New Warsaw Parks Office & Maintenance Building Celebrated With Ribbon-Cutting
New Warsaw Parks Office & Maintenance Building Celebrated With Ribbon-Cutting
Posted
David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
New Warsaw Parks Office & Maintenance Building Celebrated With Ribbon-CuttingFor Superintendent Larry Plummer, the new Warsaw Parks and Recreation Department office and maintenance building at 123 E. Fort Wayne St. is not only a long-time coming, but also a dream come true.
Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday morning for the facilities with members of the city council, parks board, park staff, Chamber staff and ambassadors, mayor’s office, Design Collaborative and GM Development present.
Plummer told those present, “Thanks, everybody, for coming today. I can’t tell you how ecstatic I am. This has been a lot of years coming, and I’d like to thank Mayor Joe Thallemer, the city council, the park board, Greg Martz (of GM Development Companies LLC), Meyer Najem’s crew, Chris Stine at Design Collaborative and the public. Without that support, we wouldn’t be here. I’ve had nothing but support on this project and I’d like to thank all of you for that. It really means something to me to have this building, and we’re so fortunate.”
He said when the old parks office building was demolished he told Thallemer “how important it was for us to be in this location. The accessibility to the public. A lot of our events and things go in this area, and it’s just a dream come true. I really appreciate it. Thank you, all, for coming.”
Thallemer said the new facility “is a neighborhood building in an up-and-coming neighborhood, if you will, with the Buffalo Street project getting some traction. Being right here at the pole position, corporate neighbors across the street who also great supporters of our parks.”
The building is also the city’s first Build Operate Transfer (BOT), he said, “and having great partners to guide us through - Greg Martz and Meyer Najem - I couldn’t be happier with the outcome. I appreciate the park department, their patience, the staff - they were over in some tighter quarters for a long time. Never complained. We all knew that one day this was going to come, and it’s here now, so thank you all for your patience. Our park employees are the greatest in the world - just look across the street, look at what we’ve got (Central Park) in this community. And it’s just one of our beautiful parks.”
Thallemer thanked the parks board and the city council for their work and decision-making on the BOT.
“It was just a group effort. There probably aren’t near enough people here that have done work to celebrate this, but there’s a lot of good folks,” he said.
A BOT contract is used to finance projects, typically infrastructure projects, developed through public-private partnerships. The BOT scheme refers to the initial concession by a public entity to a private firm to both build and operate the project in question. After a set time frame, control of the project is returned to the public entity.
On May 6, 2022, Warsaw Board of Public Works and Safety approved the BOT agreement between GM Development Companies LLC and the city for the parks building. The maximum cost of the project was for $3.65 million, according to the agreement. The substantial completion date for the project originally was set for June 15, 2023.
Parks board President Steve Haines said Wednesday, “I want to thank Larry and the crew. They’ve had pretty cramped offices for, what, three years now? Something like that. And like the mayor said, never complained or anything, and I think we did a really good job here. I’d like to thank the mayor for all the work he put into it. I think it turned out really good.”
“I just said yes,” Thallemer responded. “It’s a beautiful building. We’re just thrilled.”
City Council President Jack Wilhite said, “I think the BOT process was a real learning experience. It was a very positive experience. And I look forward to doing more like that in the future.”
“With the same result!” Thallemer stated.
After the ribbon-cutting, Plummer said the building includes offices for the park staff, which includes himself, Maintenance Director Shaun Gardner and Recreation Director Stephanie Schaefer, administrative assistant Suzanne Stokes and Assistant Recreation Director Heather Vogts.
“We have a break and conference room, training room. We have five stalls/bays for carpenters, mechanics and a wash bay. We have overhead storage and we have future expansion upstairs for offices if needed,” he said.
As for square footage, Plummer said the new building is larger than the old facility at about 6,200 square feet.
On the old maintenance building, he said, “We had that talk. Originally, it was going to be tore down with the (Buffalo Street) development, but we’ve had some talk about keeping the old building for storage, for cold storage. Cold storage costs a premium right now, so as long as we’ll keep it, we’ll use it.”
The public is invited to tour the building from noon to 1 p.m. Saturday.
“They can just come in, and Shaun and I will be here and we’ll kind of give them the tours through there and hopefully they can see it and enjoy,” Plummer stated.
The parks department has 19 full-time employees, but with seasonal staff there is closer to 50.
Plummer said it will be a process to move the equipment and tools into the new facility. “We’re going to do it as we can because we’ve got a lot of other responsibilities to take care of within the parks. We want to keep them safe, we want to have our events and our recreation events, and we don’t want to miss any of that, so we’ll do it as we can,” he said.
Schaefer said as the recreation director, having her office back downtown next to Central Park will help her incredibly. While the construction was ongoing, staff offices were at the Pete Thorn building on Park Avenue.
“Just having a lot of my concerts in the park, I would say 75% of them are here at Central Park, so that will help. Having my lifeguards close to me. Just being centrally located I think will be great,” she said.
Her schedule got busy this week with everything starting to happen. Saturday is the opening day for Mantis Skate Park, which she’s very excited for. Lifeguards start guarding the lake on May 27.
“So lots happening here at the park!” Schaefer stated.
