By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
With major holidays, as well as some weather hindrances, behind them, construction contractors and subcontractors working to upgrade American Legion Park are steadily working again.
“They are a little bit behind,” said Eddie Furlong, director of the Glasgow Parks and Recreation Department, at a meeting Monday evening of the city council committee that works closely on matters concerning that department. “I don’t know exactly how far behind just yet, but when we had our progress meeting Jan. 9, I think it was, they were about two-plus weeks behind, based on the schedule that was presented back in the fall. So we’ll see kind of what happens as far as now and ….”
“What does it look like up there? Like, from the road, it’s hard to see,” said Councilwoman Chasity Lowery, who chairs the committee.
Furlong said they’ve put in a lot of the plumbing for the pool, and the foundations are in for the pool house, including bathrooms, and a lot of the electrical lines have been installed to that location, he said.
“They just need to get in there and, like, actually start pouring the rest of the walls, finish the rest of the plumbing and get it over the pool house so they can start building,” Furlong said.
The “pool house” is an umbrella term for what is actually going to be two separate structures with a breezeway between them. As one enters the breezeway from the parking lot at the top of the hill – the same area as the old parking lot but larger – the building to the left will house the pool chemicals and filtration system, etc. plus the public bathrooms. The building to the right will have the admissions, office and concessions areas plus a lifeguard room and day-camp space, including bathrooms for employees and day-camp participants, and storage space.
He said Monday that all the colors have been submitted for various things from doors to pool slides, he said.
Glasgow News 1 met with Furlong at the park on Tuesday morning to get a better sense of how things were looking.
The plumbing has also been roughed in and the foundation poured for the smaller bathroom facility at the bottom of the hill that will be next to the pickleball courts, and a base layer has been established with gravel for those courts as well as the “pads” for a future outdoor fitness area and shelter in that same vicinity at the bottom of the hill, near the park entrance. The base layer is also there with what is now a gravel road that winds to the right and will serve as the sole vehicular entrance and exit route to the aquatic center and other features at the top of the hill. Furlong said they’ll have to wait until the asphalt plants start back up in early spring before they can start paving those areas, though.
Also as part of the excavation work, additional stormwater management areas have been created and at least one smaller existing one has been enlarged.
He told the committee the next progress meeting with the construction team would be Feb. 20.
While they may be a little behind where they would like to be, weather delays are somewhat built into construction projects like this. Overall, the work is still roughly on schedule for substantial completion of this current phase of the project by this summer.
This phase is to include all of the infrastructure with utilities, roads, parking areas, pedestrian paths and such; the entire aquatic center with its variety of features and the pool-house facilities; and four pickleball courts and the bathroom facility there.
Coming in a later phase are the equipment for the outdoor fitness area, the actual shelter in that vicinity, a small dog park with a shade structure that will also be at the bottom of the hill, near the Glasgow Police Department property, a basketball court uphill from the pickleball area, and a larger shelter with bathrooms to replace the one that was at the very top of the hill in the right-hand corner.
Eventually, a new disc golf course will be designed around the new arrangement of the park and the equipment from the old course will be reinstalled, Furlong said.
During the committee meeting, a discussion ensued after Bunnell raised a hypothetical question about the possibility of completion being significantly delayed. If that were to occur – and depending on the extent to which any delay were to occur – the discussion centered on whether it would be wise to still open the pool area if only a relatively brief amount of time were left in the season. Though options and opinions were voiced about this “what-if” situation, that situation does not exist at this point, so no decision has been made regarding it, Furlong said.
Tim Leveridge, the site supervisor for the project with the primary contractor, Walker Principles, told Furlong and GN1 on Tuesday that, from his perspective, the project is on schedule at this point.
The previous swimming pool was more than 40 years old, and each year the Parks and Recreation Department staff was unsure it would make it through another season, plus replacement parts for the mechanical functions were getting increasingly difficult to find. This park overhaul project has been several years coming, after being suggested in a parks master plan – work on which began in 2017 – and remaining a topic of discussion off and on since then, with one of the major hurdles, of course, being the funding. The current phase, for example, is costing around $10 million.
Furlong said that, after all this time, with completion expected in five to six months, he’s starting to be excited about it, but he doesn’t want to get too much so yet because there’s still so much to do.
