MILFORD – Just like in the well-known baseball movie “Field of Dreams,” if you build it, they will come.

The Hampshire Dome, which collapsed in March, is now being resurrected thanks to the efforts of not only the owners, but a slew of volunteers from around the Milford area who want to help get their beloved sports complex back in shape.

Trucks brought in components that will be assembled to raise the structure over the next several days.

“We have finally received a completely new dome,” owner and operator Rick Holder said

The dome collapsed after it ripped following a winter storm. Since then, the operators have had to make do by using the facilities at Hampshire Hills, losing some business in the process.

“We’ve been making it work,” Holder said. “When it happened, it actually happened at the end of our regular season so that made it much easier had it happened in January.”

Holder said the community loves the dome and have been looking forward to having it returned to them. And they will very soon: In about three days, plus two hours and 45 minutes to inflate the structure, the dome will be back.

“The same amount of time it takes to fly to Miami,” Holder said jokingly.

The scene Thursday looked like an old-fashioned barn raising, except the structure in this instance is made of several layers of polyvinyl, all rolled up on wooden pallets with some of the rolled

sections weighing 12 tons.

The material that makes up the new dome is much like what made up the old structure.

“One is a layer that prevents ultraviolet degradation. One is a layer that prevents sun translucency,” Holder said.

The sun provides uneven lighting, particularly in the colder months when the dome is busy, so that feature keeps the interior natural lighting level low so it can be controlled from within. The coating that makes up the new material are thicker with the new model, making the soon-to-be erected dome taller and with more volume so the configuration is a better arc for snow and ice shedding.

Redundant systems keep the dome inflated.

“We can get air in here six different ways,” Holder said.

Standing atop two of what will be four separate, massive sections of yet to be inflated roofing earlier this week, Holder called the 5-million-cubic-foot dome “state of the art.”

A group of about 60 volunteers of from the Milford High School football team gathered Thursday to provide muscle to unroll the massive sheets that would eventually make up the dome’s roof. The building’s concrete block wall encircled the artificial playing surface, which was itself protected by large rolls of plastic sheeting while they worked.

Once unrolled, the seams will be joined along the wall’s edge by more than 1,200 bolts through a series of L-shaped plates said Sean Wisbey, the soccer coordinator at the dome. The dome’s seams will be sandwiched together with aluminum plates and bolts and joined further by adhesives.

He watched the football players work together in Thursday’s humidity, lined up in a row, walking backwards and unfolding huge folds of fabric.

Wisbey greatly appreciated all of the help Thursday.

“With a small crew it takes us almost all day to just do what they’re doing in five minutes. There’s a tremendous amount of work with bolting all the seams in,” he said, as well as bolting in the edge.

Those, said volunteer Kerry Small of Raymond, take three people to lift into place.

The $860,000 dome was manufactured by Asati in New York. Labor not included.

“At the end of the day, the excitement in the eyes of the kids that come over and see their dome being put back up… it’s amazing. It’s wonderful. It makes all the hard work more than worthwhile,” Holder said. “Everybody is so excited. They miss the dome.”

Don Himsel can be reached at 594-1249,

dhimsel@nashuatelegraph.com, or @Telegraph_DonH.