Joliet rec center late and over budget, but it’s coming

JOLIET – The East Side Recreation Center will cost $2 million more than originally expected, and construction probably should have started a year ago, but it will open next year, Joliet Park District Executive Director Tom Carstens told a group of interested residents Thursday.

“Groundbreaking should have been a year ago,” Carstens said in his opening comments at a community meeting to present the final plans for the project to be built in Nowell Park.

Groundbreaking is coming in August, he said, and the grand opening for the 30,667-square-foot facility is conservatively scheduled for November 2018.

Carstens’ admissions of delays at the start of the meeting appeared to clear the air since the audience had questions but no criticism of the park district’s handling of the project. They even offered several of compliments.

“I want to thank the park district for doing what you said you would do,” said J.D. Ross, who said the park officials kept a promise to spread resources from the $19.5 million referendum approved in 2014 across both the East and West sides of town.

By Ross’s calculations, the park district is spending $12.5 million on the East Side.

The East Side Recreation Center was one of the largest projects, and its projected cost of $7.5 million exceeds the original estimate of $5.5 million.

“This building was under-budgeted,” Carstens said. “The budget for this building is now $7.5 million to make sure we have all the amenities and programs we told you we’d have.”

Carstens, hired a year ago, came into the project midstream and had said work still needed to be done to ensure the facility was not built in a floodplain and would not face future problems because of road projects planned for the vicinity.

The facility will have a 15,000-square-foot field house with a rubberized gym floor that can be used for two basketball courts, two volleyball courts and a soccer field. The field house will have a walking track and two suspended batting cages that can be lowered for baseball practice.

The facility also will contain a 3,000-square-foot fitness center downsized from the original plan, a preschool room and two multipurpose rooms.

Resident Cortez Broadnax asked Carstens what the park district will do to contain costs.

“I have noted whatever project we have in Joliet, it invariably goes over the original amount of money allocated to construct it,” Broadnax said.

“We better come in under budget,” Carstens said, adding that there is “a sizable contingency” built into the cost estimate.

The problem of who will get the work to build the complex also was brought up.

“I would like to see as many local contractors and minority contractors on this project as possible,” said Willis Sellers, a Joliet contractor who has been critical of the level of minority participation in other public projects in town.