North Bend’s largest park, Torguson Park on North Bend Way, will be getting an update almost two years in the planning. North Bend City Council members voted Sept. 20 to approve the $1.6 million project to add restrooms and a concessions building, relocate two of the fields and add turf, build a trail looping through the park, and improving drainage on the fields.
The decision, postponed from a special meeting of the council on Sept. 13, was unanimous, although most council members were concerned about the cost. Before the evening’s council meeting, they gathered for a work study on the project, at which Public Works Director Mark Rigos gave a history of the project and how it grew from the initial proposal, a restroom building and a loop trail, with $188,000 in funding committed in 2014, to today’s $1.6 million project, awarded to Rodarte Construction of Auburn.
Several factors contributed to the price increases, Rigos said, starting with the initial plan to centrally locate a restroom and concessions building among the baseball fields.
“It doesn’t fit,” Rigos told the council. The planned building, if centered on the fields, didn’t leave enough space between the fields for walking comfortably or safely between fields and building.
Four new backstops and eight new dugouts are in the plans approved last week.
Another cost-driver, Rigos said, was the city’s requirement for all developments to have no net loss in a site’s water storage capacity, such as stormwater.
“It’s called compensatory storage,” Rigos said. “Any time we fill an area, which we are doing — we’re raising up that baseball quad so it can properly drain — we have to excavate. If we don’t excavate, the city would be artificially raising the 100-year floodplain.”
The excavation, targeted for the northwest corner of the 21-acre park, would include widening and deepening ditches on the site, he said.
Concrete prices have increased about 30 percent since the city began planning the project in 2014, Rigos noted, which has also increased the final price estimate. To help limit the final cost of the project, council members suggested that some of the paved areas be reduced. They also proposed eliminating project ‘extras’ such as picnic tables and a flagpole planned for other areas of the park, and irrigation of the ball fields. Plans to demolish and remove the city’s shed, closed since it was damaged in an April, 25, 2014, gas explosion, were also cut from the final project.
Councilman Alan Gothelf, who initially raised objections to the growing costs when the project came to the council for a vote Sept. 13, said he didn’t disagree with the park improvements.
“This project needs to get done,” he said, “but my concern is the ballooning of the costs.”
Councilman Trevor Kostanich said the proposed project was not where the city started in 2014. “It seems like it went from a small, single project to a capital improvement,” he said, adding, since he wasn’t on the council then, “is that what was planned? It’s not scope creep, it’s a different project.”
Councilwoman Jeanne Pettersen responded that projects had been combined for economies of scale. “It’s not ever going to do this project,” she said, adding that Torguson Park is the city’s biggest, most active park. “In the future, people are going to say ‘thank God they did it, and did it right.’ I think we need to bite the bullet and go ahead.”
Funding for the project includes: an $80,000 commitment from Sno Valley Little League; a $127,000 grant from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund; $378,000, in part from park impact fees, in the city budget; $144,000 from the utilities budget; $100,000 from the stormwater budget; an $87,000 insurance payment for damages to the park shed following the 2014 explosion; and $475,000 borrowed from the city’s Real Estate Excise Tax fund. Park impact fees are dedicated to new park construction only and so, can’t be used for much of this project.
The city currently has $1 million in its REET fund, and City Administrator Londi Lindell projected it would have another $1 million “in the next biennium.”
Following the unanimous vote to approve the project, Rigos said, “There was applause… the residents were very happy.”
Work on the project is slated to begin in the next few weeks, and, if the winter isn’t too wet, Rigos hoped the work could be done by January — April, with weather delays. The infields will be closed for construction, but the outfields will remain open for use.
Rigos also told the council that “This is not the end of improvements to Torguson Park.” Long range plans for the park include 75,000 feet of basketball courts and parking for 100-to 200 vehicles, plus, in the near term, a new pedestrian entry to the park anticipated this spring when construction begins on the Phoenix Plaza, a residential and retail project on North Bend Way.
