City Hears Preliminary Frazier Park Plan

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After Ulysses City Council tasked Earles Engineering with coming up with a plan for new items at Frazier Park, based on city council and public surveys of what the community wants, CEO Peter Earles presented a preliminary plan of how desired items might fit in the park. Earles presented his ideas at the June 25 city council meeting in front of a packed house of citizens interested in the park’s future.

“Understand this is purely conceptual,” Earles warned the council and the public. “We were just given a list of various items and how might they fit or what might they look like if we tried to do all that stuff out there, and that’s all this is, someplace to start the discussion.”

Earles and city administrator Luke Grimes went over the list of desired items and tried to fit as many of them as were reasonable in order to give an idea of size and what may or may not fit. They started with a potential bandstand, then discussed parking for the bandstand and a road to get the equipment to the bandstand.

“We looked at reworking the existing parking lot that’s out there now, even the existing playground, alone,” Earles said. “That’s not saying we won’t have to go in there and fill that hole that is now the playground.”

Earles added items focused on the lake and potential bandstand and included new playground equipment by the existing shelter house, adding a potential new splash pad feature. Earles also added above ground storm shelters and not below ground in order to accommodate individuals who may not be able to navigate steep steps to an underground shelter.

“We took a look at mini golf, where that might go, keeping that kind of in that area where the shelter house is,” Earles said. “And then right beside that then we put a new restroom area.”

Earles then focused on a potential soccer field, which would take up a large area, but could be divided to accommodate different age groups.

“The whole idea is you build one field, but you could split it up to fit all the different age groups in there,” Earles said, adding the Frisbee Golf course would be relocated.

“Just for fun, we looked up how big is an indoor soccer field,” Earles added. “It’s a considerably smaller field.”

But the whole process began with the city’s desire for a new golf clubhouse.

“What we looked at is getting it closer to the lake, being able to see what people might want to watch,” Earles said.

The preliminary plan I for an 1,800 square-foot, two story concept with a deck on the top so people could watch golfers. A new parking lot would be included for the clubhouse with overflow parking on the existing roadway.

Mayor Tim McCauley said the clubhouse would be more of a community building and not just for golfers.

The existing volleyball court would be relocated, and an area for tent camping could be added adjacent to the current campground.

“All conceptual at this point,” Earles emphasized. “What we did is just a conceptual view trying to make use of the area, trying to pull things together families would do together more in one area.”

Earles also mentioned a walkway over a narrow part of the lake to accommodate golfers, and the addition of a floating dock for canoes and paddle boats.

Everything on the concept can be moved, adjusted or thrown out. Earles included cost estimates, but didn’t announce those in the open meeting, adding it depends on what is included. He also pointed out grants are available for some of the items and the community could raise funds for other items.

“So, as you look at different projects, there is money available for some of these things,” Earles said. “As you take a look at it, realize nothing is set in stone, this is just a first run-through, a concept.”

Councilman Mark Diaz asked if the pricing Earles provided to the council would be made public, but Grimes said that would all be put out for bid and voted on by the council.

“That’s so far off, to me, I don’t even think about those,” said councilman Caleb Woods.

Councilman Ken Warner said it is a concept and things may be cut, and mayor Tim McCauley said those prices are available to the public if they want to see it.

“If a group decides hey, we’d like to go after this to raise money for it, it at least gives them a concept of what kind of dollars they’re looking at raising to do that,” Earles said.

Grimes told the council he would like to know what they don’t like about the concept and proposed creating a master plan with a timeline and a conglomeration of what the council can agree on.

Woods asked if it was out of the question to have a meeting to work on it and suggested including community members.

“To me, that helps bring in suggestions from people in the community, plus us,” Woods said. “There’s probably people out there who have better knowledge of making stuff like this work. As we give you our ideas and thoughts, you’re working with that group to rearrange or change or whatever, to make it feasible, workable, whatever.”

Leilani Sullivan chimed in from the audience and asked if the community would have any input.

“When it comes down to the finale, will they have input?” she asked.

Grimes said ultimately the council will have to vote on a master plan.

“We’ve done some work to gather the community input and it’s their (the council’s) job to take all of that and implement that,” Grimes said.

Sullivan said at one time there was a second town hall meeting planned, and asked if that was still a plan, and Grimes said it was up to the council.

“My opinion is that this (the council meeting) is a town hall meeting and we’re not rushing this process,” Grimes added. “Every one of these, the entire community is invited to, but the council can certainly issue that.”

The council consensus was it wanted community input, and Diaz suggested at least one more town hall meeting to set a community committee to get an idea of what is wanted and set a timeframe.

“By that time, we would be able to look at the financial side of where we’re at,” Diaz said. “And we could still have our individual meeting and let them know what we come up with - then inform the public.

“Not everybody’s going to be in agreeance of how many items are here, and then we need to go ahead, and we’ve never had a 5-year plan or a 1-year plan or a 10-year plan that we’ve really followed through,” Diaz added. “We need to not let it go stagnant and I think it’s time now we move forward with that. I think there’s some items here that can be taken care of, probably even this year we can visit about.”

Diaz said the council needs to give the community assurances regarding high-dollar items such as a clubhouse would not include a tax increase.

“To simplify it for Luke, we need to be able to sit down separately to kind of give him an idea of what we’re looking at and then bring that to the public,” Diaz said. “The public knows where we’re at, they voted us in here to make decisions and make right decisions.”

The council ultimately decided to hold a special Frazier Park work session – open to the public – at 5:30 p.m. August 12.