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HARLINGEN — The big price tag on the area’s first destination park keeps coming down.
Six years after the city’s past administration proposed turning Lon C. Hill Park into a regional attraction at a cost as high as $12.9 million, officials are revising blueprints after cutting the cost of its second phase from $4.1 million to about $600,000.
After nearly three years of revisions and delays, commissioners are launching the super park’s second phase, rejecting a contractor’s low construction bid of $1.48 million, turning over the job to city crews to save about $500,000.
At City Hall, City Manager Gabriel Gonzalez is revising the park’s proposed five phases, originally carrying a total price tag of $12.9 million before the past administration trimmed costs to about $8 million.
“We’re not downscaling it,” Gonzalez said in an interview. “We’re eliminating components that we didn’t think were useful.”
Now, he said, officials are reviewing the city’s neighborhood parks.
“We’re focusing on parks throughout the area,” he said.
Cutting costs
As they enter what was planned as one of the super park’s most ambitious phases, officials are cutting out a proposed $2.5 million amphitheater, once the project’s centerpiece planned to stand between the park’s all-inclusive playground and the Harlingen Boys and Girls Club.
As early as 2021, architects were designing the proposed amphitheater to feature a timber canopy along with seating for 792, with room for 524 more on its grassy hill.
“The way it was designed, it was going to be too small for our events,” Gonzalez said, referring to festivals such as Freedom Fest and RioFest.
Meanwhile, he’s holding off on construction of an adaptive sports park, originally planned as part of the second phase, after the coronavirus pandemic’s supply chain crisis helped boost its cost from an estimated $916,062 to $1.7 million.
Now, officials are waiting on the Harlingen Community Improvement Board’s budget, which increases by about $2 million a year, to build reserves before funding the project, Gonzalez said.
To fund the super park, officials have been turning to the Community Improvement Board, whose budget is funded through a one-eighth-cent sales tax earmarked to finance so-called quality-of-life projects such as parks.
As officials reviewed the park’s overall plans, they’ve also decided to hold off on a proposed $1.2 million project aimed at installing a retractable roof over Harlingen Field, Gonzalez said.
As part the super park’s fifth phase, the past administration proposed installing a folding canopy across the stadium, planning to draw concerts there.
But some of the stadium bleachers’ poor condition led officials to hold off on plans to revamp the city’s old baseball park, Gonzalez said.
Trail savings
Now, officials have slashed the park’s second phase to a proposed $727,950, 0.8-mile-long lighted concrete walking trail planned to run behind Casa de Amistad and the Harlingen Municipal Auditorium, winding toward Harlingen Field.
As they reviewed the proposed $1.5 million project last week, commissioners agreed to reject a second round of construction bids coming in as low as $1.45 million.
Based on Gonzalez’s recommendation, they requested city crews undertake the job to cut costs.
“It’s going to save us a lot of money that we can put into other projects,” Commissioner Daniel Lopez said during a Nov. 1 meeting.
The move to turn the project over to city crews is projected to save $400,000 to $500,000, Gonzalez said in an interview.
Those cost savings, he said, could help officials fund the park’s adaptive sports field.
“With the savings from the trail, we might be able to look at the adaptive field again,” he said.
At City Hall, officials are turning over more projects to city crews, Commissioner Frank Morales said.
“We need to stop going out for bids when we can do it in-house,” he said in an interview. “We’re not spending the kind of money we did before. We’re moving in the right direction.”
Field on hold
The destination park’s blueprints call for the adaptive sports field to stand at the site of a 225-foot baseball park at the corner of Washington Avenue and J Street.
As part of the project, officials plan to build covered bleachers while installing synthetic turf to turn the field into a sporting venue aimed at children with special needs.
From across the area, the adaptive sports field is expected to help draw families with special needs children to the park featuring one of the city’s award-winning all-inclusive playgrounds, sprawling mazes of play stations designed for all children, including those with special needs.
The adaptive sports park, which could become a venue for the Miracle League, which sponsors teams made up of special needs children, could also stage Little League games while offering the nearby Boys and Girls Club a playing field, Javier Mendez, the city’s parks director, said in an earlier interview.
While city crews are expected to launch the trail’s construction around Dec. 1, officials haven’t set the project’s completion date, Gonzalez’s said.
