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| Frank Rossi kneels on turf ready for Re-Markable Paint. |
“We killed a lot of grass” is a remarkable admission from Cornell’s turfgrass expert, Frank S. Rossi, PhD ’92, associate professor of horticulture. His day job is to find better ways to grow healthier grass with fewer pesticides. A moonlighting job, for a while, produced an invention and the establishment of an Ithaca start-up business, the Re-Markable Paint Company.
The invention, a paint and paint-remover system to change markings on athletic fields, was Rossi’s response to the growing number of sports that Americans want to watch and engage in—and the limited number of venues for all those sports. Soccer, rugby, football, baseball, lacrosse, field hockey, men’s rules, women’s rules, and Little League, too, meant a lot of harried field managers who had to move lines around.
For Rossi and for Extension Associate Eva Gussack ’95, MS ’97, the invention game began with a 1999 call from alumnus Ken Horowitz ’73 (A&S), owner of the Miami Fusion pro soccer team and a co-tenant in a stadium where other kinds of sports took place. Horowitz offerred a small grant (around $100,000) for a field-striping paint that could be easily removed. February and MArch 2000 found Rossi and Gussack in the relative warmth of the Cornell greenhouses, testing various formulations for paints and solvents. “There were plenty of nights we were covered in white paint,” Rossi recounts. “We killed a lot of grass. ”
Their goal was every kid’s dream, “invisible ink,” and when they finally found the right combination, it was tested on some baseball fans’ field of dreams, Yankee Stadium. The company formed to commercialize the invention, Re-Markable Paint, says the product is visually appealing, rainfast, tolerant of foot traffic, and handy for painting logos along with stripes. Unlike other marking systems, which require damaging high-pressure sprays to remove, a gentle spray with the patented solvent renders rugby field markings invisible and prepares the space for soccer or whatever. Starting locally—with clubs, schools, and colleges (including Cornell)—the company is taking aim at bigger markets: sales of marking materials for sports, land surveying, and landscaping are estimated at $250 million a year.
The remarkable system works on all kinds of artificial turf, too. And it doesn’t kill grass anymore, Rossi adds. (Roger Segelken)
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