The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
The long-anticipated Catalpa Park is once again the topic of Township conversation, but this time the conversation is focused on finances.
The Township Council on September 9 rejected all bids on the park because the lowest bid – $9.3 million, submitted by Picerno-Giordano Construction of Kenilworth – was about $4 million more than had been budgeted.
And on September 16, the Township Open Space Advisory Committee was presented with four options on the way forward for the park. The Council will act on whatever the Committee recommends, Township Manager Robert Vornlocker said.
Following some discussion after being presented with the options by Darren Mazzei, the Township’s consulting engineer, Committee members said they’d prefer to mull over the options until the Committee’s October meeting.
Discussion on the park dates back to 2013, when the Open Space Committee was presented with plans for the as-yet-unnamed park. Construction has been delayed many times since then, the latest being in 2018.
Since then, the plan has suffered numerous delays, ranging from the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown to the discovery of a box turtle on the property and realignment of a driveway, which led to delays getting needed state Department of Environmental Protection permits.
It didn’t help that DEP officials lost the Township’s permit application during that time, as Vornlocker disclosed during the September 16 meeting.
Original plans for the park included cricket pitches, two basketball courts, a pickleball court, two tennis courts, a bocce ball area, a corn hole area, a horseshoe pit, as well as a large pavilion area and grill area, a larger playground area that has a bathroom. There is also planned a 67-car parking lot, as well as a community garden.
Mazzei gave the Committee four options to continue with the park’s development:
- Option 1: Construct the park as planned, for the $9.3 million, at the least.
- Option 2: Construct the park in two phases, with the cricket pitch area first and the second phase at a later date, for an estimated $5.7 million.
- Option 3: Construct just the cricket pitches and the community garden, for an estimated $3.9 million.
- Option 4: Construct only the cricket pitches, the community garden, a tot lot, and a bathroom, for an estimated $4.7 million.
The Township would also lose permits approved by the DEP and the Delaware and Raritan Canal Commission if options three or four were chosen, the Committee was told.
“What you’re doing if you commit to either three or four is saying that we will never build anything more than what we’re building,” Vornlocker said. “Because the likelihood of being able to do … I shouldn’t say that. You’ll get the permits. It’ll alter the design, it’ll have to be redesigned, and obviously the cost will escalate.”
Committee members said that option two could possibly end up costing more than the $9.3 million, with rising costs of materials and labor.
Vornlocker told the Committee that if option one is pursued, the Township would probably bond for about $4 million because slightly more than $5 million has already been set aside for the project. He said that’s not a big problem because the Township will soon retire the one remaining bond that it is paying off.
“The issue is cost,” Vornlocker said. “It’s all coming down to money.”
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