Shark Bait

The man in the hardhat shakes his head as he sploshes through the muddy puddles that have welled up on the cement floor of the stadium rising up on the Camden side of the Delaware River.

"Been a lot of delays here," says the construction worker, who has been on the job for all of two weeks. "Heard there was a four-month delay in getting steel. Don’t know if we’ll get this all done by May 11" — the scheduled home opener for the Riversharks of the independent Atlantic League, who will play their inaugural season here at Campbell’s Field.

The Camden cop directing traffic outside the skeletal ballyard, while no construction expert, offers his own view of the construction schedule.

"No way they can get this finished in the next three weeks," says the cop, who is stopping traffic to allow a big tractor trailer full of sand to lumber into the outfield. There, the truck will dump its load, which will become part of the base for the still-as-yet-to-be-laid sod.

No construction expert myself (just ask my wife, who is the handy one with the tools), I survey the scene, the workers screwing cup holders into seats, the painters painting, the HVAC guys HVACing. And I wonder if maybe the cop and the guy in the hardhat aren’t right about this place not being ready by May 11.

It’s a date that can’t come quickly enough for Steve Shilling.

He’s the owner of the Quaker Group, the housing development company that is building Campbell’s Field. As the general contractor, any cost overruns on the $20 million stadium come out of his pocket.

The folks on Camden’s Point Street, meanwhile, are also anxious to see the new stadium finished. Living just around the corner from the work site, the residents of Point Street say they are fed up with the round-the-clock noise, traffic and dust that’s resulted from subcontractors scurrying to finish the ballpark.

In no uncertain terms, Shilling insists that Campbell’s Field will open on time.

"We will be ready by May 11," he says. "If we have three feet of snow, we may not play, but we plan on being done."

Shilling admits that the job is costing more than he anticipated.

"A couple of million dollars more," he says, adding that he knew from the start that this project, essentially done on the fly, might be more expensive than expected.

So what was the sticking point?

"There wasn’t any sticking point," he says. "This was a fast-track project, which means that it was designed and construction was started without the benefit at the time of as much value-engineering as you would want to see take place."

The choice, says Shilling, was simple.

"We knew it would be a tight schedule, but it was either start then, or wait a year. We made the decision that we could value-engineer as we went along."

The biggest challenges, says Shilling, were a three-month delay in starting the construction, a harsher-than-normal winter and a wetter-than-normal spring, the latter evident by the thick mud and deep pools of water in and around the ballpark-in-progress.

Perhaps the most curious thing about Campbell’s Field is that, despite the beautiful Philadelphia skyline just across the Delaware, the ballpark faces… the Ben Franklin Bridge.

"We did a computer-generated analysis of where the sun sets on every single day of the year and we were able to determine what angle the ballpark could be built so that the sun wouldn’t be a problem for fielders."

There should be no problems, he adds, for anyone wanting to attend the home opener.

Shilling offers the following advice to any ticket holders to the sold-out opening day who might be worried by the currently discombobulated scene at the construction site.

"Get there early," Shilling says. "I have a feeling people will be lining up before 5 p.m."

Maribel Alvarado and Connie Smith won’t be among those in line.

"This is horrible," says Alvarado, who lives on this small, one-way street around the corner from the stadium. "We’ve had rodents and roaches crawling into our house from all this construction. They are working 24 hours a day. The noise and the dust are terrible."

Smith agrees that Campbell’s Field is no field of dreams for Point Street.

"See these potholes?" she asks, pointing to the paved-over divots in the road. "The construction trucks come rumbling down here, ripping up the street."

As the two women stand on the sidewalk, the sounds of construction loudly audible in the background, a pickup truck leaving the site speeds by on Penn Street. "See that?" Alvarado asks. "That truck is going the wrong way. We are getting really tired of having to put up with all this. Our kids can’t play out here like they used to because there is so much traffic now."

Traffic that won’t likely subside much on nights when the Riversharks are in town.

Something that Alvarado and Smith are keenly aware of.

"We have had enough," says Alvarado. "We are going to talk to someone in City Hall to see if they can do anything for us."

Good luck.

Angel Fuentes, the Camden City Councilman who represents the neighborhood, did not return a phone call for comment.