By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
Through the quality-of-life sales tax initiative that is funded by a .15% sales tax passed by voters in November 2021, a Great Bend Brit Spaugh Park addition was a project through a survey that Great Bend residents voted on as a potential project. Among other amenities, the project featured a basketball court, pickleball courts, mini soccer pitches and a playground on the south side.
City staff met with BG Consultants over a period of eight months to come up with a project that would benefit the city for years to come. Construction documents were sent out for competitive bids in February.
BG expected the project to cost around $2.1 million. The city received one bid from Prairie Landworks Inc. out of McPherson for a total bid of $3,019,000 that did not include any unit pricing for mini-shelters, picnic tables or trash receptacles.
Great Bend Assistant City Administrator Logan Burns said elevated pricing is contributed to by inflation and only one general contractor bid. City staff met with BG in March to go through value-engineering options, knowing that the entire project was not feasible.
"The base bid included the park shelter, all the on-street parking improvements, the Athco playground equipment that was going to be matched by the Great Bend Recreation Commission and associated synthetic turf involved in that," said Burns. "We minimized the footprint of the project. One thing to note is that base bid did not include any of the pickleball, mini pitch or basketball courts which was one of the many goals of that project."
The value-engineered price came in at $1,779,883, but without the main features, the Great Bend City Council voted to deny the bid from Prairie Landworks and table the project indefinitely until possible grant money or private donations can be secured.
"One of them would be the CDBG grant (Community Development Block Grant)," said Burns. "They moved that deadline back from May to September. That is a maximum grant of $750,000. That's a possible grant funding opportunity and if there is any private donations we could land as well."
In the meantime, city staff will shift their focus to other quality-of-life projects while still working to complete the Brit Spaugh Park addition in the future.