Breaking News: City revises plan for Splash Pad

Open house planned to discuss ideas with the designer

From the City of Apopka

The City of Apopka today announced a revised plan and timeline for the construction of a water splash pad in Kit Land Nelson Park. The revised plan was developed after an initial bidding process attracted no bids.

Under the new process, the City engaged Booth, Ern, Straughan, Hiott (BESH), a Tavares engineering firm, to provide design criteria for the project. BESH served as the design criteria professional for splash pad projects in several Central Florida cities, including Leesburg and Clermont.

The revised process is designed to invite input from Apopka children and parents about the features they would like to see at the splash pad. BESH and the City of Apopka will partner to host an open house at 6:30 p.m. May 22 and 24 at the Apopka Community Center, 519 S. Central Ave. The BESH team will lead residents through a series of discussions that will design criteria for the project to be bid to building firms.

BESH aims to present the conceptual design criteria to the Apopka City Council at its meeting at 1:30 p.m. June 7 at City Hall, 120 E. Main St. Bid documents should be released later in June. The City will post a request for proposals from design-build teams to create the facility. The timeline calls for awarding a contract and beginning construction in August.

Apopka City Administrator Glenn Irby said the decision to hire BESH came after city staff interviewed construction companies who previously had indicated an interest in building the splash pad.

“The challenge for us is that as Central Florida’s economy gets stronger, construction companies are finding that engineering companies are in high demand. Our previous bidders were interested in building the project, but they couldn’t find an engineering company to partner with,” Irby said. “Based on the very tight timeline that BESH and our staff have developed, we anticipate being able to complete construction by mid February of 2018,” Irby said. “I wish we could do it sooner. This is as quick as the marketplace will allow us to go.”