Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018-07-05 Parks Board Minutes RIVERSIDE PARKS BOARD MEETING MINUTES July 5, 2018 6:00 p.m. The Riverside Parks Board held their regularly scheduled meeting at Riverside City Hall, 2950 NW Vivion Road, Riverside Missouri 64150. Those in attendance were: Noel Challis, Deana Winter, Elaine Warren, LaNette Ingram, Cathy Kline and Bill Bray. Call to Order The Parks Board Meeting was called to order at 6:01 PM by Deana Winter. Approval of Minutes The minutes from June 7, 2018 were reviewed. Bill made a motion to approve the minutes as submitted. Elaine second. Motion approved. E. H. Young Final Dolores Silkworth with Confluence presented the proposed final master plan. The Master Plan Master Plan includes background data about E.H. Young, the planning process, site context, existing park usage estimates and other items that helped to inform the design. One of the goals was to increase park usage. By including the dog park, pickleball courts and destination playground in the first two phases, we should realize the goal of increased usage. These new amenities are likely to double or triple the usage. Stronger trail connections will also increase usage on a consistent level. The question was asked about English Landing Park usage compared to EH Young. We could analyze their park usage through the same analysis as ours. Dolores mentioned that the exercise of studying park usage is something that is not done that often by many park agencies in the nation. It is one thing that can actually result in more resources going to the parks. We took some bicycle counts and are currently counting vehicle entry to the park. This should be good base data for us to see how the park usage changes with the new amenities. Floodplain permitting and careful consideration with input from the Corps of Engineers will be required as we begin to detail the plans for construction. The final master plan is a combination of all three concepts originally presented. Major elements of the plan include re-alignment of the entry road, bell tower plaza, new parking lot, dog park, pickleball courts, destination playground, open space where the ballfield once was, lower river walk, river steps, additional shelters, boat dock, fire circle, the river overlook, and the canoe/kayak launch. The grading and natural landscape will help the park to drain better and keep the wet zones out of the active areas of the park. Phase I should include the infrastructure (road re-alignment), dog park, pickleball courts, bell tower plaza, interior park trails north of the road, grading for the destination playground, and some landscaping. The cost is about 1.7 million and the City has budgeted 1.5 million so additional funding will likely be needed. Phase II includes the destination playground, trails and walkways, entry sign and landscaping. This phase is shown at 1.1 million with total funding potentially available of 1,065,000 if grants can be received. Phase III includes riverfront improvements including the kayak/canoe launch, the lower level riverwalk and steps. For the construction documents and bidding we can look at some alternatives to help us be able to understand exactly how much of the project we can include in the first phase. This is a good way to work with the uncertainty of a bidding climate. We are planning to design Phase I and II concurrently and bid them together. This should help save money on both design and construction. We should see if we can accelerate the connection on the levee to the Missouri Riverfront Trail. Instead of keeping this in a future phase. This is an important connection for easier access to the park. We discussed that there might be options through trail funding to move this project up. When the park road project starts in Phase I will the park be closed? We haven’t fully decided how this will work. There is a possibility that the southern portion of the park could remain open for a while. There will probably be a point where it will have to be totally closed. We currently have all shelter reservations from March forward blocked from being reserved. Potential schedule moving forward would be to do design between now and the end of the year. Bidding Jan-Feb. Start construction Mar-Apr. Maybe some earthwork on the city contract happening this fall. How long will it take to build? Probably 6-8 months to complete. If we can get the earthwork done in advance that will save us time. This timeframe should include Phase I & II. Will the Park Board get to see the playground ideas before they are finalized? We should definitely do this. Staff and Confluence will also discuss other input that may be needed on the playground design. It is important that we make the decisions early in the process. The further you are in the process, changing your mind costs money. What is typical of a community in this process? At what point do we narrow this down? A lot of input takes time. It will need to be something time efficient to gather preferences. Perhaps a September timeframe for idea collection and then follow-up for final feedback. We do also have the data we collected during the master plan that can help inform a start. The types of playground equipment that can be used were discussed. It’s important to allow the child to have the opportunity to take risk but to understand the risk they are taking. LaNette mentioned seeing an Adventure Playground where kids are able to build and manipulate pieces in a supervised environment. th The plan will be presented for approval on July 17 for adoption. Later in the meeting we discussed the opportunity to include a bike share in the park. This is something that is listed as an amenity in the plan. We can coordinate a partnership with BikeWalkKC to include a station at E.H. Young. E. H. Young Master A motion was made by Bill to recommend to the Board of Aldermen that they Plan Recommendation adopt the Master Plan. Lanette second. Motion approved unanimously. to the Board of Aldermen The question was asked if we might have the opportunity to shift priorities prior to the design of Phase 3 and future phases. For example, could we choose to do the Missouri Riverfront Trail connection before the river stairs. Yes, there is time to think about making some of these changes. We will need to understand permitting requirements to stay on schedule. A good time to look at this seriously will be as we receive bids for Phase I & II so we know what we can afford. Something to remember about Master Plans is that this is our best thinking for today. As we think about how quickly things change in our own lives and in the world, 3 years is a long time. Things might change and a good master plan understands this and changes over time. Fitness Court The BOA provided verbal approval to add shade sails to the Fitness Court. This will improve the comfort level for Fitness Court patrons and provide more visual interest to the site as well. We talked about brainstorming ideas for making it an awesome grand opening. We can discuss at a future meeting what types of activities we should include. For example a fitness challenge with the Fire Department. It was asked if the project includes a drinking fountain. At this time, it doesn’t. However, this is something City staff would like to investigate as an option for this year or for a future phase. Monarch Walk - Art We discussed funding of this project and the concern that $2,500 may not be Plan enough per piece. Cathy shared our draft Call for Art with Nathan Neufeld of the Kansas City Art Institute. He felt that material costs alone for a metal or stone sculpture would be $2,500 so we might need to offer 2-3 times more per piece. He asked if there might be a possibility of splitting the budget between 3 sculptures instead of 6. Cathy said he teaches the 3D lab at KCAI. He did the chandelier for the Monarch Bar. Cathy also is a friend of Jim Hamil and his son Alex, both Kansas City artists. When you put out a Call for Art for a certain amount of money, what type of artists do you get? Possibly up and coming artists at a lower price point. Cathy mentioned she would rather have one crazy beautiful destination piece, but also loves the idea of the pathway connecting the art. How can we make this idea more affordable? We don’t want to put out a Call for Art and feel like we need to choose something from submittals that aren’t the quality we are hoping for. We could consider asking the Tourism Commission for additional funding. Writing the proposal for Tourism wouldn’t be difficult. If they would consider a proposal at this time, we should submit one to them. We definitely need to come up with good reasons for how this will bring people into the community to visit and spend money. If we feel like we have a really strong application we can likely ask for more funds. Advertising needs to be included in our budget. At a minimum paid Facebook posts. Roeland Park sent out postcards to all residents. We could mail postcards to other communities. For our residents, we can post it in the newsletter. How can we quantify the number of people it will bring in? We can point to other resources of how art has been an economic driver. We should also think about how we can connect this to other community events and educational opportunities. Bill asked if it could the project be done in phases. The two northern sites are remote. Maybe we could just have signage explaining the more remote sites. Funding for future years could include these sites. Perhaps we could also do something painted on the trail or community art that is noticeable, but not high dollar. We might be able to get material donations for mosaics and do a project with high school students. We discussed the entry fee just being enough to cover the cost of the CAFÉ website. We can revise the budget to include $7,000 for three pieces. If we could cover the Art costs from a combination of tourism and our current funding, we could probably figure out a way to fund the other costs with City budget. We could also consider requesting a 1:1 match from Tourism. One idea could be a Monarch Passport where people could visit businesses in the community and receive a discount for a product or service along with visiting the Monarch Walk. Next steps: Discuss with the Mayor the possibility of seeking additional funding from Tourism. If the Mayor is agreeable, we will move forward with putting together a proposal to Tourism. The Zoo has a display on the Monarch Butterfly. We could check this out as an example of information shared. Next Meeting The next meeting will be held on August 2, 2018. Adjournment Cathy made a motion to adjourn the meeting at 7:27 pm. Elaine seconded the motion. Motion approved.