Posted on: Thursday, August 7, 2003

Turf workers return

Advertiser Staff

After a three-week work stoppage, two workers from a turf installation company returned yesterday to finish the job at Aloha Stadium.

Workers with FieldTurf had walked off without installing the goal posts, leveling the field, training staff on painting the field, and other detail work, according to Lloyd Unebasami, the Hawai'i Tourism Authority's chief administrative officer.

Unebasami said the job "was not done in accordance to the contract."

In June, the state balked at paying FieldTurf a little more than $200,000 for various change orders for the project, Unebasami said. The amount included more than $10,000 in travel reimbursements, Unebasami said.

The FieldTurf workers arrived yesterday morning and spent most of the day organizing equipment, said George Toma, an NFL field consultant. The workers were looking to rent a special sweeping machine that would level the field, Toma said.

"The machine that they need is hard to find in Hawai'i, but we got some leads so maybe (today) we may have something," Toma said. "We got a number of people looking for one."

Unebasami said work should be completed in about a week. The $1.3 million project started on April 1. The FieldTurf surface — in which blade-like material is stabilized by sand-and-rubber infill — replaced the stadium's AstroTurf.