PRC 2014 05 28
CHANHASSEN PARK AND
RECREATION COMMISSION
REGULAR MEETING
MAY 28, 2014
Chairman Kelly called the meeting to order at 7:30 p.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT:
Cole Kelly, Steve Scharfenberg, Elise Ryan, Brent Carron, Rick Echternacht,
Luke Thunberg, and Jacob Stolar
MEMBERS ABSENT:
Jim Boettcher and Tyler Kobilarcsik
STAFF PRESENT:
Todd Hoffman, Park and Rec Director; Jerry Ruegemer, Recreation Superintendent;
Mitch Johnson, Recreation Supervisor; Ben Domjahn, Park Intern; and Adam Beers, Park Superintendent
PUBLIC PRESENT:
Dan Maus 2610 Fieldstone Drive, Victoria
Matt Mason 9198 Springfield Drive
APPROVAL OF AGENDA:
Kelly: Anybody have anything to add to the agenda?
Carron: Can we just get an update on the staircase schedule?
Hoffman: Absolutely.
Kelly: Put it under Reports, number 5. Anything else to be added?
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENTS:
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Hoffman: Start of the concert series June 12.
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Johnson: June 12. So June 12 and there should be a magnet on everybody’s chair, the line-up for this
year.
Scharfenberg: Red Birds baseball game on Friday night against the Chaska Cubs and we’re doing a
program with Bountiful Baskets so if you come to the game bring non-perishable items or monetary
donations for that game against our next door neighbors.
Kelly: Any extra pens? This is dying.
Hoffman: Yes, absolutely. And overall I think the series is tied.
Scharfenberg: I think so.
Hoffman: Yeah Cubs and Storm.
Kelly: Yeah the opening game was fun last night and we had a new announcer for the Red Birds last
night and he did a fantastic job.
Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Hoffman: Awesome. Way to go. I knew Denny was here so I was wondering who was out there.
Commissioner Scharfenberg filled in.
VISITOR PRESENTATIONS:
None.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES:
Carron moved, Thunberg seconded to approve the verbatim and summary
Minutes of the Park and Recreation Commission meeting dated April 22, 2014 as presented.
RECOMMENDATION CONCERNING WILLIAM’S WINGS FOUNDATION’S OFFER TO
DONATE AN ANGEL OF HOPE STATUE.
Kelly: We’ve got a proposed action. Todd do you want to talk on that?
Hoffman: I sure will. Thank you Chair Kelly, members of the commission. It’s really been a pleasure
the last 12 months and more to meet with and work with the William’s Wings Foundation and their
representatives Todd and Misty Luecke. You were provided some background at last month’s meeting
and so we have a recommendation this evening about how to move forward or how to recommend to City
Council that the City and the Foundation move forward. The proposed action that staff is recommending
is that the commission recommends that the City Council accept this donation and the installation of the
Angel of Hope statue and all the related improvements from the William’s Wings Foundation. The statue
will be placed in the city owned green space located along Santa Vera Drive, west of Kerber Boulevard.
So to get your bearings on where that site is, it’s a newly acquired piece of park property just west of the
Chanhassen Community Garden out here on Kerber Boulevard. So if you go to the community garden on
Kerber. You hear just to the west and how the City acquired that property is there’s a townhouse
development there and that green space was a part of their requirement for green space as a part of their
development but the association let it go tax forfeit and it came back to the City as a tax forfeited property
so we accepted the ownership of that to insure that it would stay in open space into perpetuity. So it
really provided an attractive location for this particular so I think the timing was good on that, in that
event. With the exception of mowing the sidewalk, mowing and the sidewalk snow removal, the statue
and the grounds and related improvements and the associated events shall be operated, funded, and
maintained by the Foundation. The William’s Wings Foundation and/or it’s designee into perpetuity. In
some cases they create a foundation specifically for the Angel of Hope in this case. It could be that type
of approach or the William’s Wings Foundation could take on that responsibility. So that, I won’t go into
the background. Both Todd Luecke and I are here to answer any questions or hear any comments of the
commission. Again staff’s recommendation is that you recommend the City Council accepts this gracious
donation to the community of Chanhassen and that we let the Angel of Hope project move forward.
Kelly: So any questions for Todd or Todd?
Ryan: Just for logistics, what is the parking like over there with the, if you have events, would the
parking be where the community garden is or is it off the street?
Hoffman: It’s pretty good access to on street parking there so there is quite a bit. The fact that the site is
oblong in nature, it has parking on all three sides.
Ryan: Okay.
Kelly: Any other questions?
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Scharfenberg: Is this, I don’t know if this was addressed the last time but is this lit in the evening or not
lit?
Hoffman: Proposed to be. I’m not sure if it’d be lit, again that’s a design element that would have to be
finalized and approved but the desire is to light the statue. There is street lighting in the area.
Scharfenberg: Okay.
Kelly: Any other questions? Any motions?
Carron: I’ll make the motion. That the Park and Rec Commission recommends that the City Council
accept this donation as stated in the proposed action and verbatim of what Todd Hoffman just went
through.
Kelly: Is there a second?
Ryan: Second.
Kelly: There’s a motion with the proposed action of the park and rec wording and a second.
Carron moved, Ryan seconded that the Park and Recreation Commission recommends that the
City Council accept the donation and installation of an Angel of Hope Statue and all related
improvement from the William’s Wings Foundation. The statute will be placed on city-owned
green space located along Santa Vera Drive, west of Kerber Boulevard. With the exception of
mowing and sidewalk snow removal the statue, grounds, related improvements and associated
events shall be operated, funded and maintained by the William’s Wings Foundation and/or their
designee in perpetuity. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 7 to 0.
RECOMMENDATION CONCERNING PROPOSED DONATION OF LAKE ANN PARK FIELD
DUG OUT IMPROVEMENTS, CHANHASSEN ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION BASEBALL/
SOFTBALL.
Dan Maus: I don’t have enough copies to go around so if you guys could share a little bit. My name is
Dan Maus. I’m here on behalf of the CAA Baseball and Softball associations. I was in here last summer
asking you guys if you would include in your next CIP planning money for dugouts over at Lake Ann
Fields 4, 5 and 6, as well as Chan Rec Center. And we’ve come back and we’ve got even a better
proposal for you. CAA Baseball and Softball would like to donate $10,000 to put the dugouts, covered
dugouts onto Field 5 over at Lake Ann. It’s the one that we need the most and we’ve got two bids for
those bids coming and both those bids coming in around $10,000. And so CAA would actually
coordinate those efforts and pay for and to have the dugouts, covered dugouts installed on that field
similar to the ones that are on Fields 1, 2 and 3 right now. And then in addition to that we would still like
you guys to continue in your CIP planning to include dugouts for Fields 4 and 6 at Lake Ann and over at
Chan Rec as well as we discussed last summer. And again the reasoning for it, just for those of you that
don’t remember, and I know I don’t have enough copies coming around, really to enhance players safety,
both from a heat and sun perspective when we host our tournaments here in the summer, as well as that’s
our most dangerous field for fly balls coming from Field 4. Foul balls coming from Field 4 up there so
this is the one we need them the most on. For those of you not aware we’ve got, it looks like four
tournaments that baseball and softball are going to be, actually five. Four different weekends that we’re
going to be hosting tournaments over there again this summer. We’ve got one coming up in a week and a
half where baseball I think has roughly 32 teams. May even be more than that playing over there on both
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Lake Ann and Chan Rec. And then week of, I think it’s the 11 and 12 of July we’ll be hosting both a
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
baseball state tournament and a fastpitch softball state tournament and then a softball state tournament the
weekend after that and then co-hosting with Eden Prairie a nationals tournament the last weekend in July
so we’ll be busy over there. I’m not sure that we get these dugouts in before those tournaments in July
but we’ll see what happens.
Hoffman: And they all have a copy of this.
Dan Maus: Okay, very good.
Hoffman: Yeah, they all have a copy.
Kelly: I was going to say, when would you expect the dugouts to go in if they got approved?
Dan Maus: I’m not sure. We will go back and accept from one of those bidders and talk to them about
timing. We didn’t want to jump the gun and go ahead and start planning before the City Council had
approved us.
Kelly: Right, and so when is the next City Council meeting?
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Hoffman: June 9.
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Kelly: June 9, okay. Other questions?
Scharfenberg: Dan the proposals that you have from the two, you said you’ve got two bids?
Dan Maus: Right. Correct.
Scharfenberg: Are those from local?
Dan Maus: You know I’m assuming they are. I personally wasn’t involved in the bid process so I can’t
answer that question.
Scharfenberg: And have those been shared with staff?
Dan Maus: Has Ted, I don’t know if Ted or Todd have shared any of that information. But we can
certainly do that.
Kelly: Other questions?
Scharfenberg: In terms of the proposal for CIP for 2015, those two dugouts at 4 and 6 then is what, so at
a cost of $20,000 potentially with the same company.
Dan Maus: Correct. Yep. Yep, and those obviously would be our first priority and then move onto Chan
Rec Center following that.
Scharfenberg: Okay. And 6 fields at Chan Rec, is that right?
Dan Maus: Well there are 6 there. Obviously we need to prioritize those as well. I’m guessing starting
with Fields 1, 2 and 3.
Scharfenberg: Right.
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Dan Maus: But we’ll need to come back as far as what our priorities are.
Scharfenberg: Okay.
Kelly: Any other questions? Any motions?
Scharfenberg: I would move to accept the donation and installation of the chain link dugouts at Lake Ann
Field number 5 by the CAA and the Softball Board.
Kelly: Is there a second?
Echternacht: I’ll second.
Kelly: We have a motion to accept the CAA’s offer at Lake Ann Field number 5 for $10,000 donation
and a second. All those in favor. Oh sorry.
Hoffman: Just a clarification that it’s a recommendation to ask the City Council to accept which will
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happen on June 9.
Kelly: Right, exactly. Yep. We realize that.
Hoffman: Okay.
Ryan: Before we vote could I just clarify. So without having the plans in place, how do we, we’re voting
to have them look at the plans or we’re asking them to move forward with that. I guess without plans
how do we move? Without the bids finalized, like the installer, without them being finalized. I know you
have two bids right, for $10,000.
Dan Maus: Correct.
Ryan: We don’t have final numbers and we don’t have plans. How are we voting that so many
unknowns to move this forward.
Dan Maus: Yeah, the plans are to duplicate the dugouts on Fields 1, 2 and 3 so the only thing that we
don’t have from a plan perspective is when we would do the installation.
Ryan: And so they’re, but so they’re the same as the other ones.
Dan Maus: Yes.
Ryan: That we’re familiar with.
Dan Maus: Yes, correct.
Ryan: And what if the bids, have they committed to you.
Dan Maus: Yes.
Ryan: That they’re going to be under $10,000.
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Dan Maus: It’s $10,000, yes.
Ryan: Okay. Okay. Thank you.
Dan Maus: You’re welcome.
Kelly: Moving forward with the motion and the second.
Scharfenberg moved, Echternacht seconded that the Park and Recreation Commission
recommends that the City Council accept the donation and installation of chain-link dugouts on
Lake Ann Park Field #5 from the Chanhassen Athletic Association (CAA) Baseball and Softball
Board of Directors. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously with a vote of 7 to 0.
RECOMMENDATION CONCERNING PROPOSED BANDIMERE COMMUNITY PARK
PRELIMINARY SITE PLAN.
Kelly: Todd would you like to speak on it?
Hoffman: I will. I’ll re-introduce Rich Koechlein. He’s with WSB. He’ll be coming up a little bit later
to go through in detail what the different concept plans are. A little background. Bandimere, 32 acres of
property. First acquired in 1988 so the planning for this park goes back a good amount of time within our
community. 9 years later after the original acquisition another park referendum was approved authorizing
initial construction of the park and so the initial construction was everything that you see here in existing
conditions so the baseball/softball fields. The three soccer fields. The original land acquisition, the
northern border was right across this fence line. This was the existing Bandimere Heights Park and then
the final acquisition at that time was some park dedication from the Lundgren development to the north in
the Springfield. So when this was assembled in the first park construction go around there was 3 different
sets of property in play that were combined to develop the first Bandimere Community Park. At that time
there was this similar type of process. Neighborhood meetings. Community meetings. Park board
meetings to say what should go in the park. There was a well rounded master plan including tennis,
hockey, skating, ballfields. All those things were proposed as a part of the community park back then.
However at the time an overriding desire to build the maximum number of ballfields that the site could
accommodate pushed aside the desires to include skating, hockey, tennis and any other improvements in
the original construction with the exception of the playgrounds. With the most recent acquisition of the
final pieces of open land adjacent to the park the community can realize the option or get to fill the desire
for expanding park attractions so I think for the commission, for the community, for the residents, it’s just
a great opportunity to be able to acquire these two additional properties to the north. What were known as
the Nettesheim properties. The two houses. So these two, both properties were approximately 2.5 acres
and we had courted the Nettesheim’s for quite some time and they were very interested in working with
the City to make that development of the acquisition and expansion of the park a reality. But then the
economy kind of got in the way when it was so red hot for a while. Their first offer was $1.2 million to
the City for those two properties. With the decline in the market our final acquisition was $640,000 for
those two properties so it just, just about half of what the original asking price was so, and they were
happy with that at that time. So that was a benefit. If the properties would have sold at the peak of the
market the City, the community would not be in this position of talking about this expansion of the park.
The current master plan and process intend to establish the blueprint for the final improvements to the
park. Once that blueprint or final master plan is established and approved by the City Council,
discussions centered on establishing a phase construction timeline and how the budgeting will take place
can proceed. We’ll talk a little bit tonight. When Rich gets to the kind of the final master plan that you
had worked on at the open house. Since that time the pipeline, Magellan Pipeline representatives have
been back in contact with us. They want to raise that pipeline if we fill it. So the pipeline is right across
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
this region of the new expansion. If we fill it to this extent they want to raise that pipeline and they want
to charge us $400,000 to do that so we don’t think that’s a good investment of those dollars and so we’ll
present, Rich will present to you tonight, it actually, the pipeline lays in a nice spot in the park where you
can actually create then a dip or a low spot in that parkland. It modifies the plan slightly but we’ll go
through that at the time. Staff’s representation to you is that we think it’s a better investment to take that
$400,000 and build the first park improvements. Not spend it on raising the pipeline and modify the
grading plan on the site so. Right now we’re in additional conversation with Magellan to see how much
they will allow us to put so we can modify the grading plan so in one area will they allow us to put a foot.
In another area will they allow us to put 2 feet or 3 feet but they wanted to raise this to about 4 or 5 feet
below the finished if we put the extent of the soil that we originally proposed in there. So we’re, staff’s
not interested in making a recommendation to the commission that you invest those kind of dollars. We
would rather modify the plan so we’ll talk about that when we get to that point. We’ll have time for
questions and then we, we’d like to see a recommendation come out of the commission tonight for the
City Council but we will wait until we get those final answers, and if you’re not comfortable with that
modified plan we can wait until we get the final answers before you make your recommendation as well
so, with that I’ll let Rich walk through the plans and then we’ll answer questions.
Rich Koechlein: I’ll just go through, kind of review what we’ve talked about up to now. One of the
concepts we came up with was a splash pad concession area in the center of the park. Taking the existing,
or renovating the existing playgrounds and adding a splash pad component as well as a shelter, restroom,
and concession building. This would accommodate concessions for the ballfields as well as another use
that currently isn’t happening in Chanhassen. Another element we’ll be proposing is adding lighting on
different fields within the park. This could be phased in different elements but basically lighting soccer
field 1 as well as soccer field 2 and 3 together and then the ballfields as one unit. And then in conjunction
you’d be lighting the parking lots. This affords longer play times or more use of the fields. Then we’ll
get to the hockey rinks. So as Todd stated the gas line cuts through, I’ll just…so you can see it a little
better but cuts through the middle of the area. We were able to slope down along these areas to
accommodate the pipeline and not having to fill on top of it. We lost a couple parking spaces from the
earlier concept last month but I think we may be able to get it back with a little more finessing of the
contours and truly figuring out what Magellan can allow us. We were able to accommodate a free skating
rink. We rotated the warming house to allow for a little more space in there. We have the hockey rink
the same place we did. We’re trying to screen that from the neighbors during the winter. You know a lot
of evergreens. All these, the skating and the tennis courts would be lit on the tennis courts. They’ve
always been in this area near the new entry. And again the warming house with restrooms that would
accommodate the hockey rinks and free skating, and also the option of turning the hockey rink into a dog
park during the summer also. Currently we’re calling for the hockey rink just to be aggregate during the
summer so, because the grass never really recovers in the hockey rinks so.
Scharfenberg: And when you say aggregate, what do you mean by that?
Rich Koechlein: We call it crushed aggregate but it would just be a stone material that compresses so
you’d still have a few weeds coming up but in general you could kind of reduce the amount of weeds and
maintenance overall so.
Hoffman: You have the original overall master plan in your packet and you can actually show that. I just
want to show them the comparison. So from the original, prior to the pipeline news to now, so that’s the
change.
Rich Koechlein: So we just had a little more, the free skating came over a little closer to the parking lot
and then I had rotated the warming house since this option to give us a little more free skating room. It’s
a little more compressed in there now.
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Ryan: So will the free skate look similar to what’s here at City Center is?
Rich Koechlein: Yeah.
Scharfenberg: And what is this blue item in the picture there?
Rich Koechlein: With the parking lot we’d be required to provide some type of stormwater retention or
treatment for runoff from the parking lot.
Carron: So the elevation in that swale is basically only a 4 feet difference between proposed elevation,
okay so it’s not much. What is the Magellan setback for hard surface? 50 feet on each side?
Rich Koechlein: I think it’s 50 feet overall.
Carron: 50 feet, 25 each side.
Rich Koechlein: I’m not.
Hoffman: We built, back in the 80’s and 90’s we built a parking lot over the top of it so it depends on.
Carron: Should have kept it there.
Hoffman: Yeah. It depends on their.
Carron: Okay, so we’ve got plenty of space basically.
Hoffman: Yeah. If the pipeline had to fall somewhere it fell on a good spot based on this expansion.
Carron: Right.
Kelly: So if we change the tennis courts to another parking lot would we have to have another pond or
would that pond suffice?
Rich Koechlein: We’d probably need another pond. There is a small area here that’s kind of depressed
that kind of happened out of the Highway 101 project but I don’t think that’s suffice to, for that much
parking.
Hoffman: One of the things I think the commission should consider is, you know should if be additional
parking or should you modify that to be tennis, basketball, pickleball. Make it more of a universal type
use for that. I don’t think labeling it tennis, based on the community input that we’ve been receiving
labeling it just pure tennis courts is probably, if you want a court surface you should more likely be multi-
purpose.
Kelly: If we did put in parking there how many spots could we fit? Would you guess.
Rich Koechlein: I’d guess probably 50. You could easily get a couple rows. You’d probably want to
access it off of the southern road.
Kelly: Okay.
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Carron: Since we’re talking about parking, the proposed parking for this park and the size of the park that
we have is that, does that work? Does that fit the number of stalls versus the uses of the fields? Are we
kind of short or are we good with what you’re kind of figuring the attendance would be at any certain
point?
Hoffman: You want to show the.
Rich Koechlein: I think coming out of the open house there definitely was a need for this. That’s the
opinion we got from the residents that there was a need for as much parking as possible.
Scharfenberg: Brent the problem that you have is that no one wants to park down by the ballfield and
have to hoof it all the way over to those two other soccer fields so the more that you can get people to
park closer to those two fields that’s I think the need.
Carron: I’m thinking just off the top of my head we might have more need than the space provided. If
we’re going to keep Class 5 aggregate on the hockey rink during the summer, could that be an additional
parking spot as well? Would that be allowed?
Hoffman: You could make it an overflow, yeah. You would have to designate it and design it to do that.
Carron: I’m just thinking tournaments and you know again lighted ballfields and people coming and
people going at the same time.
Scharfenberg: Brent you do know that on that, just to the north of the splash pad there, that’s parking as
well.
Carron: Yep.
Scharfenberg: Okay.
Carron: Yep.
Hoffman: So Lake Ann, Bandimere. To meet the peak demand you would have to have many more stalls
but to meet the average demand then, that’s always the challenge of how much more. You know they
park along the road during over, when they’re over peak and at Lake Ann they park on the grass in some
areas. But in many cases like Commissioner Scharfenberg described, at Lake Ann they’ll overflow one
lot and 3 lots on the other side will be empty and so it’s a little bit of a challenge as well. In Lake Ann
with the transition of the entrance from more southerly to more north it’s exacerbating the situation that
we talk about where there’s more of the parking to the south and they just don’t get there and so, you
know you can do that through signage or through, if the splash pad did go in you just would not allow any
splash pad parking to the north. They’d all have to park in the south lot. You would just designate that as
splash pad parking and then there would be some coordination that would have to go on with the hours of
the games when peak levels are at that type of facility. You would have to start to modify programming
to meet reasonable parking. Parking accommodations.
Matt Mason: Hey, can I make a comment? I don’t know what the forum is here.
Hoffman: Sure.
Matt Mason: But I live at 9198 Springfield which is right on.
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Hoffman: You should come forward, yep.
Matt Mason: I’ve lived there for about 15 years.
Hoffman: Name and address please.
Matt Mason: Matt Mason, 9198 Springfield. I’m right here. I’m right here. Rarely have I seen parking
an issue, just so you know. I mean we have tournaments out there all the time. Every now and then I’ll
get some cars in front of my house but the parking seems to work pretty well. I don’t know how much
your splash pas is going to add to the volume of the park but we’ve had full tournaments. There’s never
people up on the grass. There’s never, it always seems to, it always seems to work so just thought I’d
add. I’ve got a few other questions but I don’t know if now is the time. I just thought I’d interject since
you were talking about parking.
Kelly: If you’ve got some questions go ahead. We can.
Matt Mason: Yeah I mean really the main reason I’m here is with me living where I showed you, you’ll
see that my house has no, let’s do this again. Right here. There’s no trees or anything right in that area
and I’m a little concerned that the lights are just going to shine right into my back porch and if there’s any
way that I could ask to have some evergreens like you’ve talked about over by the tennis courts and ice
rinks put up there on the berm, I’d really appreciate that. I mean other than that I think this is a great plan.
It’s a great park. I’m out there twice a day with my dog. It’s a wonderful area. But if we’re going to
really ramp it up, I hope we’re also going to ramp up some people to help collect because I pick up
garbage every morning. It’s no big deal. You walk around. Grab water bottles. Whatever. The disc golf
course has been great but it’s a lot of younger kids. Even though there’s trash cans they just throw stuff
everywhere so you know, a little, I think a little more supervision would be great. And then the whole
splash pad thing, I haven’t been to any of the meetings but boy that seems expensive. $1.6 mil. Do we
know the usage there because you guys know Lake Riley is right here. Right, I mean and Lake Riley
there’s never anybody at that beach. It’s empty so just for a, I mean I’m sure you guys have done your
due diligence. Just do we know that it’s going to be used for what we’re investing?
Scharfenberg: And I think Matt to answer your question, it was just, when we had kind of as a meeting
kind of a, if we could build it and could do something like that, you know because we’ve had
conversations with the public about some sort of water feature in the city. You know people would like a
pool and we know we’re not going to probably ever do a pool.
Matt Mason: Yeah.
Scharfenberg: And so this was kind of something well if we could do that, is that something that
potentially and this park was kind of, could suit that feature if we could do it. It’s not something
potentially that would ever come but.
Matt Mason: That was the only head scratcher I had Steve. I mean you and I know each other.
Everything else makes perfect sense. We all knew the lighting was coming in. I mean I don’t know how
much usage it’s going to get. Those fields are empty quite a bit right now but I’m sure we’re planning
growth and all of that going forward so, but really my only request for the group here is if I could get
some consideration for some trees I’d be a happy clam. And anything I can do to help, let me know so
thank you for your time.
Scharfenberg: Thank you Matt.
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Kelly: Thanks Matt.
Hoffman: Numbers? Dollars?
Rich Koechlein: Oh.
Hoffman: Should we talk about that?
Rich Koechlein: Roughly I’ll go through the different elements and these are, they can be broken up even
further but lighting the soccer fields in the north, Soccer Field 2 and 3 is about $500,000. Lighting this
field is about $300,000. Lighting the ballfields. The three ballfields is about $600,000 and the more you
combine the lighting the more it comes down. The more you isolate, just doing one field the more it goes
up so lighting the parking, the lower, the southern parking lot is about $65,000. Lighting the middle, the
central parking lot is about $50,000. Then the splash pad element, which was mentioned is about $1.65
million. The hockey rink and warming house which is also lit. I don’t know if I mentioned that earlier, is
about $860,000 with the parking lot. The tennis courts is about $265,000.
Scharfenberg: Rich with the splash pad, shelter, concession, playground renovation, is that all
incorporated in the $1.65?
Rich Koechlein: Yes.
Scharfenberg: Is there anyway to break that out?
Rich Koechlein: Yes. I mean we could, it could definitely be phased. I don’t have the.
Scharfenberg: And I’m not talking phased. I’m just talking about what are the dollars? Do we know the
dollars to do a shelter so that we can.
Hoffman: Get the breakout.
Scharfenberg: Get the breakout of what those figures are.
Rich Koechlein: I’m not sure I brought it with me. The concession building is about, we’re estimating
about $500,000. The splash pad is roughly $450,000. You know and then we get into surveying, staking,
earthwork, utilities which is another you know $25,000 in those. We threw in some money because of the
grade kind of drops away there and anticipating the need, potential need for a retaining wall and you
know we put in $8,500 for that and then railings to go on top of that at $17,000. Paving in general is
about $60,000. Playground’s about $75,000. Rubber surfacing for the playground is $71,000. You know
and then we new in benches, bike racks, trash cans, picnic tables and then landscaping. So we tried to
cover it all. Asphalt paths too is about $18,000 so.
Scharfenberg: And on the playground are we talking about adding, keeping what we have there currently
or taking that out?
Rich Koechlein: Taking it out.
Scharfenberg: Okay.
Rich Koechlein: It’s life span is kind of coming to an end I think is the general consensus.
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Scharfenberg: Okay.
Hoffman: At least at the time you got around to building this kind of, the first one that was put in would
start to be at it’s upper age limit. Rich can you talk about, what other communities are you working in
this year with splash pads? A few right?
Rich Koechlein: Yeah, down in Rosemount we’re doing a splash pad and that’s where we got the
numbers from. A similar sized splash pad in their, I think it’s their central park in Rosemount. I think we
did one, was it Coon Rapids or I’m not sure if we’ve done one.
Hoffman: Columbia Heights or Coon Rapids. What’s going on is municipal pools are on their way out
largely and people are either replacing them or doing a, building a splash pad as a replacement. What this
final expansion is going to do for Bandimere Park is, it’s going to create somewhat of a Lake Ann Park in
our southern reaches for that type of a community so a water feature there really would be the last
element to add to that kind of a park facility. And it would be something that I think the young families
that are here and continue to move here would really appreciate as far as a recreation amenity and
attraction in the summer. Certainly something we don’t have.
Kelly: Going back to the lights, you said if you, now with these prices are they, is that considering doing
the lights independent of the other ones?
Rich Koechlein: Yes so potentially.
Kelly: Because you said if you do them together, like if we’re doing the lighted soccer field for $305,000
and at the same time we decide to do the parking lot just south of it, that’s $65,000. What kind of
savings are we looking at?
Rich Koechlein: I’d guess 10 to 15 percent. It’s hard to really judge because just bringing in the power
for everything is about $40,000 so do you spread it out over your estimate or do you put it in one thing. I
tried to spread it out so potentially you know if you just lit the soccer field it could be a little more but
generally they would all come down I would guess 10 to 15 percent the more you lump together.
Carron: And these figures are all in today’s dollars, correct?
Rich Koechlein: Yes.
Carron: What has been the increase? Do you have the figure on that going forward each year or what the
increase of this proposed estimate could be?
Rich Koechlein: I don’t necessarily. I would guess, I mean.
Carron: Like a 5% or?
Rich Koechlein: Yeah this year has been tricky because construction’s been really good and especially
with the lighting we’ve found that it’s increased substantially in the last year. The other elements, just
because construction’s been strong this year, we’re finding an increase of 10 plus percent but that’s.
Carron: It’s because there’s.
Rich Koechlein: You know the last couple years have been really thin.
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Hoffman: Good.
Rich Koechlein: Yeah. Well.
Carron: A thin market.
Hoffman: Good for the owner.
Rich Koechlein: Yeah. So this year’s increased a lot and potentially next year it could increase a lot too
the way things are going but it should level off here. I don’t anticipate you’re going to be doing all this
next year so, we tried to you know be conservative and make sure you aren’t you know, trying to do
something for $300,000 that really costs $500,000.
Carron: Sure, okay. Thanks.
Echternacht: I would think that as soon as we either did the Soccer Field #1 or we put the splash pad or
the hockey rink we would have to have parking lot lights included at the same time…bring the public
back to either the ballfields or to Soccer Field 1…park on both areas. If you have your hockey rink you
want those lights on and if you use the splash pad you’d probably want them on so you’d probably be
looking at doing that early on.
Hoffman: And I’d really encourage the commission though, these numbers are going to age no matter
what and so I’d really encourage you to look at an overall master plan. What kind of facilities do you
want to see? Do you want to recommend to the council and then see if they agree with that plan and then
start your budgeting for individual phased components after that. To Mr. Mason’s point we certainly
wouldn’t be lighting Soccer Fields 2 and 3 first. We’d light 1 and wait til that growth occurs, if it does
occur in the community until you go onto 2 and 3. The other fields are different in their use and so again
staff would recommend you light all three at one time and bring on parking lot lighting. Without parking
lot lighting, once your sport lights go off it gets awfully dark for people to exit the park so we experienced
it at Lake Ann and we just don’t recommend we do it again here at Bandimere.
Ryan: So for the purpose of tonight’s discussion and recommendation, do we need to be specific when
we talk about this plan, instead of calling them tennis courts, should we say multi-sport court?
Hoffman: Absolutely.
Ryan: And change those, okay.
Hoffman: Absolutely. Your intent should be as clear as it can be moving forward to the council.
Ryan: And when we talk soccer fields, do we need to say that they can also be, lines can be put in for
lacrosse with that sport growing. Do we need too be specific that they can be multi-sport fields? Or are
soccer fields just be called soccer fields or should they be called soccer and lacrosse.
Hoffman: It’s kind of a generic term. I don’t know Jerry if you want to comment on that.
Ruegemer: You know I mean they’re the appropriate size. I think size wise they can be lined really any
way we can so I don’t if it makes that much difference.
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Ryan: I think it was brought up in our meeting with council that they wanted to see if they would maybe
be available for lacrosse as well with that sport growing so I don’t know if we want to somehow reference
that as well.
Kelly: So Todd why are we trying to put together a master plan when we kind of haven’t between us
figured it out and I think you know it falls in well within our CIP discussion. I mean it’s a perfect time to
be kind of putting a master plan. I kind of feel like if we pass a, some kind of proposal to the City
Council now that we’re kind of saying well, we’re just kind of throwing darts on a board to see what will
stick and see what they throw back at us and they kind of threw at us at our meeting that they want more
specifics on why we’re doing what and what makes sense money wise versus something else so I
personally have trouble just sending a recommendation saying here’s our master plan because I’m not
sure I’m in agreement with it. Whether I am or not, I’m not sure the commission is and they may be but I
think we need to hash out more. You know does this make sense and what’s it going to take to spend a
million 6 on a splash pad if that ever happens and what’s the City Council response and I kind of know
that already. You know just from discussions that they’ve asked the questions they’ve asked so I’m leery
at throwing a big plan where they’re going to say, no you know. We throw a big plan with everything in
them, they’re going well this doesn’t make sense. Weren’t they paying attention in our joint meeting?
We wanted more specifics. We want to know the cost advantage to doing one thing versus the other and
we want a feeling from the community on where we’re going from here and I don’t think we’re ready to
give that to the City Council is my personal feeling. And again weigh in, maybe you guys are and then
that’s fine.
Thunberg: Just to follow, is there a need to have a recommendation now versus later this summer or
something as we’re doing different discussions for our CIP?
Hoffman: Timing’s not specific. I don’t foresee that you’ll see a Phase I development until 2015 at the
earliest, if that happens and it could be beyond that. So you’ve had a public meeting which had some
attendance but limited attendance. I think what the community is telling, the response that we’ve been
seeing is they like the basic concept. They like the existing park. They like the proposed improvements.
You know does the commission have confidence in the proposed improvements? You’re the group that
sat down in the work session and said you know let’s add a splash pad. Let’s add lights. Let’s add
parking lots and we did hear some things from the joint meeting from the City Council and if the
commission wants to continue to take a look at more specific dollar amounts. More phasing plans before
you make that proposal. Staff doesn’t feel it’s, we’re obligated to send a full package at this time to the
City Council. In community park planning it’s standard practice to develop a concept plan and then a
master plan and there’s often times no dollars attached to that. It’s just this is a concept plan. Do we like
it? Is this what our vision is and let’s approve a master plan and then let’s move forward after that.
Master plans often change. You know in the time that you would approve and the council would approve
this, things might modify even more. Right now we’re in a modification on a tennis court to take it from
tennis to adding basketball to probably adding pickleball. They’ll be playing a different sport out there,
you know perhaps one in the morning and one in the afternoon so there’s those kind of things. Again I
think the dollar amounts, we could spend a lot of time talking about them. Those dollars are going to age
on the table and so what we talk about is not going to be valid information 3 or 5 years from now. So I
don’t recommend you beat yourself up over that. Sometimes being bold is a good move and sometimes
City Council’s will surprise you. I’ve seen recommendations that this body was feeling were overly
exuberate and when the got to the City Council they said it wasn’t enough. Let’s you know, let’s add this.
Let’s do that so this is really about visioning and about master planning and so those are my thoughts on
the overall process. What I’ve been hearing from the community is that they’ve been waiting for hockey.
You know tennis was just kind of a standard feature of most community parks that kids could bike to in
the summer. A family could play. If that’s changed, and I think modifying that is a good thing and
beyond that you’re really finishing out the rest of the park to make it a you know quote, unquote “modern
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park” with concessions, running water. It was back in the first development that the sewer pipe and the
water pipe’s already here so it’s sitting underneath where the concession stand is proposed so that master
plan or that concept has been on the table for you know just about 20 years so those kind of thoughts that
this would be, and that concession stand in that centralized area is looking to service all the soccer fields
and all the. So you walk to this concession stand and you get your popcorn and your soda and you walk
back to your softball game or you come down from the soccer fields to the north and you come here.
Utilize the bathroom. You bring your kids to the restroom. You grab some concessions and you head
back. And then there’s the center wheel and this is proposed to receive, it’s shown there. So an octagon
shelter as a part of the shelter initiative. So the City Council has approved the neighborhood shelter
initiative. This is programmed to receive this shelter as a part of that and so when you’re out here
participating in a game and there’s a minor rainout or a weather event, spectators can gather underneath
there. Spectators and players until that passes and then go back out and finish their game so you have that
use handled there. Doesn’t make sense to put bathrooms and concessions here and bathroom and
concessions here so you really pick the central location so this not only serves the splash pad but during
off season times it will serve the field uses for bathrooms and concessions. And we would approach the
athletic associations much like we do at Lake Ann. So they would be servicing that concession building.
They would be taking the money to you know buy backstops and utilize those types of revenues into the
future. And then, so that’s the kind of proposal. The warming house has to go up here. Again you have
modern restrooms there and so you bring that on board with the hockey rink. So I really encourage you
to, communities expect that park boards will move things forward and say okay, this is the plan. This is
what we think people want. This is what we think we’re here representing to do. If it’s not then tonight I
would say okay, let’s throw out some ideas on what we think we should be doing instead of what’s on this
board and Rick and I will go back and re-draw those things. From my viewpoint I think I’m hearing good
things from the community about what you’re proposing.
Kelly: So Todd let’s say a splash pad never happens or let’s say it’s 10 years out, is that still the best
place to put a concession stand where we’re proposing to put it? Does staff feel that that’s still the best
spot?
Hoffman: Yes.
Kelly: Okay.
Scharfenberg: Matt did you have something you wanted to say?
Matt Mason: Yeah, if I could just add one thing. You know again just thinking as I’m looking through
this. You know the whole splash pad/concession thing is just still a head scratcher for me. Again living
on the park, right. It is really rare for all 6 of those fields to be going at the same time. You’ll have
soccer practice on a couple and then you’ll have baseball practice and occasionally you’ll have games that
are out there at the same time. I don’t think there’s going to be enough people there to take advantage of
a concession stand. I just haven’t seen it in the 15 years I’ve lived on that park, unless you guys are
thinking something’s radically changing but to compare this to Lake Ann. How many fields does Lake
Ann have?
Scharfenberg: 6.
Matt Mason: Okay. It’s got a huge picnic pavilion. It’s got a lake, which I like to use. It’s got a lot of
walking paths. It’s got a beach. It’s got a volleyball court. There’s an awful lot of stuff that goes on at
Lake Ann that maybe justifies a concession stand. You know this park here is just, I mean the only thing
that you’re adding that might add people, and I’m still not convinced is the splash pad. I still, and I’m
going to ask the City Council this. Do we know usage expectations for that amount of outlay? Because
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
again you’ve got a beautiful lake with public access 5 minutes from this park to get to and the beach is
never busy. It’s never busy. So just more food for thought for you guys. And I still want my trees so.
Scharfenberg: And I think ultimately when you look at it, you know and the answer to Matt’s question, I
think that this would be a destination ultimately that people would drive to it for the splash pad. The
people that live over in Matt’s neighborhood in Springfield, they’re not going to come there because
they’ve got a pool. You know unless they just send their kids over there to play, so you’re not going to
get a lot of, you’re not going to be pulling the Springfield neighborhood necessarily. You would get
some but it’s not like hey, let’s go over there because they’ve got a water feature and we don’t. They’ve
got that pool. People would drive to the splash pad because they’ve got little kids and they want to come.
I think it would become a destination with I think when you build, you know the stuff, the playground
equipment and I think Matt you’d probably agree with this. The playground equipment out there is
outdated and it’s kind of, there isn’t, you’ve got that whole climbing thing and that’s about it. There
aren’t swings and some other.
Matt Mason: Yeah there’s not a lot for them to do.
Scharfenberg: Right, there’s not a lot for them to do and if you build something that incorporates that,
that would be great and Matt you know what? I kind of agree with you to some extent that I’m not
convinced that a concession stand is the best thing for that site. What I would like to see, or what I think
would do better at that facility is more of a multi use shelter. Picnic shelter that people could rent. You
know something similar to Lake Susan. I think you’d really have to expand the bathrooms to almost be
like a changing facility with a splash pad so that could be a significant facility if you’ve got bathrooms
and kind of a changing area and you’ve got a big shelter for people to rent. You know kind of like at
Lake Riley they’ve got that big, huge circular shelter right next to the beach and people so, that’s kind of
what I envisioned with that. I’m not convinced again concession building. I’m not necessarily convinced
putting in a warming house is the best cost either where we but, you know you’d potentially rent
something like we do here at City Center and do something like that out there.
Stolar: And going off of that, for the concession aspect if we were to change that, I know Minnetonka
like at the high school they have the Legacy softball fields and they do like a golf cart that has
concessions and stuff. I don’t know the pricing about that but that could be also an alternative to the just
building concession stand. Just more mobile.
Scharfenberg: And I guess to speak to Cole’s question about whether we feel comfortable as a
commission recommending something going forward. I think Todd spoke to it tonight. We don’t
necessarily have to do that. We still are waiting for what Magellan. We have to wait for them, and can
you guys just touch on that again? What is it that we have to wait? That we get clearance from Magellan
as to what we want to do?
Hoffman: We’ve asked them to check the current, existing elevation of the pipeline and then to tell us at
each point along that pipeline in our expansion area, how much soil will they allow us to put at each
location. So will they allow us to raise it 3 feet here and 1 feet here along that pipeline? Once we know
that information then we can finalize the grading plan and then finalize the concept plan. What we need
from Magellan is an easement or right of entry to go on top of their pipeline in that easement. An
encroachment agreement.
Scharfenberg: And again Todd the master plan itself like you had I think said is, can change. It can
change. This is something we say, we’re saying to the council these are the things that we think are
important to put into Bandimere that we would like to see happen there and they just, they can say yeah or
nay send it back to us?
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Hoffman: Correct.
Scharfenberg: Or they can say no, I think that this is totally out of line. You guys need to revamp it or
come up with a different idea.
Hoffman: And it’s also your charge and the council’s charge to produce a master plan for the public to
comment on so when those, then those phasing proposals would come around. People come to your
public hearings. They say we read in the newspaper you’re going to build a splash pad. This is what we
think. Just like Mr. Mason said, he would come to those meetings and comment on it so it’s a public
communication to let people know what your thoughts are. And that started at your work session and
then went to our public meeting and if we want to continue to modify that before we send it to council
that’s your discretion.
Echternacht: Would we break down a recommendation as far as a Phase 1, 2, and 3 or we said this is
what we envision it to be and then let them come back and…but at that time based upon the dollars we
would break it apart?
Hoffman: Again that’s up to your discretion. I would recommend you do an overall master plan. This is
what the master plan is and then take it from there as a part of your budgeting process on an annual basis.
Scharfenberg: So what we could do Rick as part of that, is if once the master plan, if we agree to it then
in the CIP you would every year you would say okay, let’s do lights and we’re going to put those in these
years or, and I think it would be, we would have to as a commission prioritize what we thought would go
in there. What we would think. Okay first we would like to do this and kind of put that in our CIP and
that can change. I mean for years we’ve had different warming houses that have come and gone in CIP’s
that you know it was in one year and then finally people just said, we’re just not going to do that. There’s
not a need. We don’t see a need for that. I mean a commission 10 years from now could say yeah, we’re
not going to do a warming house out there. We’ll just continue on with what we’ve done if the hockey
rink was built.
Echternacht: I just didn’t know if council wanted some guidance as far as what, at this point as far as
some phasing or if they just want the overall plan and then throw it back to us to break it down. When we
do our annual.
Scharfenberg: Well clearly they expressed you know at our meeting that we had with them, clearly they
expressed that you know the overall, what is it? 3 point, how much was it? The cost.
Carron: More than that. 4.
Thunberg: I think it was 4 point.
Scharfenberg: Yeah, 4 okay. So you know clearly they’re saying you guys need to come to us. We’re
not going to light all the ballfields at once. You need to adopt some sort of plan and tell us, you know
have a reason why kind of you’re doing that and phase that in over the years. That’s going to happen. I
think if we just, if we, and I’m not saying we have to do it tonight but at least come up with a master plan
sometime over the next 2 to 3 sessions and say this is what we think the plan should be and let them look
at it and knowing that things are going to get phased in over the years.
Echternacht: I just knew that they were, they were hitting us for some questions as far as you know why
should lights go here rather than over at Lake Susan and so on, so I didn’t know if we just threw, we’re
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
going to have lights period. If that was going to be good enough or if they wanted more detail at this
time.
Scharfenberg: Well I think at some point when we get to our CIP and we’re putting those numbers in the
CIP, I think we’re going to have to have that conversation with them that we’re doing this and here’s the
reason why we’re doing this now. But yeah I think we’re going to have to come up. I don’t know that we
have to necessarily do that at this time.
Kelly: What I kind of envisioned, oh go ahead.
Carron: Oh just, I’m trying to break it down to make it simple because there’s a lot of information on
here and the way I’m looking at it is, the fields that are in place, they’re in place. They’re going to get lit
someplace down the line is the way I’m thinking so that, that’s out of my mind. I’m looking at the north
end. The tennis court area. That area there I’m asking myself and I’m asking the rest of the commission
as well, is that our ultimate use for that land? Do we agree with that tennis court area? My personal
feeling is yeah, it makes perfect sense for that area and then the parking lot is the parking lot. The hockey
rink and the warming house, do those two things make sense for that area as far as the master plan?
Warming house, yeah or nay. And ultimately basically and then the splash pad but the land is already
there. It’s already built minus the retaining wall that might be needed but ultimately that’s just all stuff
that can happen later down the line so I guess to sum things up. I’m looking at just the tennis court and
the hockey rink and then the lights. The lights are a given. If this is our overall plan do we agree with
those things in the north that are on this plan now to send to the council? And then the splash pad is
obviously, we can do more talking about that but it makes sense to me that the tennis court makes sense.
Slash pickleball/basketball. We can, I think we can leave it open as far as the title for now and then when
we get to the CIP and the dollars to look at, we can see how things work or get more of a magnifying
glass on that area when we put it in the CIP. And then does this area for a hockey rink/dog park make
sense and we can leave the warming house out for the overall master plan and then we as a commission or
the next commission down the line can take a look at that 10 years from now when we can afford it. I
guess I’m just trying to simplify it here and try to strum up some ideas if this is actually what we want or
do we want to see something different?
Kelly: Well I would think we’d try to put together some kind of timeline. You know we’re going to light
soccer field 1 at some point. Then as the growth in soccer, if it demands that we down the road light
soccer fields 2 and 3, then it will happen. If the demand’s not there for whatever reason, then we’ll never
get to lighting soccer fields 2 and 3 so I think you kind of phase it in over time and say, you know if
needed here’s where we’re going with it as opposed to saying to the City Council, here’s everything we’re
going to do and they’re going to go well, from some of the questions we had last time I don’t think they’d
buy it to be honest with you and I might be wrong. And I’m not sure that, I’d like to know more if
they’re not going to be just tennis courts. If they’re going to be multi-purpose courts what are the costs
going to be. What would the cost be if we decided that that parking is necessary for that area and maybe
it’s not. I’d also like to know that with, you know Steve’s idea that we just have a shelter in that area like
Lake Susan, you know what would that cost instead of putting everything else in there so we can kind of
look at the difference in costs and see what makes sense because it’s, and again it’s good to have a master
plan and send it to them but I just don’t want them to send it back and say well, we need a time line. We
need to know why you’re lighting. You know which one are you going to light first and why and that’s
kind of what I got out of our session with the City Council. Maybe you guys got something different out
of it.
Carron: Well if we just take the dollars out of the big picture, does that help?
Kelly: Say that again.
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Carron: Just take the master plan. Have no money associated whatsoever. Is that what we dream of of a
park? What we want Bandimere to look at. I mean maybe that’s a way of looking at it because it could
be 3, 4, or 5 years down the road. Those prices are going to increase by 15-20 percent. I don’t know.
10%. Something like that.
Kelly: Right.
Carron: That’s going to depend upon budget what the CIP, or what we have in our budget going forward.
What we need to spend on other areas outside of Bandimere. I’m getting hung up on the dollars too. I
mean they’re big dollars but ultimately.
Kelly: Okay. No, I agree with you. I like your idea actually.
Carron: Do we like the layout?
Scharfenberg: Right and isn’t that what we’re, that’s conceivably that’s what we have to say is, this is
what we want this park to be. If we don’t like this concept then we tell Rich and Todd and say we want to
come back with something different so you know I think we’re all in agreement. I think what Brent says,
take the dollars out of it. What we have here. What do we like? What do we don’t like? I mean I’m
okay with the warming house, keeping it there because you’re going to need some sort of facility. It just
may never be built. I would like to do something with that, with some sort of a shelter. Nice big shelter
there at, because I think if you make that a destination park with some sort of feature, if it’s a splash pad
or it’s something else, people will be there and want to rent that as a facility and you’ve got the people
that are already with the ballfields and stuff are going to use that so.
Hoffman: And that is somewhat represented already. Splash pad, shelter, concessions so and that intent,
we just need to know that this half is going to be reservable. It’s going to be covered and reservable.
Tennis court, you change that to multi-use courts. Multi-use courts. It’s not going to change the dollar
amount. Not going to change the dollar amount there. And then really the, one of the biggest hang up’s I
hear is that splash pad and is that something that, and that came out of your work session so we started at
the commission and is it going to end at the commission or are you going to keep supporting it. That’s
really up to you.
Thunberg: You know as a resident I’m real fearful of a comment well let’s not disclose costs because I
don’t think I would have worried about the splash pad either except when I saw and went whoa, $1.6
million for all of this. Are we going to get the usage out of that? I mean I’d rather see you pave all those
paths and make them nice asphalt so people can rollerblade. Don’t have that in Chanhassen either. I
think you’ve got disclose the cost to City Council and I want to be on record as bringing that up so thank
you.
Hoffman: And again the splash pad’s $450,000. It’s not the $1.6 million.
Scharfenberg: I mean another thing to think about, and I’ll just throw this out again is, you know we
already have one skating, skate park okay but it’s in the centrally located. Do you throw another? You
know do you keep that as that multi-facility use instead of a tennis court that you ultimately put
something else out there for people to use in the southern area? Because you’ve got a lot of kids in Matt’s
neighborhood and Lake Susan and stuff that would potentially come and ride to that area to do skate park.
Now we already have a skate park so I’m not advocating for that but just those are the things I think as a
council, or as a commission we need to think about in terms of putting this together. I like this plan. I
think it’s a good idea. I think it has that water feature that we don’t have and so.
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Kelly: I don’t know, I bike by the splash pad in Eden Prairie on a regular basis on the trail I use and it’s
very rarely busy. Once in a great while or maybe on a real hot day but there’s, there’s not a lot of cars
there and it’s just, and you can drive right up to the splash pad there and park right next to it. And so it’s
easy access and I don’t see it getting used very often when I bike by.
Carron: Well I’m for you know tabling this too until the next month and think about it for another 4
weeks and then bring in some more ideas and you know, ask the staff to answer some more questions
once we think about it if we have two different views right now. Like Todd said I don’t think we’re on a
huge timeline here. It’s just 2015 CIP will be the first thing that would happen if we decide to put it
there. If you’re up for that or if you want to keep discussing. I can go either way.
Kelly: Well I think we’re going to get into a little bit of CIP discussion but we have to have CIP probably
be wrapped up by July. Is that when we typically wrap it up Todd?
Hoffman: Correct.
Kelly: Correct. So we have two more sessions and I think to intertwine this with the CIP discussion
might help us come together and where we think we’re going on this so if everybody’s agreeable on
tabling this until the next session, I’m agreeable.
Ryan: The only, the only issue I have with tabling it is with the CIP we’re talking about dollars and not
that we wouldn’t disclose dollars to the council. I think they’re very aware of the dollars in this plan. I
think what we need to do tonight is utilize that vision. Is this what we see for the development of the
park? Are the main features or the concepts what we want to do going forward as a commission? And
then when the council sees this they will, the dollars will still be associated with this and they understand
that dollars change over the years and we’re not doing it all at once but they like the idea and if they have
questions then that gives us some guidance but to keep waiting to re-discuss this plan, unless there’s
something in particular that jumps off the page that nobody wants to do, you know then say what that is
and then let’s have the discussion but I don’t want to keep kicking the can down the road because the CIP
discussion is a huge discussion in and of itself because of the dollars involved and how we budget. So I’d
rather say you know this is our vision. This is what we want to do generally speaking and then you know
get feedback from council and move forward.
Kelly: Steve and Rick and I were at the City Council work session when the park and rec department
made a presentation on this. So the City Council’s seen all this and they’ve seen dollars and their
questions are how do we prioritize and why and so, the part I like about tabling it, putting in the CIP is it
gives us a chance to prioritize and send it to the City Council because that’s kind of what they told us to
do.
Carron: Well we have to…planning before we know what to prioritize. That’s the other issue.
Thunberg: Yeah I agree with what Elise was saying. I feel like we need to have the vision first and if we
intertwine this with the CIP discussion we’re going to get more hung up on dollars and start trying to
think of do we put these dollars in 2015? 2016? And then all of a sudden we’re piecemealing it and we
don’t know what part of a bigger picture it is so, I get that it seems like it should be a close second
conversation to start prioritizing and say, you know to have that at the ready and if the council asks
questions right after this plan, to say well we think we do lighting first because that’s a need right now
and we’d want to see how that increases the usage of the parks. And then we would do the north side
because the hockey rink and the multi-purpose court and then the splash pad and the center court would
be last or something. Just see like okay now we’re truly finalizing this as a destination. If we have that
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
prioritization as a quick second, then I think we can start talking CIP but it feels like we need a vision first
to say yeah, without dollars. We know they’re big. Whether we take a little of this off or add something
else, but having that plan first I think is, we need to have that locked down before we can really move
forward into the details.
Echternacht: I’m just seeing this vision, we’ve already presented them with a vision. Like Cole said, we
were there for their planning and they’ve already seen this and it sounds to me like if we just are going
back and giving them basically the same thing, maybe you know we’re changing the tennis court’s name
to multi-purpose whatever unless we really, unless we really take, you know say we’re taking the splash
pad out or we’re going to do this or that. We’re just throwing back to them what we’ve already given
them.
Ryan: But that was just a work session of conversation and it was a quick highlight of what we’ve done
and what we plan on doing. This, in my mind is a formality that we have to go through so here council is
what our vision is. Now they formally get back to Todd or us and say, we don’t like any of this. Okay
that’s your vision. Now come up with the steps. Now prioritize. That was an informal conversation of
highlighting what we as a commission have done and plan on doing. This is a recommendation that we
are putting forward. This is our vision of the development of a park and I think those are two different
approaches, or conversations or approaches.
Echternacht: Well I guess I would agree with that other than hearing their comments that they wanted
more insight into how we saw this developing and we’re not giving that to them now but I guess we give
them our vision and then have them come back again and say well we wanted to know what you want in
what order.
Hoffman: Again they are two different distinct processes so master planning and CIP budgeting. And
it’s just a guess on how much, what their reaction is going to be. We’re going to take this, whenever we
get a recommendation out of the City Council we’re going to take it to their work session. We’re going to
prepare a power point. We’re going to go through this, these proposed improvements and the dollar
amounts that we currently have the current estimates in some detail. City Council will say, we like that
plan. We want to modify it. They are the ultimate deciders on what goes down on paper as a master plan
for the expansion of Bandimere Community Park. You make that recommendation. You make a
recommendation on a CIP. They either agree with it. Modify it. Change it. Delete it. You’ve seen them
do all of that to your recommendations over the years and they’ll continue to do that. That’s their, that’s
their role in our community so. At the work session it was talked about as one of the items but it’s not a
part of this process that we have mapped out as a part of the master planning process. That wasn’t a stop
in the master planning process. That work session.
Scharfenberg: And there was, there was a discussion I think to some extent the council you know, to
Rick and Cole’s point, you know they were looking for some prioritization of how, that how this would
all kind of come together and again I don’t know that we need to do that with a master plan knowing that
they were kind of I think as we have been hung up on the numbers and talking about the numbers but
again we’re just saying this is what we envision this park to be and I think we either can do it now or we
can do it next month.
Echternacht: Well I guess I would say we, let’s do it now and get it over with and we know what, our job
will be the next month then to work on.
Carron: Well for the record my thought is that, do exactly kind of what we’ve been talking about. The
tennis courts, we can make that multi-use asphalt surface area. Whatever. If that’s for pickleball, tennis
courts, basketball. The warming house for the hockey rink, I agree with Steve. I don’t think it
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
necessarily needs to be on here. It could be part of the master plan. It might be needed someplace down
the line. And then the concession stand is kind of iffy for me but ultimately the master plan as I look at
this whole thing, this is pretty much what I like. I don’t foresee any kind of other kind of a field or use or
what. Another different kind of amenity that I’d want to see in place of something else that’s on this plan.
Thunberg: Yeah I’d also agree. As an overall plan I like this. I think having the tennis courts be called a
multi-purpose sport court. That was one of the concerns was if it’s just tennis. Personally I like the,
keeping the splash pad in there. We can continue to look into that. I think there’s been a lot of comments
on the city not having a pool versus other cities having that and if this is kind of a trend as we’re seeing in
other growing cities, I think it’s something we should keep in there and continue to look into. The only
thing, I want the multi-purpose sport court there. I think it’s, with everything else it provides. It’s well
rounded on the different activities. It’d just be if there’s truly a concern on parking as this gets bigger, if
that’s our only spot. Do we need to look at that a little further? I would vote to still have the courts there
but if the parking’s a concern that seems to be our only spot where we could put it there so if there’s
anybody else’s thoughts on usage or if it’s not truly a concern as long as we have signage saying there is
ample parking in that southern lot, then maybe we’re fine with that.
Echternacht: Down the line if that multi-purpose court is one of the later things and we find in phase 1
and phase 2 that parking is just terrible, can we go in and put parking in at that point then?
Rich Koechlein: Absolutely. It would probably cost a little less but, then the tennis courts but you know
you’d still want to light it. The only thing is, it’s really focused in the north where you’re getting one
soccer field and some hockey as a direct use. It’s not really helping the parking over here that much on
the two soccer fields or the ballfields really. But it, absolutely it’s an option I guess.
Scharfenberg: I mean what about, and I’ll just throw this out there. What about the possibility of making
the hockey rink/warming house area a parking lot? Put the lot there and really move the hockey and the
stuff over to the tennis courts and I just kind of throw that out there.
Hoffman: It’s not large enough.
Scharfenberg: It’s not large enough?
Ruegemer: It’s not long enough.
Scharfenberg: Alright.
Kelly: You know just from my discussions with the tennis players in town who can get on any court at
any time. We’re not hard up for, we have more tennis courts than we need and so if it’s just going to be
tennis courts, personally I’m against it. We’ve got a pickleball group starting up but I think we’re going
to be having discussions about pickleball over at the Rec Center and I don’t know where that group is on
their request for $40,000 but that will come up in our discussions. And actually from what I’ve seen
pickleball’s becoming very popular in a lot of placed and so do we make a multi, do we make it a multi
court system or do we do pickleball because tennis is already you know, I don’t see tennis coming back
ever like it was in the 70’s when you had to wait an hour anywhere there was to play tennis. I haven’t
seen that since and that’s been decades so you know I guess I have a problem with putting something in
that’s not going to be used and that’s why you know I’d like to look at what would be other options. And
you might be right. The parking there doesn’t really help the soccer fields that much. Maybe it does.
Maybe it doesn’t but it might be an odd spot to add more parking so I think we need to have more
discussions on that.
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Echternacht: Throw something else out. The basketball courts that are existing there, are they used very
much do you know? Down at the bottom of the hill.
Hoffman: Just a single court.
Echternacht: Single.
Hoffman: …on the basketball court, it gets used.
Echternacht: That would, I’m not sure if that would be a good place for a tennis court or the pickleball
court or something.
Hoffman: Not down…
Echternacht: Down the hill would be too difficult for people to get down there. Okay.
Hoffman: And it’s just been a, we’re not going to, when the community park was built we vacated the
neighborhood park. Brought those things up to the community park and just a promise back to the
neighborhood that we’re not going to drive those community uses. I think we were lucky to get part of
the disc golf into that, back into that park. That the neighbors accommodated that. And now you have
two holes of the disc golf go through that existing Bandimere Heights Park.
Echternacht: Okay.
Matt Mason: You know if I could just add one other observation. If you don’t have a big draw, I know
you guys are saying a destination park but what do you envision Bandimere? Is it a ballfield park or is it
a destination like we’re thinking the splash zone area because if you don’t have the splash zone there, you
don’t have any additional features that are drawing in masses. I mean the skating isn’t happening at the
same time baseball and soccer is. Right? You’ve got no problem there. Tennis, even if it’s full is 8
people max, right? And again 15 years on the park, there haven’t been parking issues. There just haven’t
and if you add lights all you’re doing is adding another shift right so you’re not increasing the volume at
any specific time. So I guess just for your consideration, I don’t think you have a parking problem unless
you add a feature like that concession or splash and if it does take off, okay now you’ve got a problem but
I don’t think it will from your comment but just another viewpoint.
Kelly: Other comments or does somebody want to put a motion together?
Carron: Well Mr. Chair you’re the one who’s talking about the tennis courts and what, do you have any
other alternate thoughts about? Are you just talking about pickleball court? You got me a little confused
here. Or are you, are you just talking about parking?
Kelly: No you know it’s, parking was one of the thoughts but parking might, you know you look at
where it’s located and it might not make any sense to do parking there and from what we hear parking
might not be an issue anyway. You know we might not have to do anything there. See what crops up.
What becomes popular down the road. You know it’s too much money to spend just on tennis courts that
aren’t going to be used in my opinion.
Carron: So for that area, in that size of land for use would you, we’ve been talking about multi-use sport
court or something like that. Is that an option?
Kelly: Let’s see if pickleball takes off. Maybe just put in pickleball courts.
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Carron: Okay so you’d like to name it just pickleball courts?
Kelly: And maybe we see a resurgence in tennis and decide at some point that it’s tennis and pickleball’s
but we haven’t had a resurgence in tennis in 40 some years.
Ryan: So couldn’t we just call it a sport court and then it eventually, I mean it could be.
Kelly: Sport court TBD?
Ryan: Yeah.
Carron: Hard surface sport court.
Ryan: Right. You put in 4 square. Maybe 4 square…
Echternacht: Hey, put shuffleboard.
Hoffman: And again looking at geography and placement, a fenced court type of facility, that’s a good
place. It’s surrounded by roadways so you don’t want to put a high occupancy use there that has a lot of
kids so, but if you take your, you know if you show up there as a teenager or a family…you’ve got your 4
or 5 stalls. 6-7 car stall parking lot there. That space lends itself just by happenstance to the size of a
tennis court and it’s a good use for that particular location. What it finally becomes if a question.
Basketball, the full court basketball at Lake Susan is popular and at Pioneer Pass it was kind of modified
down size version of basketball. And the court up at the new park, Riley Ridge is being…It gets to that
teenage group again that play basketball, tennis at South Lotus Lake Park. You have both basketball and
tennis. I don’t know the perfect split… There is still tennis interest, I don’t know Jerry if you want to
comment on what’s going on with some of your groups but there are still tennis players in the town of
Chanhassen. When I first arrived there was a tennis court in every park master plan in our city. There
would have been 24 tennis courts over our community. One of the things, one of the early park board
members, when the park board did it they said you know we’re just not going to do that. We’re just not
going to, it’s not that popular anymore. We’re going to put it in every community park and let people
drive to central locations for that kind of a use and so that’s where that kind of plan was changed.
Ruegemer: Yeah Todd is correct. We do have you know groups, mainly senior groups on an annual
basis that do reserve courts at City Center Park, South Lotus, and sometimes at Lake Susan but for the
most part that’s it for the senior groups. We are still doing tennis you know activities and lessons through
Sky Hawks at their Chan Rec Center as well so. Cole is right to a certain degree, tennis isn’t as popular
as it was but there is still tennis programs and activities happening in our community annually.
Hoffman: Are they passionate?
Ruegemer: They are passionate.
Hoffman: They like nice courts. And clean bathrooms.
Ruegemer: And vine free.
Echternacht: Well I guess, if no one else wants to I’d make a motion that we present to the City Council
the plans as are other than changing the name of the tennis courts to a sport court to be determined, like
someone said or to sport court and otherwise present it as it is.
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Kelly: There’s a motion I believe to go along with the staff’s proposed motion. Is that right Rick?
Echternacht: Yes.
Kelly: That would be right here.
Echternacht: Yes.
Kelly: Yes, okay. There’s a proposed motion to go with the wording that we have on G-3. First page. Is
there a second?
Thunberg: Second.
Kelly: There’s a motion and a second to go with the proposed motion on the first page of G-3. All those
in favor say aye.
Scharfenberg: Before we move forward can I?
Kelly: Sure.
Scharfenberg: I’d like to amend the motion to take out concession stand. Just have shelter/restrooms.
Kelly: Okay. I think we need to vote down this motion because it’s been proposed and seconded and
then insert. So all in favor of the proposed motion of this say aye.
Echternacht moved, Thunberg seconded that the Park and Recreation Commission recommends
that the City Council approve the proposed Bandimere Community Park master site plan dated
May 12, 2014 as amended to change the name of tennis courts to sport courts; and directs the Park
and Recreation Commission to begin developing a phased construction timeline and Capital
Improvement Program (CIP) for the project,. All voted against the motion and the motion failed 0
to 7.
Kelly: Steve.
Scharfenberg: I would propose a motion to adopt the master plan with the changes to a tennis court and
taking out concession stand but leaving it as a shelter. Shelter/restroom.
Ryan: Why do you want to take out? You don’t think concessions will be used?
Scharfenberg: I just don’t see that complex being used for tournaments like you would have. I know
you’ve got soccer there but I don’t know how many tournaments they run out at, if they have any
tournaments. Jerry, do they have tournaments out at Bandimere?
Ruegemer: Baseball tournaments?
Scharfenberg: No, no. I’m sorry. Soccer tournaments. Do they run soccer tournaments at Bandimere?
Ruegemer: Typically there’s one to two soccer tournaments. Typically district’s in July at Bandimere.
25
Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Scharfenberg: And they’re not going to, you know if there’s going to be a softball or baseball
tournament, they’re going to run it out of Lake Ann. They may have games out there. They may say
okay, we’re going to send one or two games out to that facility. I just don’t see that there’s going to be an
overwhelming need for a concession stand. I think it’s going to be used more if you keep it a feature of
the splash pad, you’re going to need a significant kind of restroom, locker room kind of changing area
with a shelter as part of that. That’s what I envision that.
Carron: Just to piggyback Steve. We got 3 different ballfields out there too.
Scharfenberg: Right. Right, they’re not all softball and two different baseball fields.
Carron: Right. So if you’re talking a tournament you’re right. There’d probably only be one field being
used.
Scharfenberg: Right.
Kelly: So Steve if I’m understanding you correctly, go to the overall master plan. We’re pulling out the
splash pad, shelter, concession and playground renovation at this time and the tennis courts?
Scharfenberg: No I’m not pulling out.
Echternacht: No.
Scharfenberg: Splash pad. I’m leaving that in.
Kelly: Okay.
Scharfenberg: I’m just modifying shelter/concession to just be shelter/restrooms.
Kelly: Okay. So what we’d have there is splash pad/shelter/restrooms slash.
Scharfenberg: Playground.
Kelly: Playground. Okay. There’s a motion up there that’s a little different than the proposed motion
that will take out the concession stand basically and leave everything else the same, is that correct Steve?
Scharfenberg: Yes.
Kelly: Is there a?
Ryan: Can I get a clarification? Todd was it brought to you by the CAA or any group that said we’d
really like a concession stand out at Bandimere or was this just part of the, how did we end up with a
concession stand? Was it something that somebody had asked for at some point?
Hoffman: Again the concept that a concession stand building would go there goes back to the original
plan. We ran sewer and water there. There was two discussions at that time. Concessions would either
go in the center of the baseball/softball fields or at this more centrally located area so there is differences
on how Lake Ann and Bandimere is used. If you have a splash pad without concessions then people are,
you’re just going to have to, people are going to have to bring their own refreshments to that facility and
that’s certainly an option. If you want concessions then you have that there for the splash pad facility and
you also have the option to have it during when games are operating so, the concept was always to have it
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
there. Doesn’t have to go there. Lake Ann there was never a concession stand at the ballfields and then
the athletic association worked very hard to modify that building, which was just an open shelter at the
time to add a concession stand. And then the final lynch pin for that was the $30,000 sewer line that the
City had to install to get a sink so to accommodate a concession stand it cost the City a $30,000 sewer
line so they can sell you know $2 hotdogs but that was the, that was the overriding consensus at that time
that they wanted concessions at Lake Ann for the baseball activities and the tournaments. They serve
concessions there every night that games are on. Not just during tournaments. But the sewer line, the
water line, can be utilized for whatever you put there. Concessions or not.
Kelly: Back to the proposed motion. It’s the same motion without the concession stand. Is there a
second?
Echternacht: I’ll second.
Kelly: There is a proposal and a second to use the wording excluding the concession stand.
Scharfenberg moved, Echternacht seconded that the Park and Recreation Commission
recommends that the City Council approve the proposed Bandimere Community Park master site
plan dated May 12, 2014 as amended to change the name of tennis courts to sport courts and
deleting concession stand and replacing with shelter/restrooms; and directs the Park and
Recreation Commission to begin developing a phased construction timeline and Capital
Improvement Program (CIP) for the project. All voted in favor, except for Chair Kelly who
opposed, and the motion carried with a vote of 6 to 1.
ESTABLISH 2015-2019 PARK AND TRAIL ACQUISITION AND DEVELOPMENT CAPITAL
IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM (CIP) TOUR DATE.
Kelly: Moving right along, Todd I think we got an email from you that gave us a date.
th
Hoffman: Tuesday, June 10.
th
Kelly: June 10.
th
Hoffman: Does that work, Tuesday, June 10?
Kelly: Oh somebody hasn’t seen the email yet.
Hoffman: Oh it’s in the memo. So it’s on item G-4.
Matt Mason: Thank you everybody.
Hoffman: Good night. Thank you.
Kelly: Thanks Matt.
Hoffman: So typically we take a separate night. You can do this before your June regular meeting if you
want to take a little shorter tour. Not as much time. That’s at your discretion. And the sites you want to
see. Bandimere might be a good start.
th
Scharfenberg: And the meeting’s on the 24 correct?
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Hoffman: Yes.
thth
Scharfenberg: I probably couldn’t do it on the 24. So the 10 works for me.
th
Kelly: I think I already put it in my calendar. Let me double check. What time on the 10? I plugged in
5:30 not knowing what time.
Hoffman: It’s at your decision.
th
Kelly: Okay. So what’s a good time for everybody to meet on Tuesday the 10?
Carron: Anytime after 6:00 for me.
Kelly: Okay.
Scharfenberg: How about a dinner at Bandimere?
Hoffman: Sure. Want to meet there? And then we can have vans available. Meet at 6:00 and we’ll
probably get you home by 8:30.
Kelly: Okay. Does 6:00 work? You said after 6:00.
Carron: Yeah 6:00, that’s what I meant.
Kelly: Okay. So plan on 6:00 til what you’d say, about 8:30 Todd?
Hoffman: Yep. Any specific locations. We will develop an agenda and we’ll make sure to include
anything you want to see for sure in our system.
Ryan: Can we take a look at Lake Ann? Just all the development that they’re requesting.
Carron: Bluff Creek would be, the trail down to the LRT.
Hoffman: Okay. Pioneer Pass?
Kelly: Yes.
Hoffman: Okay.
Kelly: Mayor Luke, we can have cocktails at Luke’s.
Thunberg: Sure.
Carron: Make that the last stop.
Thunberg: I’ll put something on ice.
Carron: We don’t need ice.
Kelly: So are we set? Any questions?
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Hoffman: Thank you.
Kelly: Okay, we’re set. Alright.
RECREATION PROGRAM REPORTS:
LAKE ANN PARK SUMMER SCHEDULE.
Kelly: Reports. Jerry, you never thought we’d get to you tonight did you?
Ruegemer: Moving along. Well I’ll be brief. Lake Ann. The concession stand opened up last weekend
on Saturday morning. Really a fun kind of weekend to kind of kick off. We had a pretty decent weekend
for boat rentals and I think that was a pretty decent revenue. Ben did all the accounting of the revenue on
that today so that was good. We’ll be open up weekends until probably next week. We have school
groups starting to come out now for kind of their end of the year parties for that so concessions will be
th
open daily prior to the beach opening up on June 7. So I’m in conversations with Minnetonka and we’re
kind of trying to fine tune kind of the operation down there as well. Same hours this year. We’re in our
second year of our contract so it will be 11:00, actually noon to 6:00 for the hours of that as well.
Concession manager has worked there last year as well so he’s, Nick is responsible for all the schedules
and ordering the food and kind of managing the day to day operations of that. 2013 was our, one of our
record years for revenue and boat rentals. Food sales and boat rentals down there so we had a great year
last year for that. I really look to have another banner year for boat rentals. It seemed like really the last
couple three years the boat rentals have really taken off out there and with the addition of the
paddleboards, that was really a thing that we really worked for some time. We have an agreement with
Twin City Paddleboard which is a local Chanhassen company with that to provide the paddleboards for
Lake Ann so if anybody, the commissioners haven’t been down there yet we have 4 paddleboards down
there. We have kind of a smaller one for the kids. Kind of an entry level and then we have 3 adult size
paddleboards and really all the paddleboards are really valued between $1,200 to $1,500 per board that
the City did not have to lay out any money for so the agreement that we had with Twin City Paddleboard
is they supplied all the boards. All the paddles. They’re going to be doing all the maintenance for that as
needed. If a rudder or a fin breaks off, Jeff will come down and kind of take care of it and basically in
turn of that then we, as a city kind of operate that through our rental system and our staff then coordinates
all the rentals for that and then we split revenue 70% for the City and 30% for Twin City Paddleboard so
it really seemed like a win/win for us. We are providing the insurance for anything that may happen.
Damage or otherwise with the boards but League of Minnesota Cities and our attorney’s office seemed
completely comfortable with the arrangement so we’re going and they started off last week. The water’s
a little cold if you fall off it right now but really, really looking forward to having a great season with
those. Park maintenance crews through the wintertime with Adam’s leadership made a securable rack for
those paddleboards so it’s really located in really a non-sunny area for the most part to kind of be
protected from those boards. That was really one Jeff’s kind of requirements that we try to you know
kind of make sure they’re out of the direct sunlight and Adam and crew did a wonderful job on creating
this racking system that is completely lockable. Very easy to get in and out for our staff and it’s really I
think the people that have been out there to look at it, Jeff and Three Rivers Park District have been
extremely impressed with the design so kudos to Adam and staff. They did a fantastic job. Mitch and I
were just admiring it again this afternoon so it’s really a great system and really, really looking forward to
having the paddleboards out there for the summer. Summertime. You know picnics have been really
busy. They’ve been crazy up to this point with graduation parties and weddings and just really starting to
really getting kicking off right now. School groups are going to start this week and next week with that.
I’m trying to kind of hand over the reigns a little bit to Ben and we’ll introduce Ben here in a second with
that. He’s been sitting patiently here so we’ll give him the floor here in a second. And so we really
anticipate really a high number of picnics again with revenues for that. Looking forward again for the
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lifeguards to be starting. Ben Bartell from the Minnetonka Aquatics has moved on. Dan Berve now, he’s
the Minnetonka High School coach and also the head coach for the Minnetonka Swimming Club has
taken over for Ben and so Dan’s been around a while. He still knows what’s going on so I’ve met with
Dan a couple different times and talked on the phone so very confident that you know all the safety and
the training, anything that Ben kind of brought in the last couple years will continue on and we’ll have
another great season with contractual services through Minnetonka so.
Kelly: Jerry did we sign a 2 or 3 year contract with them last year?
Ruegemer: I believe that was a 2 year contract.
Kelly: 2 years, okay.
Ruegemer: So we’ll take a look at that again this coming winter.
Scharfenberg: Jerry just to follow up on the lifeguard issue and this is kind of just, I know with the
number of drownings that they had with pools there was something I think in the legislature. I think
talking about pools and lifeguards. Was that discussed with public beaches as part of that, do you know
or did you guys hear anything about that when that was being discussed at the legislature?
Ruegemer: It was my understanding that it was passed for any lifeguard that has to be certified in CPR
and I don’t know if that AED as well but again you know Minnetonka goes through all that operation and
training so it’s not staff’s concern at this point.
Scharfenberg: But there wasn’t any discussion about hours or how long you had to have people on or
anything like that? They’re leaving that to the discretion of the cities I take it.
Ruegemer: Yeah I thought the bill specifically addressed the training aspect of that. I don’t know all the
complete language of the bill. We certainly can investigate that.
Scharfenberg: I was just curious.
Ruegemer: Other than that, that’s it for my report.
Kelly: Well I think it’s great that you’ve added those paddleboards. Just out of curiosity, what are you,
what are we renting them for?
Ruegemer: They’re going for $16 an hour and that is you know just kind of, staff looked around at
different kind of market rates and that seemed to be kind of in the comfort zone of that. They’re our most
expensive hourly rate out there but staff feels comfortable in that price.
Kelly: Great, thank you Jerry. Any other questions for Jerry?
Ryan: Can they go anywhere on the lake or do you have?
Ruegemer: Anywhere on the lake. We provide life jackets for the.
Ryan: Do you require that they wear life jackets?
Ruegemer: We do not require that, we just have to give them a life jacket.
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Ryan: Oh I see. Okay.
Ruegemer: And you have to be 18 years old or older to rent.
Kelly: I assume these paddleboards have a place to strap on the life jackets on the board.
Ruegemer: They do not.
Kelly: They don’t, okay. Because I know a lot of them do now. Okay, thank you.
2014 SUMMER PROGRAMS REPORT.
Kelly: Mitch, it looks like you’ve got just a couple things going on.
Johnson: Yeah, thank you Chair Kelly and good evening commissioners. You’ll see in the report there,
summer’s here. 2014 programs are underway. I kind of broke down the list for the preschool programs,
the youth programs and family programs. Kind of went through the Connection which I provided
everybody at your seat. That’s our summer program guide that went out the end of March so maybe it’s
been a little while since you visited it. So feel free to take a look. Take it with you or we can use them to
recycle them for other future events but going back to the report you’ll see, I’ll kind of just hit a few of
them here and at the end if you have any questions or specific questions regarding programs I’d be happy
to answer them. So kind of going down the list for the preschool, we’ve contracted with Abrakadoodle
Art Camps again. They’re going to do all of our art programming camps. We’re doing some at the Rec
Center for all different ages, as well as we’re doing an outdoor one out at Lake Ann Park called Art in the
Park. Really going to do some nature themed crafts for that one. Dance for Fun. Summer’s kind of their
slow period before they ramp up again in the fall but they’re still going to be offering some camps out at
the Rec Center. Jodi’s kind of coordinating those. We have the Minnesota Twins Baseball and Softball
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Camp is coming back again this year. It’s part of the 4 of July celebration. It’s going to be out at the
high school at the Storms/Red Bird Stadium so always very well attended and very popular in the
community so we’re excited to have that one back. Moving on in preschool programs, the Rec Center
Sports program is a big, summer’s a big time for them. We do a lot of t-ball and soccer leagues out there
for the youth, ages 3 to 6 is kind of the target audience so each t-ball session I think gets over 100 kids so
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there’s quite a few of those sessions out there. Moving onto the youth programs, the 3 Lair Summer
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Skateboard Series is coming back again this year as well as part of the 4 of July celebration. In the past I
think it started at 5:00 p.m. but this year we moved the start time back to like 7:00-7:30. 7:30 start time
which will kind of add some more to the atmosphere I think. There’s a lot more people up at the
celebration. We’ll get the lights turned on so kind of we have a contest under the lights so I think that
will add a lot to that atmosphere as well. Moving onto the back, a new program we’re starting this year is
called the Adrenaline Trips. So what we’re trying to do is market more towards the older youth, younger
teen. Kind of doing some maybe more fun, outgoing different kind of activities. Maybe they do in their
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daily lives. We’re going to take a tour to the indoor skate park at 3 Lair in Golden Valley. It’s one of
the largest in the metro area and I think a lot of our local skaters use that and for the kids that aren’t old
enough for drivers licenses I think it will be a good alternative for them to try that. Also through the
MRPA Park and Rec Days, through the Minnesota Twins we’re going to do a Minnesota Twins game for
the youth. Also Vertical Endeavors Rock Climbing trip in Minneapolis, and then Vision Wake Park
which is a water sports complex for wake boarding and water skiing so they’ve all been very popular.
Still taking registrations for those, as well as all of our summer programs. Another thing we’re bringing
back this year for the youth is the Chanhassen’s teen volunteer program. Last year we had 22 volunteers.
Right now we’re going through the interview and application process. We had like 35 applications,
which is very, I’m very excited about that and I think we’re up, based on our volunteers last year we’re up
almost 250 volunteer hours that that program is giving back to the community through our rec programs
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as well as service projects throughout the community. So excited to continue that one in our second year.
Also a new program through the Eden Prairie Chapter of the Let’s Go Fishing, we’re going to do some
youth fishing kind of camps out at Riley Lake. We’re going to use the access on the Eden Prairie side of
the line but a majority of Lake Riley is in Chanhassen so we still have that tie there so we’re real excited
to kind of partner with them and develop that relationship. We also have a new sailing camp this year for
youth out at Lake Ann so that should be another alternative kind of camp that we can offer. I know the
high school’s starting their sailing club there so kind of been in communication with some members of
that club as well to see what we can do to kind of build that up. Still have the Skyhawks and Sports
Unlimited camps that are going all summer. Everything from flag football. We have a disc golf to
lacrosse camps. Most of those are out at the Rec Center. We have some archery camps. Going into the
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family programs, obviously the 31 annual celebration this year for the 4 of July so real excited about
that. Working hard to get everything finalized. And then the KleinBank Summer Concert Series that we
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talked about earlier today. First show is on June 12. We added a 9 performance this year so every
Thursday night throughout the summer we have evening shows, as well as two youth ones as well. One
daytime so very fortunate to have KleinBank right across the street as a sponsor. Title sponsor of that
event so we’re just continuing to build that relationship as well and I think I have a pretty strong line up
as well again this year. That’s kind of the quick recap. If you have any questions I’d be happy to answer
any of them.
Kelly: Any questions for Mitch?
Ryan: Mitch I just would have, ask you to take a look. I just caught this in the newsletter. It already
went out I know but the Art in the Park because I love that idea so I was checking my calendar to see if I
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could get my kids in and it says it’s Thursday, July 26. The 26 is a Saturday.
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Johnson: Yep, it is actually Thursday, June 26. I actually just talked to my art director today. No joke
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she emailed me and she was like oh no. So yeah I did see that but thank you. Yes, Thursday, June 26 at
Lake Ann. I actually got the idea from you. We kind of a couple months ago.
Ryan: I love that.
Johnson: We were kind of talking about some ideas, you know the next big event you mentioned more
art in the parks stuff so.
Ryan: Good, thank you.
Johnson: Yeah, they made that program just for us. They’ve never done an outdoor one so I’m excited to
work with it.
Ryan: Thank you.
Kelly: Any other questions? I think the new fishing and sailing programs look very interesting and good
job on everything you’re doing. I like your ideas.
Johnson: Cool, thank you Chair.
SELF-SUPPORTING PROGRAMS: 2014 ADULT SOFTBALL.
Kelly: Jerry, I think we’re going to talk a little softball.
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
Ruegemer: We will do that Chair Kelly. I’d like to first take a moment to bring up Ben and Ben come
right up here and kind of give the commission your name and all the important information.
Ben Domjahn: Well thank you Jerry, thanks to Chair Kelly and the rest of the commission for hearing me
out tonight. My name’s Ben Domjahn. Student at St. Cloud State majoring in recreation and sports
management and fortunate enough I have the opportunity to be working under Jerry, Todd and Mitch this
summer. I’ll be working with the different recreation programs. Some summer camps to registration for
different programming. Things like that. I’m also working right now on a marketing plan for the
Summer Concert Series. Really excited about that. Contacting the bands for additional information and
kind of getting the ball rolling on that since they’re almost 2 weeks and then we start on that so I’m very
excited for that. Also working at Lake Ann concession stand. Right now I’m doing some inventory and
we helped stock it last week and get everything going for the Memorial Day opening. Other than that just
trying to get acclimated to the different things that happen at the City of Chanhassen. I have worked
under the Delano Public Works Department for 6 years and did some things with Delano Community
Education so I do have some little background in this but it’s obviously on a much larger scale up in the
City of Chanhassen so again I’m very excited to be here and thanks for having me tonight.
Kelly: Welcome to the City of Chanhassen Park and Rec Department.
Ruegemer: To the report. Thanks again. The Monday night league was actually, had grown this year
from 8 to 12 teams which is a very pleasant surprise. That doubleheader league continues to be popular.
They will be playing 28 games this year. The theme of Monday night has been rain this year. I think Ben
can help me out but I think we’ve been, we’ve had one game played, or one week played this week out of
I think 4 league nights so staff has had a historical problem with trying to figure out rainout’s at this point
but staff is confident that we’ll be able to figure that out for the teams so. We normally have one rain out
week at the tail end of the season and we already surpassed that week so we’ll get it figured out but
hopefully we will change our pattern for that and get the games in. I did try to offer one last year the
Wednesday night doubleheader league. Had a little interest in there. You know 1 to 2 teams again so we
are going to, staff is going to not offer that league anymore and look for alternative uses for that on
Wednesday nights. CAA and the youth programs certainly have utilized the fields when, at Lake Ann
when adult softball is not using the fields on 4, 5 and 6 so they just kind of came right in and staff is more
than happy to allocate that space to CAA for additional games or practices. Being on the lit fields and
that kind of stuff is kind of fun. I think that’s some of the reason for you know kind of talking about
doing the dugouts on Lake Ann number 5 as well so kind of use more of it for multi-purpose fields for
adults and kids. It seems to be working out for that as well so. Thursday night we have 14 teams for that.
We did split those into two divisions. The blue and the gold divisions. We have 6 and 8 teams for that.
They are playing out at Lake Ann and we’ve had some rainout’s as well on Thursday nights so we’ll get
that figure out as well so staff is more than likely going to take a look at playing on night other than their
league. Regular league playing nights. We can push it out on a few nights before the fall league starts
out at Lake Ann to try to make up some of those games so we’ll make every effort to get the games in or
if that doesn’t work out, if it’s not agreeable to the league managers then we might look at to do a kind of
a prorated refund at that point based on the number of games that they’ve played or not played. So that’s
kind of a quick snapshot of the softball league. Staff is very confident that, it seems like we’re kind of
holding. I think that’s where we’re going to be for the adult softball leagues from now and going into the
future kind of with those numbers. We’ll continue to offer leagues on Monday and Thursday nights and I
think that’s where we’re going to kind of settle into the future.
Kelly: Thank you Jerry.
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PIONEER PASS PARK CONSTRUCTION.
Kelly: Adam, I believe you’re up.
Beers: Thank you Chair Kelly and the rest of the commissioners. Just want to give you guys a brief
update of where we’re at with construction at Pioneer Pass. As you guys all know we started construction
there last fall under Todd and Dale’s watch. K.A. Witt was the general contractor that got the bid for the
first phase of construction and they are responsible for installation of the parking lot, basketball court and
trail system, the stormwater drainage infrastructure, grading and seeding of all the open park space, tree
plantings and proper erosion control and all of that seemed to have gone pretty successfully so I’m just
going to continue to monitor all of that stuff as we move forward with building the playground. We’ve
got a good crop of seed going right now which is promising so we’ll probably get some starter fertilizer
down in the next week or two depending on the weather just to kind of push that along. As you guys
know the spring’s been pretty tough with weather so we have been kind of up against the wall with timing
to move forward with getting concrete work done for the playground. However we did get started today.
The footings were, the sonotubes were installed. All the rebar was put in and concrete will be poured
tomorrow morning. Final inspection for that will be done I think 10:30 and our first load of rock comes
in at 7:30 so we’re going to, we’re starting to move forward quickly. We obviously are not going to make
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our May 30 deadline but we’re going to cruise as far as we can with the weather we get so. Everything
seems to be going pretty well now. Cross your fingers for good weather and that’s about it for that. I’d
like to thank Commissioner Luke Thunberg for kind of spearheading the volunteer efforts for getting this
going in the final phase. Once we get all the concrete work done, the residents are going to kind of take
over and use some sweat equity and build the playground so he kind of has taken that on to get it all
organized and like I said if you have any questions for me or, I’d be more than willing to jump in and do
what I can to help and be your direct contact or if anybody has questions I’d be glad to meet you out there
and talk some playgrounds.
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Kelly: Questions for Adam. I know we’re going to be out there what? On June 10 so we’ll check it out
then.
ththst
Hoffman: And then again sign up for those who want to help on the 19, 20 and 21 go to that site that
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Luke has. He’ll…sign up for a shift or two or three and sign up for the picnic on the 21. There’s a lot
that’s going to happen in the next 3 weeks out at that park so it’s going to be exciting.
Beers: I’m going to send out an update here tonight or tomorrow to just remind people to make a final
push to get more volunteers. We had I think last sign up as of today I looked was 47. 47 people with
some signed up for multiple shifts and if you guys are willing and able we can use the extra help on
Thursday, the first day so feel free to take a day off of work and come out and join us. I did, one of the
neighbors and this will be in my email, one of the neighbors found out through his employer that he could
take the day off and since it’s considered volunteering for a city park it does not count as vacation time.
You can take the day off and come help so I’ll be sending that message out to the residents to see if
anybody else can use that one.
Kelly: Good job Luke and thank you Adam. I think we’re scratching the commission picture aren’t we?
Hoffman: Yep.
Kelly: And then number 5. Stair case update Todd.
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Park and Recreation Commission – May 28, 2014
STAIRCASE CONSTRUCTION UPDATE.
Hoffman: Adam will give you an update. He’s been working with the contractor.
Beers: We met with him a few, probably a month ago. Month and a half ago. Hashed out some final
details on what we need to, what we’re basically is waiting for the right weather to get in there and get
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going and June 15 is our date to press on with him so.
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Hoffman: 16. Monday.
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Beers: Excuse me, 16. My apologies. So I’m going to be getting in his ear pretty quick and get going.
We, since this has kind of been put on the back burner for the last month or two, as soon as we could get
out there we put some more erosion control up and we seeded it just to kind of keep things in place so all
the work that they did before isn’t going to be messed with so hopefully everything is still as it was and
we’ll just hit the ground running.
Thunberg: You’ve got good grass growing.
Beers: Saw the green grass?
Thunberg: Yep.
Beers: Good deal. We know that works.
Carron: Good hydro-mulch.
Kelly: Thank you Adam.
Beers: Not a problem.
COMMISSION MEMBER COMMITTEE REPORTS.
None.
COMMISSION MEMBER PRESENTATIONS.
None.
ADMINISTRATIVE PACKET.
Kelly: Todd anything specific you want to point out?
Hoffman: No.
Kelly: Anybody have any questions on the administrative packet? Anybody want to put it to the
question.
Carron moved, Echternacht seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor and the motion
carried unanimously with a vote of 7 to 0. The Park and Recreation Commission meeting was
adjourned at 9:30 p.m.
Submitted by Todd Hoffman
Park and Rec Director
Prepared by Nann Opheim
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