In a construction period of two and a half months, Stadtwerke Offenbach converted the former tennis courts on Bürgeler Straße into a small artificial turf pitch at a cost of 690,000 euros on behalf of the city's sports department. Lord Mayor Dr. Felix Schwenke officially opened the new pitch on Saturday together with Stefan Hirsch from the board of the Rumpenheim sports and cultural community (SKG) and sports district chairman Jörg Wagner.
"With the new artificial turf pitch, which can be played on all year round, the city of Offenbach is supporting SKG's great work with young talent and enabling the club to expand its training and match operations in order to meet the high demand in the children's sector," said Dr. Felix Schwenke, Head of the Sports Department. "At the same time, we are supporting school sports at the neighboring Ernst Reuter Comprehensive School, which will also use the facility."
The Stadtwerke Offenbach company OPG Offenbacher Projektentwicklungsgesellschaft mbH was entrusted with the project management, which kept exactly to budget. OPG had already converted the former SKG pitch into a 90 x 60 meter large pitch with 6,900 square meters of artificial turf on behalf of the City of Offenbach. The sixth facility of its kind in the city was opened in October last year.
The new, immediately adjacent pitch is much smaller, measuring 51 x 33 meters and 2,000 square meters of artificial turf, including the safety zones. It corresponds to the E-youth category and will mainly be available to young soccer club players. Around half of the 550 SKG members are children and young people under the age of 18.
In addition to the pupils of the Ernst Reuter School, the pitch will be used by SKG's nine G to E youth teams and two small-sided girls' teams. That's around 170 children between the ages of four and ten, who can train here from around 4 p.m. on all days of the week, regardless of the weather, even in the winter season.
Like the neighboring large all-weather pitch, the small pitch is also one of the latest generation of artificial turf pitches, which are considered more hard-wearing, durable and easier to maintain than natural grass pitches and are therefore cheaper to maintain. As they can be played on all year round, the possible usage time is increased from 1,000 to 2,000 hours per year compared to an artificial pitch.
The pile, which is considered to be particularly soft, consists of tightly tufted blades and is filled with ten kilograms of quartz sand per square meter. A total of around 20 tons of quartz sand was applied. This layer of sand, which the players do not come into contact with, gives the fibers a firm grip. Plastic or rubber granules, which are also viewed critically for environmental reasons due to abrasion, no longer need to be applied.
In order to drain the surface water, OPG had around 500 meters of drainage pipes laid, which flow into an infiltration basin with a storage capacity of 110,000 liters. Energy-saving LED lighting was also installed during the construction of the small pitch.
Mayor Felix Schwenke: "With the small pitch, the city of Offenbach has continued to implement its sports facility development plan and, in combination with the large pitch in Rumpenheim, has created an optimal facility for club and school sports."