Medical Springs improvements discussed

A workshop was held Tuesday on the project near new library.

Tuesday’s Board of Directors meeting was prefaced by a workshop focused on improvements to Medical Springs Park.

City staff is investigating potential improvements to Medical Springs Park, which is the area around the new library. The improvements were one of the major selling points of the 3/8ths cent sales tax extension passed on March 1.

Siloam Springs Director of Community Services Don Clark presented a map of the potential improvements, along with their estimated costs. The potential improvements center around a splash pad and a proposed amphitheater which would house the Farmers Market and could host activities such as Second Saturday Music.

Along with the amphitheater and splash pad, staff included the options of building a commercial kitchen, an accessory building which would house the splash pad’s pumps, along with concessions and restrooms, a pair of parking lots, sidewalks and landscaping.

Clark said the commercial kitchen was an important option because it would allow the amphitheater to host cooking demos and would enable vendors at the Farmers Market to sell things that food code requires a commercial kitchen for, like coffee grounds.

Improvements to the park were identified as a need by the Downtown Master Plan and have been a priority since the new library was built.

“When we get this done, people are going to say ‘wow,’” Mayor John Mark Turner said. “People are going to say, ‘I can’t believe Siloam has something like that.’”

The addition of two parking lots, together totaling 72 spaces, drew some criticism from directors. Director Brad Burns said he wanted to see as little parking as possible at the park to encourage people to walk more. In addition, Burns said those lots added to the already substantial library parking lot nearby.

Director Amy Smith agreed with minimizing parking spaces. Both Smith and Burns spoke about the need to protect green spaces in the city.

“I don’t want this to be a concrete jungle,” Smith said.

The possible addition to the park that proved most controversial was the addition of equipment to the splash pad to enable it to transition to an ice skating rink in the winter, similar to the outdoor rink in Bentonville. Clark said the ice rink addition and the purchase of a Zamboni to resurface the ice would cost $418,000.

Altogether, with all of the proposed additions to the park, the Medical Springs Park project has a price tag of approximately $2.5 million. That figure does not include costs such as technology for the amphitheater and kitchen.

The city will likely apply for a grant from the Walton Foundation that would cover design costs for the project. The grant could cover somewhere between 15 to 18 percent of the total cost, Clark said during an earlier project update in May.

Two methods were discussed for financing the project. The first was to pay for the project over the course of five years. The second, and more popular, option was to use all of the funds from the 3/8ths cent sales tax for this year and finance the rest over the next year. The city would then pay back into its infrastructure fund to meet the requirement that 50 percent of the funds from the tax be used for infrastructure.