Parks and rec board discusses skateboarding, pickle ball and swimming

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Summer activities were on the minds of members of the Charles City Parks and Recreation board at its monthly meeting Wednesday.

Charles City Mayor Dean Andrews shared some temporary skate park options with the board, as he has been in contact with American Ramp Co., which constructs skate parks.

Last year the skate park in Charles City was taken down, as it had become a safety hazard. Director Tyler Mitchell said that it was in disrepair and it was too big of a risk to keep it up.

Andrews said that although the city is likely years away from building a new skate park with permanent fixtures, there are temporary options available in the meantime, according to American Ramp Co.

“If and when we decide to go to an expanded skate park, these can be moved there,” Andrews said.

Costs of the skate park features can range from $490 to $3,000 and higher, and Andrews said a community could get about six different features for under $10,000 and have a nice variety of temporary skateboard options. He said the features could be placed at the site of the old skateboard park.

“These are some things that we might want to consider, at whatever location you want to do that at, just to have something for skateboarders to do so they aren’t skateboarding on someone’s railing downtown,” said Andrews, who added that he was just sharing the information with the parks board, in case there was something they wanted to do.

“It’s just something to think about,” he said.

Mitchell said that although a new skate park wasn’t part of the plan for several years, some of these temporary skate park features were well within the Parks and Recreation Department budget and could be utilized, should the board want to do something.

“It’s not so much for a full-scale skate park, but it will give skaters something to do,” Mitchell said. “We don’t have to do it, but it’s an option that’s out there.”

In other business, Mitchell said he’s found a grant that could pay up to $20,000 toward re-doing the pickle ball court.

Mitchell said he was getting estimates on what the total cost would be to fix and renovate the pickle ball court, which has cracks and isn’t proportioned properly to hold officially sanctioned tournaments. Mitchell believes the total cost will be in the $25,000 to $30,000 range.

“This grant could potentially pay for one-half to two-thirds of the project,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell said Charles City meets all the requirements for the grant, and the board voted for Mitchell to proceed with an application.

Also, Wednesday, Mitchell told the board that he has posted all the seasonal job openings for pool employees and has found some lifeguards and a potential swim instructor for the upcoming summer.

The pool never opened last summer, due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions which put up too many hurdles for the pool to overcome. Because of that, Mitchell said he was getting ahead of preparations for opening the swimming pool this year.

Mitchell said that all the pumps are still working, and he thinks the pool will be in good enough shape, although he can’t be sure until he drains the water.

Regarding the prospect of building a new pool in the future, Mitchell reported he was in the process of putting out requests for proposals. He said the process could take “a couple of months.”

Request for proposals (RFP) are sent to swimming pool companies for ideas on how the companies can work with the city in developing a major overhaul or replacement of the existing 29-year-old swimming pool at Lion’s Field. Mitchell said it would be a better use of resources to focus on replacing the pool, rather than overhauling it.

The parks and recreation board has been talking for years about eventually replacing the city pool.

Because the pool did not open last summer due to COVID-19 concerns, the board got to walk through the empty structure during a board meeting, and Mitchell pointed out the cracks, leaking joints, broken tiles and other deficiencies.