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Downtown Ulysses will soon have new places to sit after the city council gave city administrator Luke Grimes permission to purchase new benches along Main Street at the April 9 council meeting. The benches will be in addition to what’s already in place but will include a new Sunflower design.
“Basically, I’m wanting to buy some additional seating for downtown, for Main Street,” Grimes said. “I found a product I really like, it’s a really cool, sturdy metal bench, on the back (are) sunflowers.”
Grimes wants to buy between 12 and 20 of the new benches, put them downtown and anchor them to the sidewalk, then ask the businesses to stop installing their own “random” benches, he added.
“People do that, they like seating right in front of their place, and that’s great, but they’re all mismatched,” Grimes said. “Some of them are in bad condition and people just think they’re ours.”
He said it will add some uniformity, and since the cost is less than $10,000 the council doesn’t need to vote on it.
“Since I was making a visual change to downtown, I thought I would bring it up with you,” Grimes said.
The benches the city purchased two years ago will remain, but the city will restrict businesses from purchasing their own. If they want a bench, the city will put one in, but it will be city property.
The council gave Grimes the thumbs up to purchase the new benches.
In related news, the council gave permission for Grimes to bring in a consultant to redesign Russ Binney Park. Grimes has a design bid for the park that he can act on using grant funds of roughly $19,000, so it won’t cost the city anything.
“The design will be paid for if we decide to pursue this, but how do we feel about potentially spending some money to renovate that park in the next couple years?” Grimes asked. “It’s not really a discussion we’ve had yet.”
Councilman Ken Warner asked what the goal is.
“Is our goal that we really talked about was maybe looking at the playground issue and taking equipment or are we looking at tearing everything down and starting over?” Warner said. “I guess that’s my issue that I have. Because otherwise when I look at that space and think what we talked about doing, I personally think this is an extreme amount of money that we’re asking knowing what they’re going to do for us.
Are we gonna tear out the flower area and the gazebo? Or are we looking at the equipment? If the equipment’s the option, then I think there’s a better way to go, more economical.”
Warner wants to know if the grant money being used to hire a design consultant could be used for the equipment.
“If we do this process, we’re looking at almost $19,000, and that doesn’t pay for a dime of anything as far as renovation,” Warner added.
Grimes believes the gazebo needs replaced, if not a redesign of the whole park.
“That gazebo is showing its age, for sure,” Grimes added.
Warner said if it’s the equipment that needs replaced, those companies will come out and show the different kind of things they can put together and configurations they can do as part of their sales pitch.
“If we want to do something else, I’ll go after other money,” Grimes said. “This money just fell in my lap.”
Mark Diaz asked if the city decided to use the money for a design consultant, would the city be more apt to get another grant for better equipment, and Grimes thinks so.
“If we really want to lean into some of the social aspects of the park design, making sure that it’s handicap accessible, mom-friendly, modern or progressive ideas that are big, talked-about buzzwords in the urban planning world, probably,” Grimes said. “As opposed to we want to install a playground, pay a playground company to draw it up and install it, it’s probably a little trickier to get a grant for that.”
Grimes said his intent for wanting to bring a highly specialized firm is because the park is in such a small space.
“It attempts to really maximize what we can get done in that small area,” he said.
The council ultimately voted 6-0 to allow Grimes to use the grant money to bring in a design consultant.
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