Construction to Begin on UMore Park and Ballfields

The City of Rosemount will begin moving forward with construction of the 27-acre UMore Park and Ballfields this fall, with portions ready-to-use in spring 2012.

Parks and Recreation Director Dan Schultz provided a site (or concept) plan created by WSB & Associates and Hoisington Koegler Group, Inc. (HKGi) to the City Council at Tuesday’s meeting; the plan has also been previously shared with the park commission.

“This is just one more step in this lengthy process. People have probably been hearing the city talk about these fields for a couple of years now,” Councilwoman Kim Shoe-Corrigan said.

Schultz informed the council that the project is estimated to cost $4 million, from start to finish. However, he said that although the city does not have the funds to finish the entire project, “we do have the funds to start phases of this project.”

“We have developed, along with our engineers and architects, a phasing plan that would include four different phases,” Schultz said. “The idea is that everything [in phase one] would be built and be ready for use sometime near this spring. It should be bid later this winter and if we get favorable bids we would move forward with that.”

According to Schultz, the first phase will include a parking lot, access road, rainwater gardens, and pedestrian walkways extending from the parking lot to the fields as well as pond areas. In addition, two baseball and softball fields would be ready for use and are located on the westside of the property.

Phase one will cost the city about 10-12 percent of the overall cost, which according to Schultz, is typical of a project of that size.

“I know when we met with the council for a work session in the past we talked about having a budget of approximately $800,000,” Schultz said. “The numbers [before council] are right about 10 percent of that construction cost.”

The city has already paid $50,500 for the design development of the project to get them to the level of detail of where they are now.

“The University of Minnesota has already spent $22,000 on this project, so the initial step one was a little cheaper than in the past,” Schultz said.

The next step will be to create construction documentation for only the phase the city intends to build right now.

In addition, the City of Rosemount received an in-kind donation of $200,000 from SKB Environmental for grading and earthwork. The entire acreage will be graded this fall by Carl Bolander and Sons Company, which would allow construction of phase one of the project to begin soon after.

"This project is being constructed on land currently owned by the University of Minnesota and will be constructed as a city park. The land has been dedicated to the City of Rosemount by the U of M," Morgan Dawley, WSB and Associates, Inc. project manager, said in a UMore Park CD Proposal letter to the city.