The less than three-year-old outdoor track at Oak Park and River Forest High School is shut down for two weeks as workers from the company that installed the track resurface it and repair parts of the track that had broken off. The track was shut down on July 27 and will reopen Aug. 9. Signs on the fence around the track state the track is closed due to “track replacement and routine turf field testing” but an OPRF official said the track is just being resurfaced.
The track was opened in January 2024 and putting in the track in late fall and winter caused problems.
“It had been unseasonably warm the fall they poured the track surface, so they decided to pour in late October/November, but then a cold snap caused the track to cure to itself too fast, not to the concrete — that’s why big chunks are breaking loose,” said Stephen Traphagen, an assistant boys cross country coach at OPRF, in a recent post to the Polite Politics Oak Park Facebook page.
Amy Guralnick, the mother of a child who attended a track camp at OPRF this summer, said that chunks of the track near the pole vault area had broken off.
A worker for Track Surfaces Company, the Elburn-based company working on the track, also told Wednesday Journal that cold weather after the track was poured caused problems.
The repair and resurfacing work is being done at no cost to OPRF because the track is still under warranty. The worker told Wednesday Journal that after the current work is completed the track should be good for at least another 10 years.
Anthony Arbogast, the assistant superintendent for business services at OPRF, said that the work being done on the track is just standard resurfacing and upkeep. Karin Sullivan, OPRF’s chief spokesperson, said the track was never unsafe and questioned whether “big chunks” of the track were breaking loose.
“It was nothing egregious,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan described the work being done on the track this summer as “nothing unusual.”