Sports Park officials working to lessen impact on taxpayers

BROWNSVILLE - The regional manager of the construction firm for the Brownsville Sports Park said Thursday that he's not sure who is responsible for erosion problems with the softball fields.

But he emphasized that everyone is working on a solution to lessen the impact on taxpayers.

"That is our goal at the end of the day," the manager, Rene Capistran, said.

His comments come on the heels of Monday's Brownsville Community Improvement Corp.'s meeting, where the board tabled a decision to spend $101,306 to correct the steep fields.

Instead, the board called for a meeting next Monday with contractors SpawGlass, and architectural-engineering firm HNTB, who designed the project, to determine who the city will hold accountable.

Capistran said that SpawGlass followed the design and had not taken part in the project's design. "We don't do designs . . . We don't hold any design liability," Capistran said. "We're just the builder."

Capistran said the concern was noticed several months ago and that adjustments were made, but these had not corrected the slopes.

"I'm not certain who would be accountable for it," Capistran said. "I can't blame the design team or ourselves. We made the modifications that we could."

Capistran's project manager David Gomez walked the site Wednesday with HNTB engineers.

On the other hand, HNTB's Associate Vice-President Bobby Balli said in a statement Thursday that "up until today our client had not contacted us about this issue, and we do not have the information necessary to determine what has taken place."

Balli further noted that te firm was ready to cooperate with Brownsville toward a resolution to the issue, "as soon as possible."