Pool, Wildwood, parks improvement and upkeep on Charles City Parks & Rec Board’s radar

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Parks and Recreation Board spent most of its monthly meeting Wednesday evening talking about priorities – for potential repairs to the municipal swimming pool at Lions Field Park, for needed repairs and upkeep in the city’s parks, and for capital improvement goals for the next five years.

The board has for now put aside the idea of a multi-million dollar project to repair and upgrade the swimming pool, paid for through city bonding that would require super-majority voter approval.

Instead, the board has grabbed onto a suggestion made by Mayor Dean Andrews and City Administrator Steve Diers at an earlier meeting, to use the city’s ability to borrow up to $910,000 on the City Council’s own authority. The City Council has discussed the idea but has not made any formal decisions on the matter yet.

At the Parks & Rec Board meeting this week, Charles City Parks and Recreation Department Director Tyler Mitchell presented a proposal from JEO Consulting Group, the Ankeny engineering and design firm it has been working with, that looked at the potential cost for repairing the pool without adding any additional play features.

The proposal was for $826,000 for pool repair, mechanical system repair and site work, and $285,000 for project designing and oversight, for a total of $1.111 million.

The list of repairs proposed by JEO included:

• Pool repair – floor and wall expansion joint repair; gutter low point repair; gutter handhole replacement/repair; gutter crack repair; surge tank and plunge pool leak-proofing; and pool ADA compliance update.

• Mechanical system repair – new pump pit; recirculation pump updated piping/location; filter system replacement; chlorine system replacement; acid system addition; variable frequency pump drive installation.

• Site work – diving stand replacement; installation of dewatering sump pump system

“What we’re looking at is having to get rid of about $200,000 worth of stuff” to meet the $910,000 limit, Mitchell said.

He went through the list of proposed repairs, identifying things such as the sump pump system to remove ground water to relieve pressure on the pool vessel, the variable frequency pump and the diving stand replacement, saying, “those would all be nice,” but they could probably be cut from the project to meet the spending limit.

Mitchell said he would talk with the JEO people on the project to clarify some questions that he and the board still had.

The repair plan would be to close a couple of weeks early next season, in 2024, then start construction right away so that the pool can reopen in May 2025.

New features for the pool, such as a climbing wall, floatables, shallow depth play structures, as well as a splash pad near the pool or in some other location, may have to rely on grants and fundraising, Mitchell said.

The Parks & Rec Board also looked ahead at next year’s budget and the board’s five-year capital improvement plan, identifying priorities and potential timelines.

Mitchell said Atura Architecture of Clear Lake has looked at the Wildwood Golf Course clubhouse and was going to give him an estimate of the cost of repairs.

“It’s just rough numbers,” he said. “If we want them to go more in-depth on the clubhouse then we’d have to pay for their services.”

Board Chair Jeff Otto said the department should consider at least painting the clubhouse, because it doesn’t look very good now.

Mitchell said Wildwood was on track to have record use this year, until the drought caused the course to dry up. At first the course restricted use of carts, then had to close entirely at times.

“It was insane numbers until we had to shut it down. Like we were going to set all kinds of new records for people out there, money brought in, everything – until this month,” he said.

Three golf tournaments had to be canceled, and a high school cross country meet scheduled at the course had to be canceled, he said, because “if you had 300 kids running on a 5-foot-wide path through it, it would turn the whole thing to dirt.”

The course doesn’t have an irrigation system, and can only water a small area at a time.

“It would be nice if someone donated a ton of money and we got irrigation throughout,” Mitchell said. “Then we could have cross country meets every week if we wanted to.”

Another big-ticket item is potential refurbishment of the city whitewater course, which has started to degrade over the years as the Cedar River has carved new paths and undercut some features.

But Mitchell said that project may be beyond the scope of the Parks and Recreation Department budget and need to be tackled as a city project.

Potential Parks and Rec projects in the five-year plan include continual work on the city’s bike and pedestrian trail system, additional lighting at the city parks and ball diamonds and finishing replacing lights with LED lights, repairing or adding dugouts at ball fields, repair of roofs at shelter houses in the parks, and attention to the playgrounds, as well as continued consideration of a skate park.

Mitchell talked about repairs at public restrooms in the city parks and said that some of them are subject to regular vandalism.

“We can look at security measures, too,” he said, “ways to lock them at certain times, stuff like that if we want to start going that route.”