Majestic Fields costs adjusted to stay in cap

The $11,082,702 bid for the Majestic Park baseball complex was more than $3 million higher than the guaranteed maximum price the Hot Springs Board of Directors will consider tonight, causing more than 60 items to be removed from the project.

In December, the board named Hill & Cox Corp. as the general contractor tasked with remaking the former Boys & Girls Club of Hot Springs into a five

field complex for youth, high school and college baseball. The resolution adopted by the board stipulated the cost would not exceed $7.5 million, the amount of bond proceeds in the construction fund.

The resolution before the board tonight sets the maximum guaranteed cost at $7,413,218, which includes Hill & Cox’s 5% construction management fee.

“When you set that price, that’s what they’ll construct this for,” Deputy City Manager Lance Spicer told the board last week. “That’s what Hill & Cox Corp. is actually on the line for. It will not cost the city of Hot Springs through the Advertising and Promotion Commission any additional funds.”

Almost $500,000 in savings was realized by removing the practice space, batting cages and maintenance building, according to information presented to the board. Visit Hot Springs CEO Steve Arrison said Monday that none of the deleted items will materially affect the finished product.

The contract stipulates the project will be completed within one year of the city issuing a notice to proceed to Hill & Cox.

“The project is the same,” Arrison said. “We still have all turf fields, the best lighting, covered stands, shade structures, all that stuff is still there. You won’t be able to tell a difference from what they originally said they were going to do. A lot of what we took off is not needed until the end of the project.

“We still have a very good project. It’s still going to be first class. It’s going to be great for our kids, great for visitors.”

Arrison said the almost $2 million for site preparation was a surprise, attributing the higher-than-expected cost to allowances that have to be made when doing construction in a flood plain. According to the city’s public works map, the complex is in Hot Springs Creek’s flood plain.

The board of the now-defunct local Boys & Girls Club deeded the property to the ad commission in 2018 prior to the board’s dissolution. Financial difficulties at the local club led the Boys & Girls Club of America to revoke its charter earlier that year.

According to the construction contract, 15,000 fewer cubic yards of dirt will be removed as part of the project’s earthwork, saving $315,000. Arrison said the turf vendor indicated that excavation won’t need to be as extensive as initially thought to install the artificial playing surfaces, which, according to the contract, account for $834,090 of the project cost.

To align the cost with the $7.4 million guaranteed maximum price, some building materials were substituted for less expensive alternatives that don’t affect functionality, Arrison said.

“The architects gave us a design with this kind of brick,” he said. “We dropped the brick from a Cadillac to a Chevrolet. A lot of those types of changes were made to get us back to where we need to be.

“They said we could do it for this number. The bid came in and we had to value engineer it. I’ve never been involved with a project that you didn’t have to value engineer it, but the thing that surprised me the most was it was so much to get the site ready.”

Lighting was removed from the contract as well and will be procured through a separate purchase agreement using a cooperative government buying program the city is part of, Arrison said. The cooperative’s buying power will lower the cost substantially, he said, noting that removed items, such as lighting, could be purchased by the ad commission, grants or corporate sponsorships the ad commission plans to sell for the complex.

Facility Manager Derek Phillips said Monday the new fields could support participation levels similar to what the Boys & Girls Club had when he was its director of athletics from 2002 to 2008.

“When I was here in the early 2000s, we had 700 kids playing Cal Ripken baseball ages 5 to

15,” Phillips said, noting that he’s the local district commissioner for Cal Ripken and Babe Ruth baseball. “I don’t know why we couldn’t start a Cal Ripken league back up and have T-ball to Babe Ruth age kids and have

500 to 1,000 kids playing again. “In 2005, 2006 and 2007 we had 700 kids in our league. We had 20-plus T-ball teams. We had almost 20 coach pitching machine teams at that time. There’s a lot of kids in the area who want to play ball who don’t really have a league to play in.”

Last September, city voters authorized the city to issue up to $8.5 million in debt on behalf of the ad commission. Last November’s bond sale yielded $7,875,000 in proceeds, with

$375,000 deducted for issuing costs. The 3% sales tax the ad commission levies on prepared food and lodging is securing the debt.