Center Lake Pier

By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — To move forward on the bid process for the demolition of the Center Lake pier, the Warsaw Board of Public Works and Safety on Friday approved a supplemental agreement between the city and A & Z Engineering for the Center Lake Recreational Trail project.

City Planner Justin Taylor explained, “As we discussed in previous meetings, and it’s been written up in the paper as well, the original plan for the Center Lake Recreational Trail project was demolishing the existing pier. There’s a number of issues with that pier.”

He said they ended up having to carve that demolition out of the original trail project, but now they’ve identified funds and resources to hopefully move forward with the pier’s demolition.

The supplemental agreement for $10,280 will enable A & Z Engineering, the consultant for the trail project, to pull together the bid documents necessary to rebid the portion of the project that is the pier demolition. The supplemental agreement brings the total engineering contract cost to $177,130 on the project.

Mayor Jeff Grose thanked Taylor for his efforts, as well as Parks Superintendent Larry Plummer, city engineer Aaron Ott and Public Works Superintendent Dustin Dillon. “Lots of hands here and I greatly appreciate it from my office,” Grose said.

Councilwoman Diane Quance said the pier removal will be a great benefit as far as environmentally and for the safety of the public. She made the motion to approve the supplemental agreement, and the motion passed.

The bids are due and expected to be open at the board’s next meeting in November.

Taylor then presented a contract with The Parking Whisperer for $9,250, which includes a $7,500 consulting fee and a $1,750 travel fee for the consultant to travel to Warsaw one time.

“They have been our consultant. They initially were looking at our downtown area with the … performance venue study that KEDCO undertook. They’ve also worked with us on securing a vendor for our parking services, so we’re in the process. This week we’ll be receiving those proposals from vendors interested in providing us technology to improve our parking enforcement, our ability to issue parking permits in downtown and just how we regulate parking for the downtown for the benefit of the merchants,” Taylor said.

The consultant contract is for The Parking Whisperer to look at the city’s ordinances.

“With the advance in technology that we have, with the abilities that we’ll have, we’ll also have more abilities to offer permits and different fee structures for our parking downtown. So, they’re going to look at that, they’re going to look at where we have two-hour parking and where we have free parking and how we model our downtown,” he said. “So, a very experienced consultant and we’re really excited at the opportunity to potentially have them revamp our ordinance as well with part of this whole effort to improve the parking enforcement downtown.”

Quance said the city has all kinds of residents that use the downtown and the city doesn’t want those residents to be intimidated by coming downtown.

The board approved the consultant contract.

The third agreement Taylor presented was a consulting agreement between the Warsaw Public Arts Commission and SmallBox Consulting Inc. for $9,800, which will be paid from donations and grants received by the WPAC.

He said WPAC was asking for permission to work with SmallBox, a consultant out of Indianapolis. “They will help the Arts Commission add more structure to what they’re doing,” he said, such as bylaws.

The WPAC has been adding a more robust program over the years so there seems to be more of a need to add structure to what they’re doing, he said.

He reiterated that no city funds will be used for the contract.

The board approved the agreement.