Quakertown
Park District
Richland Township, Pennsylvania
In
the spring of 2006, Richland Township, Pennsylvania (30
miles north of Philadelphia) embarked on a plan to develop
a 20 acre tract of farm land into a new park. Richland Township
surrounds the villages of Quakertown and Richlandtown and
has been experiencing steady growth which has placed pressure
on the Park and Recreation Department to keep pace with
the demand for sports fields.
The
new park contains six softball fields, two multi-purpose
fields, a walking trail, a playground, a picnic area and
parking spots for 320 cars. The site has also been chosen
as the location for a new veterans’ memorial resulting
in the name Veterans Park. Land for the new park was acquired
under the joint Land Preservation Program of Bucks County
and Richland Township.
Steve
Sechriest, Township Manager, explained, “One of the
things we noticed about the site was that the soils in that
area don’t drain particularly well. So that was a
concern to us. The softball season is quite short and so
we were concerned that if we got a lot of rain it could
mean trouble. We recommended putting an underdrain in the
softball fields to prevent game cancellations.”
Engineering
firm, Boucher and James, from Doylestown, PA, recommended
a Multi-Flow drain system. They felt that the Multi-Flow
provided effective and long lasting drainage at an affordable
cost.
Sechriest
recalled that after the plans were drawn up, “We invited
bids on the project with and without an underdrain. And
the price with the drainage system came in better than expected
so we went with it.”
Subsurface
drainage was only a small part of the $2.5 million project
but it will add immeasurably to the value of the park, making
it available soon after heavy rain events.
A.
H. Cornell and Son won the bid and commenced with the grading
of the site in January. Drainage was installed in June of
2006. Progress on the project was slow due to recurring
rain. As the township had observed, the site soil was slow
to drain. Consequently, there were long delays after each
rain. The soil avoided saturation and rebounded much more
quickly once the Multi-Flow drain was in place.
The
park will be out of bounds until the summer of 2007 allowing
the newly seeded grass time to become well established.
Next summer the park should be ready for normal park and
recreation activities such as soccer and softball practices
and games, picnics, walks, as well as special events such
as tournaments, outdoor movie nights, and the annual Community
Day events.
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Richland
Park and Recreation serves the needs of residents of the
township as well as surrounding villages. |
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Veterans
Park will specialize in softball but be used for a wide
variety of functions. |
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Township
Manager Steve Sechriest says, "The park does not have
a very thick layer of topsoil, for the most part, and under
that is nothing but clay and rock." |
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The
20 acre site required considerable grading. The bulk of
the dirt work was carried out in January to March of 2006. |
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Frequent
rains in the spring of 2006 slowed up the process of installing
the drainage system and finishing up the surface grading.
Here you see Multi-Flow products and construction equipment
waiting for the rain to stop. |
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8-inch
PVCtransport pipes were installed and partially backfilled
before the Multi-Flow collector lines were trenched in.
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Narrow
trenches were cut for the Multi-Flow collectors. Once the
Multi-Flow was in place, rain was no longer a serious deterrent
to construction progress. |
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