Building(and Rebuilding) for Success

Track Coach Frank Haggerty always gets a little nervous when he shows a prospective athlete around Harvard.

First he tries to woo the kid by walking him into the Indoor Track and Tennis Center (ITT) and showing him the track--a facility some call the fastest in the world. Sometimes that's all it takes. But sometimes the visitor asks the question Haggerty doesn't want to hear: where's the outdoor track? Haggerty usually just says "It's in the Stadium." Rarely does he bother to show off the run-down four-lane cinder circuit.

But starting next fall, things will be different. By September 6, contractors are scheduled to have completed work on a new, million-dollar track and field facility officials say will be the "fastest and most innovative" outdoor track at any university in the world.

Workers broke ground in mid-April on the track project, marking one of the final stages in a long-term upgrading of the University's athletic facilities that has cost more than $20 million since 1975. In that year, an athletic department study recommended more than $30 million in new facilities and renovations for the then-decrepit Soldiers Field complex.

That recommendation included plans for a pool, a hockey rink, an indoor track and tennis facility, squash courts, a basketball arena and a plush complex of underground lockerrooms. After several alterations and abbreviations of those optimistic blueprints, most of the plans have been realized. By 1980, the University had built Blodgett Pool and the ITT and renovated Watson Rink.

But it wasn't until this year that the 1975 prospective neared its completion. The Harvard football team played out its season as construction workers hastily finished of an $8 million project aimed at saving the 78-year-old Stadium from decades of corrosion. And a few weeks later, the Crimson hoop team opened its season in the newly refurbished Briggs Athletic Center.

While athletic department officials--as well as most of the facilities' users--count those two structures as well-schemed successes, neither project was without problems. Contractors worked throughout last summer to install enough seating to span the length of the 100-yard field, then scrambled to erect seats in the enclosed end of the stadium in time for The Game. "Before the Yale game, there was round-the-clock pressure to get the seats in," Athletic Director John P. Reardon Jr. '60 says. Construction workers did not complete the seating until the Tuesday before the Yale game. "It was a far more complex job than anyone realized," Reardon explains.

The Stadium project received another setback this spring, when a Law School student charged that the University had overlooked a federal law requiring that newly-refurbished facilities be made accessible to the handicapped. The University altered its plans to include 30 permanent seats and 65 temporary seats for the disabled, as well as reserved parking spaces and a wheelchair ramp. Contractors started work in March on the alterations, which will cost about $200,000.

Briggs Athletic Center--which was converted last year from an indoor track with a dirt floor to a basketball court with a portable astroturf covering--suffered from minor structural problems in its first year of use. Though most athletes and coaches using the facility praise it as an excellent multi-use complex, some complain of inadequate ventilation and problems with the worn floor surface. Officials call these problems "minor" and say repairs are currently being considered.

"Problems like that are almost expected in any new building," Scott Anderson, assistant director of athletics, says. Anderson recalls that some department officials were apprehensive about the facility originally because they questioned the feasibility of the astro-turf surface. "That worked out," says Anderson, "and that fact really overshadows any minor problems there might have been."

The complex was in full use all year in both modes--for basketball and other court sports, and for baseball practice and other turf-sports. "Most coaches agree," says Reardon, "that it's a very good Ivy League-type facility."

While varsity athletes were enjoying Briggs and the other new facilities at the Soldiers Field complex, structural problems forced the temporary closure of a recently built facility near the Radcliffe Quad. Radcliffe President Horner closed the doors of the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center (Q-RAC) before students arrived last fall because water leakage was causing buckling floors in squash courts and bubbles on the epoxy-coated floor of an exercise area. Horner commissioned an extensive study of the problems plaguing the $2.4 million facility which was built in 1978, and kept the Q-RAC closed through the fall. Weather problems delayed the study for several weeks, but officials finally determined in early November that the University should repair the facility on a gradual plan, until refurbishing is completed next fall.

In the mean time, the 1050 residents of Quad Houses were left without an athletic center nearby, until December 1, when Horner agreed to open the large gym, and established weight rooms in the houses. Questions of legal liability for the water-caused damage have yet to be solved, and repairs will continue into the summer. "We're still holding our breath about the weather," Horner says, "but things should be ready by the fall. I think there's obvious disappointment, but there should be some sense of relief that the building will be forthcoming in a matter of months."

Having completed most of its projected improvements on new facilities used by varsity teams, the athletic department may next focus on an older structure, the Indoor Athletic Building, a structure currently used almost exclusively for recreational and intramural activities. "That's a great building that just needs some work," says Reardon. "I was hoping someone would come forward and want their name put on it, but that hasn't happened." Reardon cites problems with the filtering system for the 50-year-old building's pool and rotting wood on the windows as areas needing attention. The department also plans to install an insulating blanket over the swimming pool to reduce the building's excessive humidity. "It's so humid that now if you paint anything in there it peals off," Reardon says. Anderson says the department would like to refurbish the entire building, but because of financial restraints, "we're looking at it with a piecemeal approach."

"Now," says Reardon, "we want to improve things one at a time at a reasonable rate. We'd like to fix up the whole thing, but you have to ask. "Where the hell are we going to get the money."

Gilbert Fuchsberg assisted with the reporting for this article.