Oct. 2, 2009
ORLANDO, Fla. – Southeast Construction Magazine announced its Best of 2009 Awards this week and Shirley Clements Mewborn Field, home of the Georgia Tech Softball team, was awarded Best Small Project. All winning projects will be featured in the December 2009 issue of Southeast Construction and will be honored at a luncheon at the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort in Orlando on Dec. 9.
The Best of 2009 Awards celebrate and honor the building teams that created the best projects of 2009 in the Southeast. This includes Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. The projects are selected by juries of local prominent industry professionals. Categories awarded cover a variety of building and highway/heavy categories, from Best Commercial Project to Best Highway Project and many more.
“It has been Barton Malow’s privilege to work alongside Georgia Tech and Rosser to deliver this project,” said project manager Jason McFadden. “We are especially proud of its sustainable features and look forward to receiving LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.”
This year’s competition received a record-breaking number of entries. Nearly 200 submissions vied for top honors in approximately 20 different categories, based on construction type. An independent jury of industry experts reviewed and scored the entries, and met in September at McGraw-Hill offices to finalize this year’s winners. Eligible projects had to be located within the four-state region and completed between Sept. 1, 2008, and Sept. 1, 2009.
The 1,500 seat stadium is nestled on the corner of 8th and Fowler Streets giving the Tech softball team an on-campus venue in the heart of other athletic facilities. Built at a cost of $4.99 Million, Barton Malow Company and architect Rosser International completed the project in less than a year.
“This is a great honor for Barton Malow and Rosser International,” said head coach Sharon Perkins. “They built one of the premier softball facilities around and we feel so privileged to play in it each day.”
Mewborn Field features an indoor facility with three batting cages, places for pitchers to work out as well as infielders. The surface is the same as the infield. Mewborn Field also has a state-of-the-art Musco Lighting System, press box complete with radio and TV booths, bathrooms, concession stand and spacious dugouts that would make Major Leaguers happy. One of the unique features is a 42,000 gallon cistern underneath right field which captures all the rain water and allows the grounds crew to water the field year-round. If full, the cistern can keep the field watered for two or three weeks without rain.
In the first year of Mewborn Field, Georgia Tech hosted the first NCAA Regional and Super Regional in school history, the latter of which showcased it on ESPN. The Yellow Jackets won 46 games, finished in the top 15 nationally and took home the program’s third ACC Championship.
