Photo Gallery: Melrose Field Construction Update

Just six months after the Melrose High football team played its final game at Fred Green Field, construction has already begun on what will be a brand new sports complex at Melrose High School.

Driving along Lynn Fells Parkway, it’s nearly impossible to miss the countless cranes, dump trucks and bulldozers that have been tearing up the old fields. 

“This is the first phase,” said Melrose athletic director Pat Ruggiero. “The city had been doing the drainage pipes and everything and they put that all in place. They’ve been doing that right along and now the project has been turned over to the company and they started demolition.”

Right now the field is almost unrecognizable. Much of the grass and the track have been torn up while the bleachers are slowly being dismantled as debris and construction equipment lay strewn across what was once the football and baseball fields. 

“They’re correcting, redirecting a lot of drainage pipes under there,” said Ruggiero. “Everything is on schedule so far.” 

The renovation at the high school is a part a $5.5 million plan to overhaul Melrose’s athletic field’s at the high school and at Pine Banks Park. 

The plan, which was first laid out by Mayor Rob Dolan in October is expected to take more than a year to complete, but Ruggiero. said an exact timeline of the project will be discussed at an upcoming meeting. 

“There’s another meeting coming up within the next two weeks and I think we’ll have  more of an idea of that,” said Ruggiero. “The proposed timeline will be reviewed at that meeting.”