The City of Mount Vernon will make improvements to the baseball diamond at Davis Park in the next two years.
Parks and recreation director Matt Siders outlined the needed improvements to the park.
Siders said the number one improvement needed is the lighting at the field.
“There’s currently no ability to play on the field after it gets dark,” Siders said.
The lack of appropriate lighting, council member Paul Tuerler said, is definitely a safety issue as well.
Siders said that he would look into two different lighting options – halogen bulbs or LED lighting. The city is currently leaning towards LED lighting.
Siders said when looking into lights at Davis Park ballfield five years ago, Alliant Energy was interested in donating the light poles if the city paid for the installation, and he hopes that will be the case now.
Siders said the other priority is the restrooms.
City administrator Chris Nosbisch said that lighting and the restrooms accounted for roughly 90 percent of the costs for the project.
“I challenged my staff to elevate our parks from good to excellent, and these improvements would bring this park to where they should be,” Nosbisch said.
This project was not on the city’s current Capital Improvement Plans at the amount bid by P and K. The city was working on bids for some of the repairs that were more than five years old.
The cost for the lighting improvements is roughly $150,000 on the top end, and the improvements to the concession stand would be $150,000, with an additional $25,000 to extend and connect electricity, sewer and water service to the new building. The new concession building would have two single stall restrooms.
Council member Stephanie West asked if it would be possible to spread the project into two different fiscal years, getting the lights installed this season, and then making improvements to the restroom and concession stand building.
One of the issues for the city is the current concession stand building and press box is not in the appropriate setbacks to the road right of way. That means any construction of a new concession stand will have to relocate the building.
Council member Debra Herrmann asked if there was an ability to make the restrooms a shared facility with the Mount Vernon Swimming Pool.
Tuerler said the proposed building was a premium building, and he was concerned for the amount of time the building is used that it was too costly.
Nosbisch explained that the cost savings by making sure the building has concrete floors and solid construction would even it self out over the life of the building. That assuaged Tuerler’s concerns.
The restrooms will be labeled as unisex.
Council members Scott Rose and Tuerler said they were leaning towards biding the project all at once.
“It comes down to the longer we wait to do any of these projects, the more expensive it is going to get,” Tuerler said.
Nosbisch said that in the bid process, the city could set hard start and completion dates for construction, which would allow the construction to not impact the use for the season.
Nosbisch said he will work with P and K to get the parameters for when the project can be tackled. The council will add the roughly $400,000 project as one of the Capital Improvement Projects to be completed over the next fiscal years and one of the projects that will be funded by the city’s borrowing $1.3 million this year.