New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Fieldhouse demolition begins
DERBY — The demolition could take the whole week, but its memories will last forever.
Demolition of the 61year-old fieldhouse at Ryan Field began Monday morning. With it will go decades of memories.
These include the Class S state championships in 1990, 1985 and 1969, the great Derby-Ansonia and Derby-Shelton football classics and the back-toback 2017 and 2018 Derby track and field Championships.
The fieldhouse is where players dressed and showered, listened to half-time motivational speeches, celebrated victories and lamented last-second defeats.
“We were able to save the tapestry that contained the poem ‘Pride’ that Dom Piscioneri wrote of the 1969 state championship team,” said Andrew Baklik, chief of staff for Mayor Richard Dziekan. “George French, our football coach, has it and he’s reached out to the Piscioneri family to see if they want it.”.
It was a longstanding tradition that players would walk down the stairs from the locker room and touch the poem, which hung overhead, before turning to go out the door and onto the field.
“We would never let something like that be destroyed,” he said.
Additionally, Baklik said, the home-team lockers have been offered to players.
Carmen DiCenso, the former aldermanic president, football coach and player, said the silver ductwork on which inspirational messages were written by players over the years also was saved.
“We’re hoping to put it somewhere in the new field house,” he said.
In its place will be built a state-of-the-art, two-story facility, funded by Joan R. Payden, chief executive officer and founder of Payden & Rygel, a $110 billion asset management company.
Payden donated millions to build the new field house and reconstruct the boys’ baseball and girls’ softball field as a memory to her father, Joseph R. Payden, the 1915 Derby High School valedictorian. He graduated from Yale University and served in England as a fighter pilot during World War I; he later became chief executive officer of Union Carbide Java in Indonesia.
The new fieldhouse, designed by Kaestle Boos Architects and to be built by Turner Construction, will stands two stories high with porches outside the second floor providing a view of both the football and baseball fields. Inside will be a state-of-the art locker room, a banquet room and meeting hall, and a museum. It will be located between the football and baseball fields.
Superintendent of Schools Matthew Conway said demolition of the existing structure will take two days while another three days will be spent removing the foundation.
The city received $2.9 million from the state to construct a track field and line the football field with artificial turf.