North Little Rock City Council members will have a special meeting Jan. 19 to hear a request for appropriating an estimated $350,000 to repair sinkholes at the city-owned Dickey-Stephens Park, Mayor Joe Smith said Monday.
"That's our best guess to fix the problem," Smith told the City Council on Monday evening about the $350,000 estimate. He also didn't rule out city insurance coverage possibly being available for part of that cost.
The meeting will be at 5 p.m. Jan. 19 at City Hall. Aldermen will be asked to waive competitive bidding to hire a contractor and to appropriate the necessary funds, Smith said.
Sinkholes along the outfield warning track and in the outfield appeared in December when the Arkansas River swelled.
The $40.4 million Dickey-Stephens Park is below street level on the north side of the city's Riverfront Drive, next to the north end of the Broadway Bridge, which crosses the river between North Little Rock and Little Rock. The ballpark is home to the Arkansas Travelers minor league professional baseball team.
The money for repairs to the field's drainage system will come from "several different pots," Smith said. Those funds will include money available from 2015 sales tax capital, Smith said, and $88,000 in an account managed by the North Little Rock Public Building Authority that had previously been designated for field repairs.
Chief City Engineer Chris Wilbourn on Monday referred to the work needed as a "rehabilitation" of the field's drainage system.
"We will try to start work a week from [today]," Wilbourn said, once the City Council approves the appropriation. "The $88,000 will be to start buying materials for the drainage system. We are making changes to the system.
"It's totally related to the river coming up," Wilbourn said of the sinkholes.
Repairs are scheduled to be completed before the Travelers' opening home series April 7, team General Manager Paul Allen said recently.
The sinkholes that appeared last month aren't the first at the baseball stadium. A sinkhole about 5 yards in length was repaired in center field in 2008, a year after the ballpark opened. Another sizable hole and other small ones were filled last season after spring floods.
When the sinkhole appeared in 2008, Smith has said, the ballpark's building contractors, architects, engineers and others involved with the construction combined to fund an account to cover any future repairs to the field. Smith said Monday that he previously misstated that amount to be $160,000, instead of $135,000.
The city has spent about $47,000 of that amount on field repairs. The $88,000 mentioned Monday is what's left from the original $135,000, the mayor said.
North Little Rock voters approved a two-year, 1 percent city sales tax that ended in September 2007 to fund the ballpark's construction. The city used about $28 million of the tax revenue to build the ballpark. Private contributions and the value of the property donated for the ballpark are included in the ballpark's total cost.
The Travelers Baseball Club pays a rental fee of $230,000 to the city each April on the ballpark's debt left from a $6 million overrun of the construction cost. The payment amount was established in 2014 through a restructured 10-year loan agreed upon by the city and the Travelers.
Metro on 01/12/2016