Fort Smith park’s start delayed till May 2015

FORT SMITH - The opening of a Fort Smith/ Sebastian County aquatics park will be delayed for a year, until Memorial Day weekend 2015, even though the Quorum Court voted last week to appropriate its half of the $8 million project.

A memorandum from County Judge David Hudson on Monday stated that the park could be ready by August 2014, but that is the end of the outdoor aquatics season. It will take about four months for engineers and architects to complete construction bid documents and about a year to build the facility, which will be at the county’s Ben Geren Regional Park just south of Fort Smith, the memorandum said.

Fort Smith Assistant Administrator Jeff Dingman said Tuesday that he is disappointed that the opening of the park will be delayed from its originally projected opening in May 2014. But the advantage, he said, is that builders won’t be rushed to complete it, which could drive up the project’s cost.

The Sebastian County Quorum Court voted 7-5 on April 16 to appropriate nearly $4 million for the project. It was the third reading of the ordinance the court first voted on in January. Three readings and votes over several months were required because the ordinance did not receive a two-thirds majority of the court’s votes on its first reading.

Dingman said if engineering and architectural work had begun in February, the park could have been ready to open in May 2014.

The decision to delay the project was made during a meeting Monday of city and county officials. During that meeting, Andy Smith with Larkin Aquatics of Kansas City, Mo., the aquatics consultant on the project, told officials he had checked with several contractors and concluded a minimum of 12 months would be needed for construction, Hudson’s memorandum stated.

The delay will give time for city and county officials to tour similar facilities, like those being completed in Rogers and Clarksville, Hudson said Tuesday. Touring completed projects will help officials become more versed in the features that make up an aquatics park and help them make more informed decisions on what features to incorporate into the Sebastian County park, he said.

Officials and residents criticized plans for the park unveiled earlier this year when they discovered that the length of its “lazy river” was shortened and a dive well was removed. Those features were included in the plans at the time Fort Smith residents voted last spring to allocate the city’s $4 million share of the project cost from a portion of a city sales tax.

Officials were told that those features could be restored if the city and county did some of the work, such as building the parking lot and putting in the water and sewer extensions to the site, and appropriating another $820,000 for construction.

Since Fort Smith voters approved spending only $4 million on the project, Hudson proposed that the county pay the extra $820,000 and the city reimburse the county for its half of the additional cost over time by paying more of the operating costs, which the county and city had agreed to split.

The Quorum Court did not vote on the resolution to appropriate the additional money at its April 16 meeting.

Hudson said Tuesday that officials will wait until the project’s design and engineering work is completed before deciding whether to devote more money to the project.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 04/24/2013

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