New London — Veterans Memorial Field hasn’t hosted a baseball game since 2003.

But the long-dormant recreational field is slated for some improvements, including a baseball field, that should start by spring. City officials must first decide between two of the seven companies that submitted bids for the project.

Killingworth-based Running Brook Farms and Colonna Concrete and Asphalt Paving of West Haven were among the two low bidders for the project and are expected to meet with city officials, including members of the Parks and Recreation Commission within the next week for final interviews.

Public Works Director Brian Sear said the two companies were close in their bids on the project and also close to the approximately $880,000 left of what the city had budgeted for the project. The city had earmarked about $1 million for the project and has spent about $120,000 for design of the plans and bid documents from Kent + Frost Landscape Architecture.

Running Brook Farms submitted a total bid of $913,398, which includes grading and preparing the field, paving a parking lot and demolishing of a concrete structure on the property off Cedar Grove Avenue. Colonna Construction submitted a total bid of $893,970 for the same work.

The city had bid out three different elements of the work: the field, the parking lot and a composting toilet facility. The toilet option, at a proposed cost between $55,000 and $61,600, was dropped in favor of the parking lot at the request of the parks and recreation commission, Sear said. Portable toilets are the likely alternative.

A final decision could come before the end of the month on which company will perform the work.

“They’re so close, it makes sense to interview both,” Sear said.

Because the bids came in higher than what the city had expected, additional funds will need to be appropriated.

Finance Director Don Gray has said the funding for the project will come from a previously approved bond authorization for a $61 million school construction project, called the 21st Century Comprehensive Facilities Plan. All but about 5 percent of that cost was covered by the state.

Mayor Michael Passero has said there was also a more than decade-old pledge made to the city that the field would be restored for use after portable classrooms were removed. The classrooms were removed four years ago. Passero had pushed for funding the project as head of the School Building and Maintenance Committee.

“It’s been a frustrating process. It’s been a long process but finally there’s light at the end of the tunnel,” Passero said. “We expect a shovel to be in the ground as soon as it thaws. I’m looking forward to the ribbon cutting at some point towards the end of the construction season.”

The current plans call for a baseball field with dugouts, a backstop, movable bleachers, a walking track and chain link fencing around the property.

The field, which is located behind the former Edgerton School, was closed to the public in 2003 when high levels of arsenic and lead, remnants of a coal ash landfill, were discovered.

The state funded a $1.7 million grant for cleanup of the site before it was used for portable classrooms during the construction of two elementary schools. A proposed bill pending in the General Assembly would get New London $500,000 in reimbursement from the state for costs covered by the city as part of that cleanup project.

Sear said the job is not simply a leveling of the playing field. The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection has a land-use restriction on the property that bars digging or disturbing the soil that was capped during the environmental cleanup. Much of the cost of the project will come from bringing in new fill.

g.smith@theday.com