Final plans, pricing for West Homewood, Patriot park improvements to be available within two months

The parks and recreation department will soon have more information to share with the public on the cost and final layout of plans for upgrades to athletic fields in West Homewood Park and a pool facility at Patriot Park.

In a June 15 meeting, parks employees and designers who have been working on the project decided to break the projects into three "packages" for bids from construction firms. The Patriot Park pool will be its own package, as will the gym and tennis court complex on the southeast end of West Homewood Park. The remainder of the work at West Homewood will be a single bid package, but the work will be done in multiple phases.

The first bid advertisements will be published in July, and ADEM (Alabama Department of Environmental Management) permits will also be applied for at that time for the first phases of work, though permits will be amended at a later point for the rest of the phases.

Athletic Director Jakob Stephens said construction on the pool and Phase I of West Homewood Park – which is a set of four baseball/softball fields, some parking and a playground - will break ground this summer. Phase II is the gym and tennis court complex, which will begin work in November. Phase III is the maintenance facility, which includes batting cages and wrestling mats, on the former Mason property at the southwest end of the park, and Stephens said work there is projected to begin in December.

Phase IV includes the multi-use fields next to the new maintenance facility, as well as parking, sand volleyball courts and two baseball fields on the northwest end of the park. Stephens said some work on the multi-use fields will begin in January 2018, but the rest of the phase will wait until the end of the fall tennis season to begin. Finally, Phase V includes the remaining baseball/softball fields and parking throughout West Homewood Park, and Stephens said work on those will begin at the end of the 2018 baseball season, around next summer.

In total, there will be four new baseball/softball fields and nine existing ones refurbished, plus new multi-use fields and tennis and volleyball courts.

The parks department commissioned a survey of West Homewood Park to determine the final layout of the fields with regards to grading hillsides and steering clear of protected wetland areas. Stephens said he expects to get pricing information on Phase I and the Patriot pool within the next two weeks, and pricing for most of the park sometime in July or August. Stephens said pricing information will be put on the department website when it is available.

All of these projects are slated to be funded through roughly $30 million from the city's $110 million bond issue, which is also being used for school growth projects and a new public safety building. The Patriot Park pool is expected to cost around $5 million to $6 million, and construction in West Homewood will be around $24 million, with "soft costs" such as architects and B.L. Harbert's project management taking $4 million to $5 million.

During the June 15 meeting, parks employees made note of a few changes since the last public meeting earlier this month. The pool has a new proposed layout, Stephens said, that keeps the same amenities but rearranges them for more deck space and so the noisier elements, like the slides and splash pad, are closer together. There will also be an aquatics building, which Stephens said they would like to include garage doors that can be rolled up on sunny days, or rolled down to provide a safe place to wait out storms. The new layout has been sent to designers at Counsilman Hunsaker for review.

A playground, with an enclosure and shade structure similar to the one at Central Park, is planned for West Homewood, as well as additional equipment for the existing playground at Patriot. Parks Superintendent Berkley Squires said they will be working with ecologist and Homewood Environmental Commission member Amy Milam and UAB biology professor Winston Lancaster to identify trees that are a high priority to preserve and create a nature trail in the wooded area near the Mason property. Some new trees may also be added at both parks to replace what is lost to construction.

A walking path is still part of the plans for West Homewood after community support for it during the public meetings, and Stephens said the path will include LED lighting. Squires said he has talked with Ward 2's council representatives, Mike Higginbotham and Andrew Wolverton, about the possibility of a path connecting the two parks together. That project would require council involvement and could not be done by the parks department.

The Homewood Star will continue to follow the progress of final designs and pricing for these projects.

Some residents feel that the way the city is moving forward on the parks projects is not suitably transparent and, as Hollywood resident Lindsey Chitwood puts it, is too eager to spend money before having a definite plan of how it will be spent.

Chitwood spoke at the June 8 meeting of the park board with a list of concerns that she and some other residents shared. Many of her questions were not completely answered during the meeting, including the usage growth information that is the reason for expansion, and The Homewood Star followed up with Stephens and Squires for much of that data at a later date.

One of these concerns was how the parks department determined how many new fields they would need, and why they didn't wait for the completion of the schools' demographics study to have a clearer picture of future need.

“I just want to make sure that we are justifying the spending of this much money on the ages 5 to 17,” Chitwood said. She felt that the growth may not sustain itself longterm or justify the increase in amenities that will mostly be used only by children.

Stephens said the parks department has been tracking its own enrollment growth for several years and used those as the basis for projecting its growth. Youth baseball had about a 23 percent growth from 2016 to 2017 participation, with about 50 teams total that play at least one practice and one game per week, weather permitting. With time constraints imposed by work schedules of parents and volunteer coaches, Stephens said typically each of the fields can support about three practices per weeknight. Weekends are mostly devoted to games, though some practices are also held at that time.

Flag football grew from about 143 participants in its inaugural 2015 season to 250 last year. Softball grew from 22 girls in 2008 to 100 last season. Youth soccer has about 1,000 kids playing, in total, Stephens said, though each multi-use field can fit between six and eight teams for a practice.

"It's just so packed," Stephens said. The baseball league has had to cap participation the past two years due to space, and youth basketball enforced a similar cap for the first time this year.

The changes the parks department is planning include room for the programs where they see a push for growth, including flag football, ultimate disc and the possibility of adding volleyball.

"Every sport we offer is growing and needs room to grow," Stephens said, adding that the department has tracked an overall 30 percent growth in youth league participation over the last six years.

The final capacity of the new field design will not be available until around the end of June, when survey information determines the layout of each field. Stephens said some of the fields can have year-round use, as baseball outfields can be used for flag football or soccer practice in the off-season.

Another of Chitwood's questions was the ongoing operational costs of these additions, and how they would affect membership fees and the city budget for parks and recreation. Stephens said with the use of low-maintenance artificial turf on the new and refurbished fields, he doesn't foresee an increase in maintenance costs, and some current part-time parks employees may spend more of their shifts in West Homewood.

Squires said the pool will include the existing lifeguards from West Homewood pool plus about four new guards, and he is requesting about $40,800 in additional salary expenses. He forecasted about $10,000 in additional chemical costs for both Patriot and Central pools and about $2,000-3,000 in building maintenance costs.

"With the West Homewood pool existing in the past, I'm not expecting to see a huge bump," Stephens said.

Discussion has not happened about membership fees for the pools, which he said is a park board decision. The fields, tennis courts and volleyball courts will be open to public use when they are not hosting league games or practices, but Stephens said a decision has not been made yet about public access to the gymnasium or the maintenance facility's batting cages and wrestling mats. West Homewood Park will also be installing a front gate, at the request of Homewood Police, and will have a night guard on the property, Stephens said.

The idea of an indoor pool at Patriot Park was briefly discussed during the public meetings about the improvement plans, though park board members said it was too expensive to pursue. Chitwood said on June 8 that she felt the idea had not been discussed enough to warrant a complete dismissal. Park Board Chair Chris Meeks said at the meeting that the difference in cost between an indoor and outdoor pool is not only initial construction, but also ongoing staffing and maintenance, which would have to be offset by increased fees or more frequent rental of the facility, reducing its availability to the public.

A cost comparison presented at the May 10 public meeting showed an outdoor facility would cost around $6 million to construct and cost $147,000 per year to operate. A comparable indoor facility would cost $11 million to construct and $612,000 in annual operation costs. Stephens provided more data from the cost comparison showing that the total cost of the outdoor pool after 15 years would be around $8.2 million, while the indoor pool would be around $20.2 million.

At its core, the problem many residents have with the planned projects is not the idea of improving the parks, but what they see as a lack of public input and clear planning. Chitwood said the need for the expansion, as the city currently plans it, has not been proved to her yet.

Meeks responded that their initial plan had been shaped by input in three public meetings and a survey, and  “I hope most of that community out there that has comments feels the same, that we listened to them.”