LAWTON – The Lawton Youth Sports Trust Authority has tapped the Oklahoma City-based architectural firm ADG Blatt to design the city’s proposed youth sports complex.
The authority voted April 3 to approve a contract with ADG Blatt on a conditional basis, which means YSA Chairman Brian Henry may sign the contract once the two parties have worked out the final details of who controls intellectual property.
The contract is divided into phases, and every phase requires the authority’s approval to move forward, Henry said. That was because the authority started working on the contract before Lawton City Council formally approved the project through the design phase, which occurred in late March.
The council has also allocated $1.25 million for architectural and engineering work on the project.
“We set this thing up where we could get maybe phase 1 and 2 done before all that happened,” Henry said. “Now we have $1.25 million. Our support agreement has been restructured. It still will require us to approve moving to the next phase.”
ADG Blatt’s fee for the first three phases of the project – schematic design, design development and construction drawings -- will total $949,664.
The final two phases – bidding and construction oversight – are also included in the contract.
The sports complex will be located on 120 acres off East Gore Boulevard, near MacArthur High School. ADG Blatt will design the entire site, meaning the design will include outdoor sports fields as well as the building.
“How we build those, costwise, will be determined later,” Henry said. “But this will get us to a shovel-ready project.”
He said having a shovel-ready project will make it easier to apply for any grants that may be available.
Intellectual property The only contract-related issue that remained unresolved as of April 3 concerned who controls the intellectual property and data for the project.
Under the contract, the authority may call off the project at any time. If that happens, the authority must pay ADG Blatt for its work up to that point, but the authority will retain the rights to everything that has been generated to date.
ADG Blatt Principal Tony Blatt was concerned that his architects would have no rights to the intellectual property that they garnered during the process, which would prevent them from taking the lessons they learned from the Lawton sports complex and applying them to a similar project somewhere else, Henry said. He said Blatt proposed granting the authority a license for the complex, which would include the site off East Gore Boulevard. The license would apply only to that site, meaning the city could not build the complex in a different location.
“So that protects him (Blatt) from us duplicating his work eight times on different sites,” Henry said.
Henry asked the authority to approve the contract with ADG Blatt on a conditional basis so the two sides could iron out the language concerning intellectual property. He thought the issue could be resolved by the end of the week.