KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Legends Field, the home of the Kansas City Monarchs, is getting a facelift.
Crews have spent the last month excavating the Kansas City, Kansas, stadium’s dirt field and installing a new (and nearly) all-synthetic playing surface.
“This project has been in the works for a long time,” Monarch Director of Broadcasting and Media Relations Carter Woodiel, who also serves as the voice of the Monarchs, said. “... Putting in synthetic turf that's built to last is going to lead to fewer rainouts and shorter rain delays and allow us to host a lot more events, which is going to make Legends Field even more of a destination for Wyandotte County, the KC metro, and the region as a whole.”
Mammoth Sports Construction — which is based in Meriden, Kansas, just north of Topeka — is installing the new field.
“We started about three weeks ago, first part of March,” Mammoth Director of Project Management Connor Harris said. “... Our crews have been working late, doing a really good job. We've had the lights on. They've been working 12-, 13-, 14-hour days, seven days a week. We're hustling to get this done for the KC Monarchs, for the fans. We're just excited about this project and want to see it successful.”
Harris said they are on schedule to finish the installation by April 21, in plenty of time for the Monarchs’ season-opener on May 9.
After digging out and hauling away tons of dirt, Mammoth “chemically stabilized this field” by tilling Portland cement in the remaining soil. Crews then installed significantly bigger drains and poured concrete where needed before beginning to layer in base rock and progressively smaller rock, according to Harris.
“There's about 3,000 tons of rock coming in on this field that's gonna be underneath the turf,” Harris said. “Next week, we'll start turfing.”
The infield, outfield, foul territory and even the bullpens will be covered in a two-inch thick turf pile.
“This is a transformative project,” Woodiel said. “This is something that we really haven't seen in the history of this facility, since it was first established in 2003 as the Kansas City T-Bones. It's a top to bottom revamp of our playing surface.”
Only the pitcher’s mound and home-plate area will remain a natural surface.
“We're doing that solely because pitchers want natural mounds,” Woodiel said. “We've heard that again and again from folks that we've played with and from other ballparks.”
The new surface aims to reduce the duration of rain delays and, the Monarchs hope, virtually eliminate rainouts. It also will prevent delays, like the one last summer, caused by damaged turf from non-baseball events.
“A huge reason why we're doing this is to make Legends Field an even better space to host an event,” Woodiel said. “We've already had some great concerts and non-baseball events at this facility, but, now that we have this surface that's more resilient, we can host events here year round. That's something that we're really looking forward to doing.”
Expect more announcements related to concerts and trade shows and other sporting events after the turf project is complete.
“It's all on the table for us,” Woodiel said. “... That's one of the huge benefits of having turf. You can bring in an event when the team's out of town, they can pack it up, pack it in, and the stadium is going to be ready to go and still be professional quality for our players.”
Harris said the design phase for the project started in February, so he acknowledged that it’s a quick turnaround from concept to conversion. But that’s well within Mammoth’s wheelhouse.
“We're a full-on, design-build, sports construction company, so we have in-house engineers and architects,” Harris said. “Then, on the back end of that, we come out here with our crews and we build the field ourselves, so it allows us to control the schedule. It allows us to be able to flex up and jump on quick timelines like this to be able to make this project happen.”
Mammoth works on projects nationwide.
“We're doing projects as far east as South Carolina and Florida, as far north as North Dakota, as far west as Phoenix, Arizona,” Harris said.
Having a pro-sports project so close to the company’s headquarters will be a treat for Mammoth’s crews.
“We're ecstatic,” Harris said. “I’ve got three little boys that are just getting into the game, so it's gonna be awesome coming out here, watching a game, watching the team play on this for the first time. I can’t wait to have them come out and see it.
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