Evanston aldermen are scheduled Monday to award a contract to design renovations for Garden Park on the city’s lakefront.
The contract with Evanston-based Teska Associates for landscape design and engineering services totals $74,466.
A memo from Public Works Director Dave Stoneback says the park, on Sheridan Square north of the South Boulevard beach in southeast Evanston, was last renovated in 1990, although the drinking fountain was replaced last year.
The memo says the playground and other furnishings don’t meet current design safety and accessibility standards and that the park is in “general disrepair.”
Last spring city staff met with area residents to get suggestions for improvements to the 1.14-acre park, and Stoneback says those suggestions, along with the 2008 lakefront master plan, were used in developing a scope of work for the project.
Teska Associates received the highest score from a team of city staff reviewers of the proposals three firms submitted for the design project.
The design work is to be funded from this year’s general obligation bonds.
The city has budgetd $500,000 from next year’s GO bonds to implement the renovation project. That’s almost half of the funds set aside for bond-funded parks projects next year.
Is this a way to get even?
Garden Park is right next to Yu Darvish’s home. Is this a way for the city to get back at him for asking a simple request to add a fence around his property?
Not so
Hi Ron,
If you would look at a map, like this one: https://maps.cityofevanston.org/apps/PropertyBrowser/, you’d see that the north edge of Garden Park is more than 460 feet from the nearest point on Darvish’s property and is separated from it by six other house lots.
And just how spending over a half million dollars to improve a park in the neighborhood “gets back at” someone eludes me.
The neighborhood meeting on redesigning the park was held in May. Darvish’s request for the fence was first heard in June.
But, hey, conspiracy theories are popular this year.
— Bill
BTW…
Yu’s (revised) fence plan goes before the Preservation Commission tomorrow night (10/9/18).
— Bill
Oh, really?
Actually, the park right next to Yu Darvish’s house is named Clark Square Park. Yes, one of the disadvantages of living in Evanston is that there are so many different lakefront park names to remember. Garden Park is my wife’s favorite of all of them, but for the longest time she would call it Friendship Park or Rainbow Park.