Company takes artificial to new heights

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Hellas Construction, Inc ., the Austin Company that creates state-of-the-art artificial turf athletic fields is scoring big time. Hellas is responsible for not just one, but three new fields at the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington. The stadium will boast an NFL style field, as you would expect. Also, though, grounds crews will be able to roll up the pro surface and roll out another football field meeting college and high school specs. Then, they can roll that one up and unroll a soccer field. Finally, all three fields can be stowed beneath the stands, making way for other events like concerts.

The high profile job is a big feather in the Hellas cap, but the company stays extremely busy with bread and butter projects, as well. In the past year alone, Hellas executives say, the company installed almost three dozen artificial turf fields in high school stadiums across Texas. All this had its beginnings with something called Astroturf.

"Of course, Astroturf was the first," said Bruce Layman, Turf Division Director for Hellas, "invented really for roof tops up in New York City for inner city play. Then in 1965, they installed it at the Astrodome because the grass that they had in there died."

The Hellas product, called Matrix, is much different from early versions of artificial turf. It is made from polypropylene, a petroleum based material, but Layman says it is heavy metal free. Also, instead of a carpet installed over a pad, the long fibers in Matrix are brushed up and in filled with small rubber pellets. The result is something that actually resembles grass growing in the ground. We are talking here about grass that never needs watering and a field that allows rain to percolate into aquifer below the field.

"No mow, no grow, no H2O," said Layman. "We don't have to do any of those things."

We are also talking about a company that provides 350 jobs in Austin alone in a time when jobs are not growing like grass.