Longmont sets goals of completing 8 parks projects in 5 years

Longmont wants to get eight parks projects done in five years utilizing a new purchasing process.

Director of Parks and Natural Resources David Bell explained the “Best Value Approach” to the city council on Tuesday. To expedite the parks process, staff is moving to a design build process and will look to bring in vendors to get the “best people coming to do the most work,” he said.

“We’re finding a lot of things in the traditional purchasing process that really slows us down,” City Manager Harold Dominguez said.

The city is consulting with the Kashiwagi Team, who has seen a lot of success implementing these processes.

The projects the city wants to complete in the next five years include the Fox Meadow Neighborhood Park, Clover Meadow Neighborhood Park, synthetic turf sports fields at Dry Creek, ball fields at Sandstone Ranch, phase two of the Dry Creek master plan, completion of the Quail Campus master plan and adding pickle ball courts, Union Loop Trail and phase 12 of the St. Vrain Western Expansion.

“We’ve looked at this and kind of looked at what the community’s been looking for, what’s kind of been hanging out there, what council members have had to talk to the community about and saying we are really tired of going back and saying it will be on next year’s budget, but we really can’t get to it,” Bell said.

Bell added that the city will not only focus on these new projects, but also continue with the existing projects at Nino Gallo, the master plan for Button Rock, St. Vrain phase 13, Loomiller and the Kensington Restroom.

“Those are not going to get dropped,” he said. “We’re going to continue to do the work we have in play right now while trying to move forward with this new process.”

The city has created buckets of similar projects to put out for proposals, so a request for proposals on the neighborhood parks Fox Meadows and Clover Meadows is already out to test this concept. If it works, more projects may be put together to expedite the process.

“This is going to be a shift for us and a learning process,” Bell said.

Once these projects are completed staff plans to tackle the existing backlog of renewal projects using the “Best Value Approach” if it proves successful. Those projects could include Thompson Park, Spangler Bridge, Garden Acres Bridge, Sunset/Price, Hove Park and the Rough and Ready Trail.