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Although wooden construction horses emblazoned with the warning "Under construction. Field closed. Please keep off." continue to stand on the football field at the Campbell Community Center, the new track surrounding it is open for business.
As one of former Mayor Dan Furtado's last acts as mayor, on Dec. 1, he participated in the inaugural run on the track. Since then, on any given day, dozens of runners, joggers and walkers can be seen taking advantage of one of the community's newest facilities.
Laurie Kehl, 43, said she's lived in Campbell her whole life, but had used the track only for the first time on the Sunday before Christmas.
"I always used to drive by this place," she said as she walked around with her two daughters. "But it was only a dirt track for some years."
"Now it's so inviting," she added while walking with her two daughters on the soft rubber track, bright red and striped with brilliant white lines.
The community center renovation was approved in September 2002, with a total budget of $7.2 million. The city awarded Novato-based Arntz Builders the $5.3 million construction contract.
Originally scheduled to reopen in September, the track and field project was delayed three months by unusually heavy showers in December 2002, said Al Oxonian, Campbell senior civil engineer in charge of the project. Underground clay, which doesn't allow the water to be absorbed into the ground very easily, made it difficult for construction machinery to do its work.
Then, in fall 2003, rains caused more delays, preventing workers from putting on the finishing touches for a couple of weeks. But because of some cushion built into a reworked schedule, Oxonian said, workers met their revised Dec. 1 grand-opening target date.
When complete, the revised community center facilities will include not only the new track, but also an improved football field, new night-lit tennis courts, ball walls, more walkways, a reconfigured skate park, new restrooms and a completely reconfigured parking lot.
"I really like it," Campbell resident Dan Dempelein, 37, said of the track. "You can't beat this surface."
Dempelein has lived in Campbell for five years, so he's seen the construction unfolding in the last year.
"I didn't know what they were going to do with this place," he said. "But I was quite pleased with how it turned out."
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