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The old Weaver popcorn factory at 211 West Railroad Avenue will soon have new life thanks to a tradeoff between USD 214 and Dr. Bradyn Bishop in a move approved October 24. Bishop and school superintendent Corey Burton were at the November 25, Ulysses city council meeting to request approval of Ordinance 1344, a zoning change from industrial to commercial.
The planning commission previously recommended the rezoning.
“The planning commission really didn’t have any discussion after they (the school and Bishop) explained what they want to do,” said Natalie Anguiano with the planning commission, who indicated a fitness center was part of the plan for the property.
“We were able to attend the planning commission meeting and share our thoughts with them,” said school superintendent Corey Burton. “The school’s working with Bradyn and Bradyn’s got some plans for that building and we’re in the process of swapping out and building a new building over by the high school for our storage facility so we think it’s a win-win situation and this is a big step of that to allow Bradyn to do what he needs to do with that building which I think will be a positive for the community, as well.”
Councilman Ken Warner moved to accept Ordinance 1344 to rezone the property, seconded by Caleb Woods.
Bishop has not publicly said what he plans for the property other than Anguiano indicating a fitness center was part of the plans looked at by the planning commission.
•In other action, the council tabled discussion on a new city logo. The idea to update the logo was presented by Grimes at the November 13 meeting, with the plan to choose the logo to add to new city letterhead and to newly-purchased city vehicles. Grimes presented several more logo ideas at the November 25 meeting that he designed with the help of AI. The council decided to look them over and choose at a future meeting.
•The council approved a fee from Earles Engineering for $224,000 for a new water line project. Grimes said $208,000 of that will come out of funds the city received from the American Rescue Plan Act after the Covid pandemic, with the city spending the other $16,000.
“It was kind of given out by the state and the feds really with the idea that it would be used on water infrastructure,” Grimes said. “They did relax on that apparently because it sounded like a lot of municipalities weren’t getting it spent, but we’ve got plenty of water projects we can spend it on.”
The project wouldn’t get started until next spring.
The council voted to approve using the $208,000 ARPA funds and $16,000 city funds for the project.
•The council approved a fee of $21,000 from Earle’s Engineering to redesign ”The Wetlands” sewer pond, which originally was an attempt to purify sewer into more usable water to return into the water system, according to Grimes. But the state rejected it 14 years ago.
“Ultimately I think it ended up tanking,” Grimes said. “The state ended up saying ‘We don’t accept this method anymore’ and it’s just been abandoned. As opposed to a new pond, this is a cheaper way to kick that can down the road maybe a decade at a considerably cheaper cost.”
Grimes said he budgeted $200,000 for next fiscal year.
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