Littlestown plans to build new athletic stadium
District hopes to have stadium built by May 2018
After many years with few upgrades to its football stadium, Littlestown Senior High School is planning to have a brand new one in 2018.
The school district has started plans to construct a new stadium and turf field where the district's Rolling Acres Elementary School currently stands. Rolling Acres is being demolished this fall, with its operations being moved to Alloway Creek Intermediate School. The district hopes to begin building the new football stadium next January and complete it in May, according to Littlestown athletic director Jeff Laux.
Bids for the project will go out this November. The approximate cost is $3.4 million, with most of the funding coming from money remaining from the bond the district received for the Alloway Creek renovations, according to Laux.
Laux said the district has three motivating factors for building a new stadium: to improve safety conditions, to create something the community can use and to give its students something they deserve.
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"You go to our stadium and there are a lot of good things, but then you go to places like Bermudian and Hanover, and ours just doesn't compare," Laux said. "I want our community to know our kids deserve something nice. They deserve something they can take pride in."
The school's current stadium, Memorial Field, has existed since 1948, according to littlestownpa.info. It is currently used not only by Littlestown's high school football team, but also its soccer, baseball and youth football teams. By the end of the fall, the grass field is "a mess," according to Laux.
The new stadium will have a turf field, which will be used for all home football and soccer games and as many field hockey games as possible starting in fall of 2018. Laux added that the baseball and softball teams could potentially practice there when there's snow on the ground. The current grass field will continue to be used by the baseball team, with the football team occasionally practicing on it.
In addition, Littlestown will hold its graduation ceremony in the new stadium, with other community events potentially taking place there, too.
"It sounds like an athletic-stadium-only project, but it's really not," Laux said. "There used to be a band competition here that could potentially come back. We're going to try to do different youth fitness and community stuff."
Laux said the district hopes the football stadium will be the beginning of a three-phase plan to upgrade athletic facilities at Littlestown. The next two phases would be renovating the school's softball field and building a new field house, though those plans aren't in motion yet.
Since the bond being used is for capital projects, the stadium will not affect local taxes. The district still needs about $400,000 to complete the funding for the project. To raise the money, the district is selling advertising. Laux said interested businesses can contact him at lauxj@lasd.k12.pa.us.