Engineer to reevaluate skate park project
Splitting project could create savings
Plans for a skate park in Lansdale could be even further delayed as staff and borough council look for ways to stay within budget.
Council’s parks committee is recommending a new contract with the borough’s engineering firm to look for ways to break up the skate park into subcontracts, in the hope of keeping the price as low as possible.
“All I know is that it won’t be completed when we thought it would be,” said council member Mary Fuller.
The skate park has been up for discussion since early 2016 as council and the public debated the possibilities of creating a park for skaters somewhere in town. Throughout 2016 and into 2017 staff and council evaluated possible locations, chose a site adjacent to Fourth Street Park, then hired a design consultant and architect while holding a series of meetings to gather
feedback from skaters and neighbors and refine a design.
With the design done, a first round of bidding in early 2018 received no responses from interested bidders, and staff said at the time that was due to a compressed timeline with a goal of finishing the park that year. A second bid attempt asked contractors to do the work throughout 2019, and that second try did produce three bidders, but all with higher than budgeted costs because none were from local companies.
Fuller said Feb. 6 that the parks and recreation committee, of which she is chairwoman, will ask council to approve a roughly $49,000 contact with borough engineering consultant Remington, Vernick and Beach to evaluate how the skate park project can be split into multiple contracts. The goal of doing so is to to widen the field of contractors who can bid.
“What they’re going to do
is separate the bid into the skate park construction and then the site work construction,” Fuller said.
“We don’t think we’ll have to bid out a third piece, because we’ll have our own staff do some of the site work, after the engineering plan is in place,” she said.
The second bid package produced responses that came in well over the anticipated $500,000 budget, Fuller said, largely due to bid qualifications that asked if contractors had done certain numbers of skate parks over certain time periods.
“Last time, when we got the expensive bids, we just had West Coast people because the East Coast people didn’t have enough projects in a certain time frame,” she said.
“In California, they do skate parks all year, and here they don’t, so they don’t produce the same number of skate parks that they do on the West Coast,” she said.
The engineer will also identify ways to split the site work, such as excavating the area where the skate bowls will be located, apart from the construction of the
bowl and ramps themselves.
“The site work, we’ll put that out as a separate bid, because skate park contractors don’t do the site work. Some of the bids were overinflated, because people were not comfortable, that wasn’t their expertise,” she said.
“So they bid it out way higher, either in the hope that they didn’t get the job, or knowing they were going to have to subcontract it out to someone else,” Fuller said.
The original bid package could also be changed to eliminate a retaining wall proposed for the east side of the skate park area, between the skating bowl and the adjacent Fourth Street Park. Doing that could cut down on the amount of excavation and removal of fill from the site, Fuller said.
“We can either put that in later, or do something more economical,” she said.
Original estimates for the skate park project’s cost came in at roughly
$540,000, with roughly $220,000 of that total to be covered by a state grant, an additional $220,00 in a match from borough parking authority funds provided by developer Equus Capital Partners from their contribution for public improvements related to their Madison Parking Lot apartment building project, and the rest from borough reserves.
Fuller said Feb. 6 the engineer now estimates a total price tag closer to $700,000, including the $50,000 engineering contract, and a $300,000 line item on the borough’s long term capital plan could cover that difference.
“$300,000 had originally been set aside, or earmarked in the capital budget for this project. We don’t anticipate needing to use that whole $300,000, but it’s about $100,00 more than we thought originally we’d have to use,” she said.
The growing costs could also be covered, at least in part, by fundraising from the local skate community, or those who have asked for ways to help honor the legacy of Carl Saldutti, the borough’s longtime parks and
recreation director who passed away last October.
“We have no idea what that’s even going to look like, because that won’t be a borough-run fundraising appeal. That will be grassroots. I’m sure people have all kinds of different ideas,” she said.
“All along, much of the skate park community has asked and asked, ‘What can we do? We’re willing to help, what can we contribute?’ And I know a number of people had asked what they can contribute in memory of Carl,” she
Does the extra time for the engineering work mean the skate park won’t be done in 2019?
“For start of construction, I’m hopeful. Completed in 2019? Unlikely, but stranger things have happened,” Fuller said.
Lansdale Borough Council next meets at 7 p.m. on Feb. 20 and the parks and recreation committee next meets at 8 p.m. on March 6, both at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine St.