Parks Commission July Meeting
The Parks Commission met Wednesday morning. After the usual review of Parks Events applications and Strategic Plan, we heard some good news regarding the new playground and bad news about Grove Hill Park.
Park Events
Shakespeare by the Falls will be held on August 10 & 11 in Riverside Park. Safe Routes Chagrin will host students from the Intermediate School once again for Walk to Town in Riverside Park.
Strategic Plan
We again discussed the desire for a survey to better understand what the community wants from their village parks. Anne will request that the topic be added to the next Facilities & Services Committee agenda. Rob mentioned that the City of Shaker Heights is currently undertaking a Recreation Strategic Plan.
Riverside Park
The playground is complete and will open once the surface is tested has passed inspection and opened on July 4.
Geese (and specifically the droppings they leave everywhere) continue to be a challenge in Riverside. The Service Department has often been working in the park recently and sprays off the walkways, but it’s not practical to do so year-round. The commission requested that council consider a more lasting solution, like harassing them with dogs or lasers (or dogs with lasers?)
Grove Hill Park
A bid was accepted for the Cottage Street wall repairs and full masonry repointing starting the week of July 8 and lasting about six weeks.
Bids for the actual Grove Hill Park path construction were solicited from eight different companies, but only two proposals were received. Despite being estimated by the village engineering firm at $55,000, both bids came in over $200,000.
In light of that huge discrepancy, the administration is now planning to build the path in-house, using the Streets & Service Department. They would build the entire path from start to finish, and install the barn stone benches and natural wood climbers as time and materials allow. The non-path landscaping and planting will be contracted out in the fall, when the S&S Department is busy with leaf collection and preparing for snow plowing.
I’m trying to keep an open mind here, but it’s hard for me to see this as anything but another setback for a project that has dragged on for nearly four years. (The village acquired the land for the park from the Land Conservancy on July 29, 2020.) As I’ve written before, I think it was a mistake to wait until mid-June to bid these projects out. I wonder if some or all of the cost difference between the estimate and the proposals is due to construction companies being already booked for the year, and just throwing out big numbers to see if they can hit the jackpot.
The next Parks Commission meeting will be August 7 at 8:30 am.