Bid for park restroom site work blows budget

By LYNETTE SOWELL

Cove Leader-Press 

Copperas Cove’s parks enter 2020 facing yet another hurdle for Phase 2 of the city’s park improvement project, as discussed at the most recent Quality of Life Advisory Board meeting on Dec. 12.  

During the Dec. 12 meeting, Parks director Jeff Stoddard said that the bid for just the site preparation came in around $230,000, and with the cost for that plus the expected cost of the three prefab buildings is “way over budget.”

Replacing restrooms in the city’s park system is part of a multimillion-dollar, multiphase improvement project, as approved by the Copperas Cove city council in 2016.  

Phase 2 of the park projects funding totals $378,029 for restroom renovations, which includes replacing three restrooms at City Park, and retrofitting the existing restroom at South Park with new doors, fixtures, adding a drinking fountain, LED lighting, mag lock locking system, new skylights, and updated paint job. 

Stoddard said that he will be making a presentation at the council’s first meeting of the new year to recommend rejecting that bid. He will be looking for direction from council for the project, as right now the ballpark figure to install prefabricated restrooms plus site work would be well over $100,000 above what is budgeted.

The council could potentially pull money from other phases to do the prefab buildings, or go another direction, which is something Stoddard said he and city staff have been looking at. 

“Staff has been working on possibly a different direction that is cost effective and still a good quality bathroom,” Stoddard said. From site preparation to restroom installation/construction, it would be about a 90-day period to open them up. 

“We are working on that as quickly as we can,” he said, adding that it would be “tight” to have restrooms ready in time for baseball season. 

On Dec. 11, the city demolished one of the restrooms by Ball Field 4 in City Park, as it had been boarded up and out of use for many months, said Stoddard.

Prior to last month’s discussion, it was announced back in November 2018 by then Parks Director Joe Brown that the city couldn’t replace all the bathrooms proposed as part of the second phase of park improvements that began in early 2018. 

Two parks which currently don’t have restrooms, Rhode and High Chaparral, will likely have septic system model type restrooms which would be funded through Phase 3 allocation.