MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa- Marshalltown is digging into the past to build a new future at a historic athletic field.

On Tuesday, the Marshalltown Community School District held a groundbreaking ceremony to start the renovation project at Franklin Field. Students made the first dig, officially kicking off its construction.

“This tack is going to go down in like history and more Miller Students will start running on this,” said sixth grader Brandon Wise.

While the field is adjacent to Miller Middle School, the project will benefit the entire community. This comes after the city recently made upgrades to athletic amenities at Marshalltown High School on the city’s south side.

“It’s super exciting that the north side of town is going to have something comparable to what the south side has had the last few years,” said Superintendent Dr. Theron Schutte.

Renovation plans include creating a new turf field for soccer and football, plus a six-lane oval track with an eight-lane sprint straight. The new design includes bleachers that will fit up to 500 spectators, and a press box.

Apart from the athletic amenities, a building for concessions, bathrooms, and storage space will also be constructed.

Franklin Field’s facelift is one of the three projects voters approved in a $57 million bond referendum in November. Using the bond money and state funding, a total of $106 million is being used to renovate Miller Middle School and Franklin Field, and add audio/visual elements to all six elementary schools.

The referendum received overwhelming support from the community.

“[Franklin Field] has historically been a point of pride for our community and to see it in its current condition and to envision what it’s going to be a year from now is pretty exciting,” said the superintendent.

Schutte was part of the last class of students who played high school football on Franklin Field in the 1980s, but the field is also etched into history.

It’s is the sight of the first-ever live report, which took place in the early 1920s. At the time, radio announcers would share updates with the public that they received through phone calls from reporters attending games.

On September 23, 1922, the local radio station, KFJB, built a microphone cord that was three blocks long and ran it down to the field to have live coverage of two high school football games.

Now, the radio station says Franklin Field’s renovation will help preserve this history.

“If we didn’t do something now, how long was it going to be or would it actually happen? Then, you’re gonna see places like this become dilapidated, the history will be lost because it’s going to be torn down, or something else would happen to it,” said Todd Steinkamp, the owner and general manager of KFJB.

Construction is expected to be done by December and the new field will be open next Spring.