Council approves funding for splash park projects
By Riley Funk
Winter is in full swing, but the parks department has summer on the brain after the city council approved funding Monday that will allow splash park and pool projects to move forward.
Hyde Park, among other city facilities, will receive funding through the Capital Improvements Program and parks tax, with council members passing the bill 8-0-0.
The money will help complete the second phase of the Hyde Park Water Feature project, which will showcase a finished splash park and an added shallow swimming pool. This will cost around $2.7 million in parks tax funds.
Parks Director Chuck Kempf said once completed, the facility will be an asset that serves multiple purposes.
“There would be a shallow water swimming pool, which we would really just call an activity pool … maybe a couple of feet of water with different types of play structures,” Kempf said.
The Hyde Park Water Feature project will receive an additional $896,007 in CIP funds.
Other funds will go to an additional splash park on the north side of town, which will cost $2 million in parks tax funds, as well as renovating the Hyde Park pool house, allowing it to possibly be used for events year-round.
“In the warm months to where it can almost be used as a higher serving park shelter, but also being closed in the wintertime to where maybe, maybe we can we can use that for cold weather events, where people might be able to rent that space and use it,” Kempf said.
Additionally, the building will serve as a storage facility for park maintenance equipment, supplies and materials. The pool house project will cost $1.5 million in parks tax funds.
This is the initial plan, Kempf said, however, final details are still being worked out
Kempf said for the time being, work put toward these projects won’t have any impact on other facilities such as Krug Pool. Down the road, that could be a potential possibility.
“We don’t want to be a city without an actual swimming pool. We’re trying to make sure we preserve that public service. How that’s going to look is going to go through a lot of discussions and a lot of planning over the next two or three years,” Kempf said.
There are no blueprints for what the final plans may look like for each facility. The hope and expectation is for construction to begin on the projects in the fall of 2024 with a completion date sometime in spring 2026.
Other notes:
The city council also passed funding to go toward additional work to fix the lower ball field at Bartlett Park. The total cost will be $61,750 and the project will be headed by Auxier Construction, according to city documents. The project was approved with an 8-0-0 vote.
