First Game on New Football Field Scheduled For Nov. 4

Editor's note: This article was updated on Monday, Oct. 24 with additional information about parking and entering the field.

football players were originally going to break in their new home field at the annual Thanksgiving Day tilt against rival Wakefield. Now, cleat will meet turf a few weeks earlier.

The first game on the new Fred W. Green Field will be played on Friday, Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. against Arlington.

"Arlington has been great because it was originally a home game for them," Mayor Rob Dolan said recently.

Dolan said the entire new athletic complex won't be ready—the concession stand, visitor's locker room and ticket booth won't be open—but the new turf field itself will be ready and "we want to get these kids on this field, get this senior class out there."

Tickets cost $6 for adults, $4 for students, and go on sale beginning next Monday, Oct. 24. Special commemorative tickets for the inaugural game will be sold immediately after school in the main lobby of and Melrose High School. Tickets can also be purchased at the at Mount Hood and the .

Tickets will be available at the gate, but because of the anticipated response, the city encourages attendees to buy tickets in advance.

All attendees should enter the game from the middle school side; there will be no tickets or entrances on the Tremont Street side of the field. Parking is available at the and in the Melrose High School and upper and lower Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School parking lots.

Project approved last year

Last year, to build a new Melrose High School athletic complex and new fields at Pine Banks Park using revenues from Mount Hood Golf Course. The Board of Aldermen , which also required state Legislature approval and .

The approximately $4 million project installed a new synthetic turf field at Fred W. Green Field, something that wasn't an option before due to flooding problems in the area, which meant the city could not get the field insured.

However, a —with a greater rainfall total than the Mother's Day storm of 2006—showed that flood mitigation projects over the past four years made a synthetic turf field a viable option at the high school, Dolan said. The water only reached about 25 percent of the area that it reached in the 2006 storm.

In addition to the field itself, the project includes new lights, a press box and increased handicapped parking directly next to the middle school. New stands will hold 2,000 seats; the old bleachers had 3,500 seats, but Dolan previously said the Middlesex League average is 1,500 seats per football stadium.

Morelli Baseball Field is also being redone with a natural turf field; new bleachers, including in the outfield; a permanent baseball fence; and new batting cages and bullpens.

A three-lane walking path will circle the entire complex, replacing the currently existing track as an option for walkers and runners, and a new entryway into the complex near the middle school would house concessions stands and a ticket booth.

A twisting and turning sewer line that runs underneath the complex was replaced with a straight line, located underneath the line between the baseball and football field, which should help alleviate the ongoing problem of sewer backup at Melrose Towers Condominiums.

That sewer line replacement cost $1 million and was paid for with money from developer National Development, which is building a 'lifestyle center' in Lynnfield that ties into the Wakefield system and previously agreed to pay Melrose to mitigate any impact on Melrose's sewer system.

Information from previously published Melrose Patch articles was used in this report.