Memorial Field, the sunken downtown stadium, may soon get a makeover.

State College Borough, State College School District and private citizens are working together to raise funds and renovate the aging facility.

Although nothing has been finalized yet, renovation plans include replacing the grass playing surface with artificial turf, widening the field area to better accommodate sports like soccer, and fixing a drainage problem to prevent flooding during heavy rains.

The field itself was actually constructed over a sinkhole that used to be the town dump.

During the '30s and '40s, the Works Project Administration built the stadium, said Ed Poprik, director of the Office of Physical Plant for State College Area School District.

Because about 50 acres of land drain into a limestone cavern under the stadium, the field has unique drainage problems, Mark Whitfield, the borough's public works director, said.

During heavy rains, the field often times floods until the water has time to drain out, he said.

"There's no other place for the water to go," Whitfield said. "Without [the sinkhole] you'd have a 50-acre pond downtown."

Limestone is a soft shale rock that slowly erodes when exposed to water, resulting in caverns, he said.

Home to the local high school football team, Memorial Field is used for sporting events and community activities.

"The facility has served us very well," said Patricia Best, superintendent of the State College School Area School District. "It's played an important role in the community for the past 60 years."

The field is used throughout the year, hosting events like the annual Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, the Halloween parade and First Night.

"Occasionally we play a soccer game or two because it's the only field with lights," Poprik said.

However, the playing surface is grass, limiting the amount of activities that can go on.

"Eventually you destroy the turf," Whitfield said. "By the end of the football season it becomes a mud bowl."

If an artificial surface is installed, activities could take place seven days a week without damaging the surface, he said.

"There's 101 things you could do with it that you can't do now," Whitfield said.

The tentative plan is to have the artificial turf installed on the field by Aug. 22, he said.

That will be just in time for the fall football season, Whitfield added.

"There are caverns all over State College," he said. "We have sinkholes all over town; it's just the geology of the area."

If the plan to renovate the stadium is approved, the borough would pay to purchase and install new piping.

The piping would help to control the flow of water into the sinkhole, Whitfield said.