Kiwanis Oval Groundbreaking Set for Monday

A groundbreaking ceremony Monday morning will signal the official start for construction on the multi-use turf field at the Kiwanis Oval—one of several areas of Caldwell being dug up this summer.

Mayor Susan Gartland prefers to call it "chaos."

PSE&G has begun the installation of a new gas pipe along the length of Roseland Avenue. In addition, Essex County's project to repave Bloomfield Avenue from Newark to Route 46 is also underway.

The county, which is also redesigning the intersection of Bloomfield and Roseland avenues this summer, has already completed the construction of several center islands for flowers and shrubs to be planted in the downtown area.

The county is also contributing a $750,000 grant toward the nearly $2 million Kiwanis Oval project. Lake Hiawatha-based Applied Landscape Technologies, which was , will begin scraping the field on Thursday before Monday's official groundbreaking ceremony that Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo expects to attend at 10 a.m.

"That's pretty exciting and hopefully right after that they will actually break the ground and begin the construction," Gartland said during Tuesday night's council meeting.

"It should be really interesting now that Bloomfield Avenue, Roseland Avenue and everything else is under construction. It will be utter chaos in Caldwell over the summer, but what's new?"

Gartland said Wednesday council approved—following executive session Tuesday night—the payment of $6,450 to Mario Iannelli, the project's engineer from Birdsall Services Group, for routine oversight of the Kiwanis Oval construction.

However, Gartland said a decision has not yet been made for the additional monitoring that was requested by Borough Engineer Glenn Beckmeyer. According to Iannelli, it would cost an additional $19,200 for a full-time inspector to be on site during critical junctures of the project.

Gartland said the governing body feels the additional oversight is needed, but is waiting to confer with West Caldwell's governing body.

"We feel there needs to be additional oversight during certain periods of the project," Gartland said. "We feel there needs to be a lot more oversight than just a couple of hours a day since they're really going to be pushing to finish this prior to Labor Day. But we're waiting to hear what West Caldwell has to say."

West Caldwell Mayor Joseph Tempesta said Wednesday his council has not yet had an opportunity to have a discussion on the issue.

According to Caldwell's Municipal Attorney Greg Mascera, a draft of an agreement with Caldwell College, which has for its baseball team to use the field, has been completed and will be sent to the school.

In addition, the recreation agreement with West Caldwell is nearly finalized, Mascera said.

"The contracts are in order and we're ready to go. The agreements are essentially in place with West Caldwell. We are just waiting on one more piece to the agreement," he said.

"Some of the things that were included, for instance, was the library. I don't think that falls under the umbrella of West Caldwell recreation. Obviously, Caldwell has its own library and we shouldn't be paying toward any library expenses with West Caldwell. That's what I need the committee to finalize. That's the final piece to that puzzle."