Ceremony Monday will start Poway Veterans Park work
A groundbreaking ceremony for the long-awaited Poway Veterans Park will be held at 10 a.m. Monday on land northeast of Midland Road and Adrian Street.
The event will be hosted by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion and the Navy Fleet Reserve, and the Elks Club.
Plans call for construction will begin in early August and be completed in time for a dedication at 11 a.m. on Veterans Day, Nov. 11.
Poway city officials say that although construction bids for the park came in higher than expected, sufficient funds are available to build the long-awaited park.
The City Council on Tuesday night awarded a construction contract to Palm Engineering Construction Inc. of San Diego. The firm was the lowest of nine bidders, offering to build the park for $384,000. Other bids ranged from $424,095 to $569,869.
The city engineer had estimated the park would cost about $260,000 to $280,000 to complete.
In a report to the council, City Manager Penny Riley said the gap will be filled with a final $81,599 allocation from a $1 million payment made to the city in 2004 by the developers of the proposed Wet ‘n Wild water park. The payment represented a buyout by the company from its contractual obligations to the city so that the company could bail out of the business park project. Riley said the money has been allocated by the council over the years to a number of public projects and nonprofit organizations.
Some unallocated redevelopment project money is also available to help build the park, which is located within the agency’s jurisdiction, Riley said.
As for the city engineer’s low cost estimate, Riley wrote, “The custom nature of this project, including non-standard construction methods and artistically detailed concrete finishing methods, made it difficult to accurately estimate the cost.” She said the city realized similar concrete-related cost issues when opening bids for the new City Hall several years ago.
The park will be built on city-owned land.
Local veterans organizations will be contributing at least $90,000 toward the park, the result of an ongoing, successful community fundraising campaign kicked off in April with a $25,000 donation from Poway-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. City Special Projects Engineer Jeff Beers said about $80,000 of the amount will go toward park features, while the balance will be set aside for annual operating costs.
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