November 21, 2024
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Update Yorkville parks or build new amenities?

Park Board weighs how best to spend expected windfall

By Lucas Robinson
Tim Evans, director for the city's parks and recreation department, talks during a Jan. 28 Yorkville City Council meeting at City Hall, 800 Game Farm Road in Yorkville.

FILE PHOTO: Tim Evans, director for the city's parks and recreation department, talks during a Jan. 28, 2019 Yorkville City Council meeting at City Hall, 800 Game Farm Road in Yorkville.

Thanks to a recent incentive agreement between Yorkville and the developers of Grande Reserve subdivision, the city’s parks department is set to receive a near million dollar injection of cash as the subdivision is completed.

The Park Board discussed the windfall during a meeting Thursday, Aug. 5, describing it as “the last real chunk of change” recreation areas could receive from local development. Under the new agreement, parks and recreation will get about $959,000, most of which will come over the next year.

Officials expect up to $600,000 is needed to finish parks and trails in Grande Reserve. That leaves hundreds of thousands left over. With Parks and Rec’s remaining land cash and capital accounts, up to $700,000 could be used for other projects in the city.

“We’re looking for direction of where to go from the board on what we want to look at,” Yorkville’s Parks and Rec Director Tim Evans said Thursday.

Potential options include installing new playgrounds, purchasing land for a future athletic park, grants and replacing current parks, per a city memo.

County Board Member Amy Cesich, who sits on the park board, said residents have wanted a pickle ball court and dog park. Yet she noted the windfall “doesn’t go very far.”

“If you’re looking at what we already have with our 28 parks, it would be nice to see what you guys can see that needs to be replaced,” Cesich said.

Evans also cautioned against putting the funds toward new projects.

“It’s great to add a pickle ball court,” he said. “It’s just that becomes another thing we have to maintain. We have responsibilities to these other ones that we’ve gone years past the useful lifespan, and we did not replace it because we didn’t have the money.”

The city is already behind on updating its existing parks. While Price and Fox Hill parks are being repaired now, they were due for a replacement back in 2018.