The planned Richard Memorial Spray Park won’ t be making as big a splash on the pages of Lac La Biche County’ s pocketbook. County Council has adopted a revised budget of $940,019 to complete the project, which was previously calculated at around $1.
The planned Richard Memorial Spray Park won’ t be making as big a splash on the pages of Lac La Biche County’ s pocketbook.
County Council has adopted a revised budget of $940,019 to complete the project, which was previously calculated at around $1.2 million to finish.
Despite the reduction, Councillor Hajar Haymour says the costs are still too high for comfort.
“I’ ve supported this project and I think it’ s a good cause, but we need to watch our dollars,” he said last week.
The dollar amounts to finance the project have been creeping steadily upwards since the beginning, he says, with initial estimates closer to the half-million-dollar level.
The Richard family is donating $250,000 to the project in memory of Paul Richard, a local businessman whose body was lost and never recovered following a canoeing accident on the Christina River in 2013.
The donated funds will reduce the County’ s portion of the total cost to $690,019.
The project involves building the actual spray park as well as an accompanying mechanical building. Upgrades to the existing seasonal washroom facility in McArthur Park have also been included in the revised budget.
Initial plans called for building a new washroom facility, but Mayor Omer Moghrabi says the projected costs for doing so were “very prohibitive.” Much of the work of refurbishing the existing building can be done in-house, he says, to lower the dollar amounts even more.
The plan is still to build the site near the playground and beach area of McArthur Park. Last summer, it was determined that in between the park’ s baseball diamonds would be the ideal place to situate it, but councillors later insisted on relocating it nearer to the lakeshore.
Originally, the spray park was supposed to be built and operating in time for a June 2015 opening. Some preliminary work like geotechnical testing has been done at the site, but construction has yet to start.
Acting chief administrative officer Shadia Amblie says the project has changed in terms of scope and financing several times. There has also been some staff turnover within the County that’ s affected the continuity of the project.
“Our administration recognizes there has been a lot of challenges with this project,” she said.
County documents say construction should begin this spring if weather permits.
Splash and spray parks have become popular additions to many Alberta communities in recent years. Costs range from around $425,000 for a spray park in Sexsmith in 2013 to over $1 million for one in Hinton the year before.
