LAC LA BICHE - Crews have been busy in Lac La Biche over the last weeks on a project that will eventually install enough sod in a new recreation park to cover one and a half CFL football fields ... including the end zones.
The sod installation — about 120,000 square feet of it – is part of the ongoing, three-year plan to modernize McArthur Park and what were once the community's downtown Recreation Grounds.
Initially budgeted at $3.5 million, but now sitting at $7.3 million, the McArthur Park project will upgrade what was once the home of baseball and softball diamonds into a large, 350,000 square foot civic leisure area, complete with picnic benches, walking paths, a skate park and a "town square," all set off with attractive lighting. The third and final phase of the three-year project is slated to be completed by next fall.
The late-season installation of about 120,000 square feet of grass is being done largely by hand, with county-contracted work crews taking sod from large palettes delivered by forklifts, and dropping them one at a time into the cleared area. The work is being aided by a steady flow of water from an on-site sprinkler system.
The sod option is being used by municipalities more and over dirt and seeding, says Lac La Biche County's spokesperson Jihad Moghrabi, explaining that sod has always been the preferred option in the plans for the McArthur Park redevelopment.
Moghrabi says the sod work is scheduled to be completed in mid-October this year.
The Lac La Biche POST newsroom did ask municipal officials for an interview with the crews tasked with laying out the sod, but that request was turned down.
• with files from Rob McKinley