a surface that no matter what the weather conditions are, you know it’s going to be a true surface.
“From a facility standpoint, it just gives you one spot where you know that you’ll be able to play your games, whether it’s day or night.”
Spotts also said he will make the new stadium complex available to host Schuylkill League, District 11 and PIAA contests in soccer, field hockey and football.
Lehighton’s school complex is easily accessible off Route 443, and just minutes away from the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
It’s also centrally located in District 11, with the Schuylkill League to the north and the Colonial League and Eastern Pennsylvania Conference to the south and east.
“It gives us a facility that is capable of hosting district and state-level competitions in field hockey, soccer and football. Given our centralized location in District 11, it’s our hope to fill this place as much as possible,” Spotts said.
“Once this is complete, whatever we have to do to host games here with District 11, we’re prepared to do. We’ll submit the request for proposals to the district to host all the fall sports we can here.”
As far as the Schuylkill League is concerned, Lehighton’s new complex may mean local teams don’t have to travel to Northern Lehigh or Whitehall to play district and state-level games in boys’ and girls’ soccer.
The artificial surface is lined 73 yards wide and 117 yards long for soccer, making it attractive to host playoff games.
In our area, only Schuylkill Haven and Hamburg have artificial turf fields.
“This provides a venue for the Schuylkill League teams that will have played here, it gives them a surface that they’ve played on during the season if we can host games here,” Spotts said. “It’s our intentions to use this facility as much as possible.”