Procore & Santa Barbara High School: Arrow to the Heart

[note: this piece is being reposted to commemorate completion of the project described]

For nearly a century, storm runoff from "The American Riviera's" northeasterly quadrant has found its roaring, subterranean focal point about 20 feet beneath Santa Barbara High School’s football stadium. How’s that for unnerving? From the age of bowler hats and bloomers right up to the current era of head-to-toe Lulu Lemon zest, two lil' subterranean pipes under Peabody Stadium’s 50 yard-line have held firm as 98 years of boom-and bust wet stuff barreled downhill from a ~260-acre catchment, and through increasingly populous (and pricey) east side neighborhoods.

“We made the final tie-in approximately a month ago,” says Albert Giacomazzi, President and Chief Executive Officer of AMG & Associates. They're the construction outfit responsible for the busy open pit that now exists where SBHS' dear, rust-eaten old stadium once stood. "The whole new storm drain system has been installed and the existing system has been basically terminated.”

This brief assessment speaks volumes.

Concrete Dream Collective

Santa Barbara High School's Peabody Stadium is being thoroughly redesigned and rebuilt by AMG and its partners, to put it as euphemistically as possible. The rebuild was necessarily preceded by the thoroughly hair-raising demolition of the old stadium and grandstand—which from at least one perspective may be seen to have been a huge concrete bowl that for nearly a hundred years has filled slowly to the brim with the deeply stirring memories of thousands of Santa Barbara teens from every 20th century epoch.

Nervous grads in gowns, marching band kids awkwardly taking the field, their hoisted brass glinting under the warm eveningtime glare of stadium lights, the sweet smell of stepped-on grass, decades of banner-waving football fans in a time-traveling array of clothing and hair styles—Peabody Stadium has been, like high school stadiums everywhere, a longstanding community repository of... love?

Yeah. Those who stare into the middle distance when contemplating the hurried nature of sand in an hourglass—all of us, that is—have surely been made reflective by Santa Barbara High School's new stadium project.

A project which did, just incidentally, feature some technical challenges.

Water Water Everywhere

AMG & Associates won the bid to perform open heart surgery on the timeworn and emotionally freighted little football field at 700 E. Anapamu - presently a meteoric hole filled with swarming hard hat types. Since hanging out its shingle in 2006, AMG has been a quietly swaggering construction firm whose growing portfolio includes about 80 projects for public entities in California, Arizona and Texas—the lion’s share of those out-of-state projects being federal contracts. AMG’s California portfolio has more than a smattering of school stadium projects. They know their stuff, and then some.

Still. We're talking about the SBHS Dons here. That's...different.

Santa Barbara High School is special in a way that other high schools are not. That’s just logic and science. And maybe a smallish sprinkling of sentiment. Certainly a measure of statistical specialness became evident during AMG’s early dig which, as fate would have it, coincided with some record-setting local rainfall, and the delicate matter of conveying storm-maddened waters through the job site (see paragraph one) even while prepping the changeover to a new drainage system. AMG’s soft-spoken but clearly unflappable CEO understates the adventure in calming tones:

“We had to locate where the new system was going to be installed, at the same time leaving the existing system in place while we had these disastrous rainstorms that occurred earlier in the year. When we were excavating out, we were doing this all during the storms.” One tries to imagine a dig of this size happening in the midst of the rainy melee that arrived in late 2017 and became a cataclysm in January 2018. Mr. Giacomazzi continues in a matter-of-fact tone, switching now to present tense as he recalls the details.

“We’re monitoring the weather systems on a daily basis. We’re planning our installation of the storm drain system very carefully so that we’re not exposing the district, or the city of Santa Barbara, to excessive flooding. It was challenging, but it went very smoothly.” When a guy as sanguine as Mr. Giacomazzi describes something as “challenging” you know it had to be scary.

The Shirt that Built a Repository of Dreams. So to Speak.

Santa Barbara High School owes a lot to the Arrow shirt. Not because the heavily creased blouse with its earlobe-grazing high starched collar and barber shop quartet cuffs is so beloved by today’s teens. Nuh uh. It’s because when the Arrow shirt took off like a rocket in the 1920s, it’s crazy success enriched a local gent whose company made and marketed the thing; a stern-looking, big-hearted guy named Frederick Forrest Peabody, the genuinely altruistic millionaire who for a time chaired the Santa Barbara County Board of Education.

Peabody donated the land in the San Roque neighborhood where the charter school that bears his name now stands. It is Peabody’s sculpted face that stares placidly out from above the entrance to the Santa Barbara High School auditorium, looking like an outcast from Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion even as the school’s lobby fills, decade after decade, with the laughing, excitable teens of Saint Babs. And it is Peabody’s name that graces the stadium presently undergoing its grand transformation under AMG’s careful and practiced guiding hand.

Santa Barbara High School’s 40-acre campus, built in 1924 (a year before The Quake leveled much of the rest of the town and ushered in SB’s red slate epoch) was planned and largely paid for by Mr. Peabody, who threw in the school’s eponymous sports stadium for free.

Peabody himself, described in all biographies as a “self-made man” from humble Vermont beginnings, had little schooling, and entered the work force himself at 17 years old. This may explain the lavishness of his giving to education during his financially liquid autumn years. Peabody became an adored Santa Barbara gadfly and philanthropist, supporting the Lobero, the rebuild of post-quake Santa Barbara, and much, much else. He saw wealth as a lever for moving mountains, to our common benefit.

The Santa Barbara High School he built has long occupied the emotional center of our little seaside idyll, and her ever-freshening population of age-diverse alums; bent, grinning oldsters smartly fist-bumping their tattooed modern counterparts. Once a Don, baby.

21st Century Hammer

And speaking of levers…AMG, like a goodly number of construction outfits around the country— and around the world—runs its builds through Procore’s smooth-flowing cloud-based project management platform. Thanks to this benevolent techno-brilliance, a construction project's multifarious (excuse me) project management threads may be tamed and organized, and made editable and actionable and visible to all project players in 24/7 real time. Honestly. Drawings and spec books fit in your pocket and can be viewed on your mobile device wherever you are, from Sioux Falls to Sebastopol.

“Procore is actively being utilized on the project by AMG, by Lundgren Management, by KBZ Architects and their consulting engineers,” CEO Giacomazzi says. “And we're getting hit right now with a lot of intense deadlines, too.” Why now? AMG’s relaxed CEO ticks off his company’s list of sheepskin-driven summer chores.

“AMG is working a number of stadium projects that have to be completed by the middle of June for graduation on various campuses.” Mr. Giacomazzi counts them off. “Canyon Springs High School in Marina Valley, La Habra, Stacey Middle School—that one's essentially a gymnasium, but they're holding the graduation ceremonies in the gym. So we're getting hit right now with a lot of deadlines. But we'll be meeting all of them.” His tone is matter-of-fact. “We'll make sure we’re maintaining those completion dates. AMG’s primary forte is public works. 95% of our work is public works projects, in fact. And Procore’s technology is something that we rely on daily.”

Birds and Dogs and Sheepskin Deadlines

Which gets us back to campus. A gee-whiz reporter has a possibly naïve question, and puts it unflinchingly to AMG’s Giacomazzi— the current steward of Santa Barbara High School’s soul (not to put too fine a point on it). Is AMG experiencing much pushback from the community, some of whose most emotionally penetrating memories can be said to have been bulldozed with the old Peabody Stadium? I picture teary throngs in timeworn letter jackets clinging to chain link and howling as the concrete battlements of yesteryear are reduced to spiritless rubble. Mr. Giacomazzi answers this way.

“The alumni actually were very active early on in the project.”

I knew it!

“They actively participated in fundraising for the project and raised approximately $6 million.” He pauses— for effect, it seems. Okay, I take your point, Mr. Giacomazzi. “The rest was funded through bond measures and matching funds by the state,“ he adds.

The multi-tiered funding model speaks to the thoroughness of the upgrade across many fronts, a long-awaited renovation that will include a fancy 2,300-seat concrete grandstand (whose prefab modules will be produced in Bakersfield); as well as a cool new press box, weight room, classroom, team room, (not a tea room – you misread), and a space-age track that meets California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) standards. Dear old Peabody Stadium 1.0 had an asphalt track; one of the last few in California.

By comparison, Peabody 2.0 will have a Mondo Track – a futuristic, footwork-embracing laminate whose features include non-directional tessellation, co-vulcanized multi-layers, and elongated honeycomb backing. Okay? The new field with its artificial turf will be a combination football, soccer and lacrosse space.

There’s more. Stadium lighting will be LED-based, directional and shielded; meaning in surrounding neighborhoods the birds won’t begin their confused sunrise song every time SBHS hosts an evening game. A new state-of-the-art sound system will likewise contain and focus inward the loudspeaker blare that normally has the terrified family dog charging in through the just-repaired screen door every game night. A storm-water drainage system and underground utilities upgrade complete the picture.

Dave Hetyonk, SB Unified School District's Director of Facilities and Operations, is also wowed, and points up exactly what Santa Barbara High School is gaining from the build. "Significantly, SBHS had no CIF-compliant track. So the school could practice on the old track, but if they ever wanted have a track meet they would have to go to SBCC or to another high school, because of the shape of that bowl. This will be a great facility for the community."

At this writing, the district's Mr. Hetyonk is two working days from retirement, and wanted to give a public shout-out to the members of his team, those involved with the Peabody project, and those with whom he's shared weekly meetings for years. And years.

On the Peabody project, Steve Vizzolini will succeed Dave in a District position that will now be called Maintenance and Modernization. Richard Whirty, SBUSD Project Manager, will continue to hold down the district's varied PM fort. "And I've been meeting with my Facilities team—Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Meg Jette and Superintendent Cary Matsuoka, every single Friday to discuss project status and budgets, and much else." Mr. Hetyonk ends his official remarks with light laughter. Understandably.

"40 years in the education business!" he says proudly, ringingly. It's terrific to hear someone so clearly aware, in the powerful present tense, of his accomplishment. "I'm moving on to my next chapter." Glad I stumbled into the closing action of this chapter, Dave—and a hint of the happy energy you're bringing to the next.

Arrow to the Heart

Mr. Giacomazzi (“call me Albert”) is wrapping the conversation with a shout-out to his own blue chip posse. “The relationships that we have on this project are amazing, in particular KBZ Architects, which is the design architect on the project. Joe Wilcox is the principal in charge for KBZ, and I've known Joe more than 25 years. Excellent architect, incredibly helpful, and a problem solver. We’re fortunate to have his associate Mat Gradias assigned to the project, as well. Both of them work very closely with our team, as well as with the school district.” 

AMG, KBZ, Lundgren, Flowers & Associates, Knowland, Procore, and big Fred Peabody—these folks have joined forces in the rebuild of a beautiful new memory magnet. How about that?

The Arrow Shirt may be an old-timey relic of a dowdy past, but Frederick Forrest Peabody’s gracious leveraging of his Arrow Shirt fortune was as far-seeing as one could hope; buying, for instance, more non-directional tessellation than you can shake a stick at. With AMG’s help, Frederick Peabody’s gift rolls quietly forward to urge on the next century of sprinting, leaping, passing, la-crossing, high-fiving Santa Barbara High Schoolers; boys and girls with everything ahead of them, and a blowsy, hopelessly square dress shirt behind them, swelling like a sail with the fragrant sea winds for which the town is known and loved—pushing these kids onward, tattoos and all.

Go Dons.

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