Brookfield trustees approved a contract for both phases of renovation work to baseball field number one at Ehlert Park.
In partnership with Riverside Brookfield High School and the Brookfield Western Conference Babe Ruth baseball league, the village’s project will see “much-needed improvements” to the field, said Village President Michael Garvey at the village board’s Oct. 27 meeting.
In the first phase, due to be completed by the start of baseball season in March, those improvements will include the demolition and removal of existing structures like the dugouts, backstop fencing, storage facility and press box alongside the reconstruction of the dugouts, the installation of new backstop fencing and netting and some design and engineering services for the second phase, which will be completed later.
That second phase will involve constructing a new, combined storage and scoring area and installing remedial infrastructure for drainage issues that historically have caused the dugouts to flood.
The contract was awarded to Lindblad Construction, a firm based in Joliet, for a total price of $554,900. Lindblad was the lowest qualified bidder, village staffers said, though even their bid came in nearly $300,000 over the project’s previously estimated budget.
Other bids ranged in price from $575,000 up to $938,000.
The first phase of work will cost $295,000 while the second will cost $259,900, according to a village memo from the meeting.
RB will pitch in $100,000 toward the first phase of the project with Western Conference contributing another $20,000, the memo said, leaving the village on the hook for the remaining $175,000 for that phase and the entire cost of the second phase. Brookfield had only budgeted $100,000 toward the project initially, leaving $75,000 it would need to find a way to fund, according to the memo.
Garvey said village officials will need to account for the unexpectedly high costs of the second phase, which Assistant Village Manager Stevie Ferrari attributed to the “realities of [rising] construction costs,” as they finalize Brookfield’s 2026 budget.
“The board is aware that, if you approve this tonight, we are looking at, during our budget discussions, the need to come up with a significantly larger contribution from the village to finish phase two,” Garvey said. “Staff aptly pointed out that if we don’t intend on at least seriously considering the funding for stage two, that it wouldn’t make sense to move forward with phase one.”
According to the memo, two projects that Brookfield had budgeted for 2025 are no longer expected to be completed this year, freeing up about $138,000 for the project. Those projects include renovations of the bathroom facilities at Kiwanis Park and of the playground at Maple South Park.
At the village board meeting, Trustee Jennifer Hendricks asked if there would be any way to reduce the costs, but Ferrari said she found it unlikely.
“I think we do have the lowest qualified bid that we are going to see,” she said.
Ferrari said she did not recommend decreasing the scope of the project, as doing so could have negative consequences for the field’s use in the future. She said the engineer could look at phase two for possible places to cut costs if the board desired but said many of the costs, such as those for prefabricated structures or concrete work, likely cannot be adjusted without altering the project’s scope.
Ferrari said the village’s draft 2026 budget includes the second phase as a potential capital improvement project.
Garvey said it will be the board’s decision on whether Brookfield can accommodate the project in 2026. He said the village could seek state or township grant funding or ask RB or Western Conference to contribute more than they previously agreed to but called their existing funding contributions substantial.
“[The storage area] is probably the worst building we have in a park anywhere, and the investment in the amount of equipment and things we store in there — I’ve got to give credit to the Western Conference and RB people, they’ve tried to keep it up,” he said.
