A cell phone tower at Green Bay West's Del Marcelle Stadium is preventing the grandstand from extending as designed in a renovation project. PC: Fox 11 Online
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — High school football season starts in less than a month, but a unique obstacle has created uncertainty where fans will be sitting when a newly renovated stadium in Green Bay is ready.
A cellphone tower is standing in the way of finishing the grandstand at Green Bay West High School’s Del Marcelle Stadium.
Providing a level playing field for Green Bay’s four high school stadiums was a highlight of the 2022 referendum 69% of voters supported.
“The old stadium was very run-down and now they got something they can be really proud of,” said Donny Kensmoe of the Green Bay West Booster Club.
The inability to relocate the cellphone tower is preventing the project from being finished the way it was designed.
“It’s kind of out of our hands, out of the school district’s hands,” said Cale Pulczinski, chief operating officer for Green Bay’s public schools. “That is between the city and the lessee, but to our knowledge, at this point, the city and cell tower company have not come to an agreement without further financial impact to the Green Bay School District.”
Pulczinski says the district has three options. The first is to get the tower re-located, which Pulczinski says would cost at least $1 million — $750,000 for relocation and then covering revenue loss for the cell tower company and the city, which leases out the land.
The district says it isn’t willing to use taxpayer money to cover the revenue losses.
“That is a lot of money, but we’ve come this far,” said Kensmoe. “I don’t know if I can say it’s the right thing. It should happen eventually.”
“I wouldn’t say not optimistic, but we have to proceed,” said Pulczinski when asked about the chances of the tower being relocated.
The other options the district is now looking at involve the cell tower staying put — either bringing the grandstand as close to it as possible or building the grandstand over the gear on the ground.
Both those options would affect capacity, but be more affordable than moving the cellphone tower, according to Pulczinski.
“Either way, we’re going to come up with a great solution that is not going to impact that stadium in a negative way,” said Pulczinski.
A district spokesperson says the possibility of this being an issue wasn’t on the district’s radar before the referendum was passed in November 2022.
“It’s not very different than constraints and other challenges that we deal with on other sites,” said Mike Helmrick, the project manager for Rettler Coporation. “Just have to work through the process to coordinate with all the parties and come to a solution that will work for everyone.”
While some early season games will be played elsewhere, the plan remains to utilize the stadium this fall.
Kensmoe believes the current plan is to play two of five home games at Del Marcelle. He says the other games will be played at Green Bay Southwest, Preble and East high schools.
Capacity would have been 2,019 with the original design, about a 30% increase from the old stadium’s capacity of 1,560.
The hope is to come up with a solution that will have as minimal an impact to capacity as possible.
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