The appointment of Killeen Sports Grounds to carry out improvement works on MacHale Park was approved at a meeting of the County Board on Wednesday night.
Chairperson of the board, Liam Moffatt, gave the club delegates a run-down through the full process of the works, including what needs to be done and how the tender process was carried out before it was ratified.
He told the meeting the indicative budget for the project was €250,000, which will be funded through a mixture of Sports Capital Funding and fundraising through the Laochra Maigh Eo project. The board also ratified the appointment of vice-treasurer, Michael Diskin, as the project manager for the project.
The work is expected to take six weeks to carry out but the board is anxious to have it done by August 1 this year, depending on when Mayo will no longer need to use the pitch for championship matches this season - but the pitch will not be available for use during the 2022 National Football League for the senior inter-county side, in order to allow it to bed in fully before being reopened at the start of May 2022, Moffat said. This will also lead to the closing stages of the Mayo Club Championships being moved out of MacHale Park to other grounds in the county.
The process will be carried out in three phases, the first will be the pitch resurfacing, followed by installation of irrigation systems and the third phase will be maintenance and capital investment.
The pitch itself will be lengthened by five meters at the Davitt House end of the ground, the board did look at widening it on the MacHale Road side of the field but was not followed, as it was found the gains would be marginal for the amount of work that would have to be done to accommodate it on that side of the field.
The tenders for the works was sent to four different companies and when they were returned, they were examined and Killeen Sports Grounds was chosen as the successful tender for the project.
