December 2003

New York High School Receives $2.5 Million Athletic Facility

A football field is 100 yards of turf … and 25,000 old car tires.

The Take the Field organization dedicated a $2.5 million state-of-the-art, and environmentally friendly, athletic facility made from recycled car tires for Flushing High School, thanks to the support of Ford Motor Company and Recovery Technologies Group Inc. (RTG), with a major assist from the Queens Borough President.

The new facility is built on the site of a sports field in Flushing Memorial Park that had gone a half-century without any renovation. Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, contributed $500,000 for the project.

The complex comprises a new football and soccer field, softball field, four-lane running track with areas for field events, new bleachers, and scoreboard. The football/soccer/softball component was built from the recycled tires. Ford and RTG maintain an ongoing partnership in which recycled tires are crumbled in the most technologically advanced manner, and used to create a host of products, including state-of-the-art artificial turf athletic fields such as the one at Flushing Memorial Park, as well as the majority of National Football League fields, including the new one at Giants Stadium.

The Flushing field is one of a number of Take the Field projects throughout NYC’s five boroughs made from the recycled tires. Each field is made from 25,000 tires, which are recycled into 300,000 pounds of crumbed rubber.