POA Board OKs new Sierra Park

Canyon Lake voters approved $2.2 million last month to fund the development of the new Sierra Park North. With that OK, the Canyon Lake POA Board of Directors Tuesday approved the funding authorized by the Ballot Measure.

The Canyon Lake POA staff has its work cut out, though, to get the budget for the park down to what the board approved. At Tuesday’s board meeting, the board approved Capital Improvement Funding in the amount of $2,000,000 with a 10% or $200,000 contingency, for a total of $2.2 million.

The lowest bid received for the project was $2,255,700, which did not include the $325,000 needed for the Pump Track construction, which is a major component of the park. Hence, with a maximum $2.2 million to spend and the current bids totalling $2,580,700, the board is asking its staff to negotiate and value engineer the project with bidders, and bring the cost down by almost $400,000.

“The CLPOA Board, Staff and the community are excited to bring this long-awaited amenity to Canyon Lake,” General Manager Eric Kazakoff said. “We look forward to getting started on the project.”

Eric said he expects to negotiate the costs down to where they can execute a construction contract for the project sometime next month. His staff’s current goal is to present the proposed design and specification changes and a proposed construction contract to the board on July 6 within the $2.2 million framework.

If the Board approves that proposal, the Canyon Lake POA will execute a construction contract and go to work as soon as design changes are approved by the City of Canyon Lake, Eric said.

The Canyon Lake POA staff is confident, Eric said, that they will be able to find areas within the bid to save the money they need to save to bring the total cost of the project to the required $2.2 million. CLPOA Staff is now negotiating and value engineering all aspects of the project with all the consultants and bidders.

Where the staff is initially looking for places the funds can be saved is in modified grading and retaining walls, and constructing the restroom instead of purchasing the prefabricated one that was included in the bid. These things and many others in the project are currently being considered to reduce costs, Eric said.

The sitework on the project is expensive due to the extremely hilly topography, the stream that runs through the property, and various other conditions. There are a large amount of soil retention measures,  and retaining walls required to create the engineered flat areas required for the designed amenities.

The retaining walls alone cost $375,000, Eric said. Along with the retaining walls comes the cost of importing fill dirt. The high cost of trucking and fuel to bring in 9,000 yards of imported dirt is costly right now.

“The CLPOA is working with engineers to modify the grading to lower the cost of these items, and many others,” Eric said. “The restroom building specified was a prefabricated one, and bids came in around $240,000 for that item alone. The restroom can be constructed onsite for much less money.”

Ballot Measure #8, allowing the board to spend $2.2 million on the project, was written months before the election so that ballot measures could be approved by the board, printed and mailed to homeowners. The $2.2 million value used to write the ballot measure was based on engineers’ estimates provided by consultants at the time.

“The measure passed and received 956 votes,” Eric said. “The results show that the voters strongly support this new amenity.”

The request for proposals went out to bidders on April 16 and six bids were received on May 12, the day before the election. Bids received ranged from $2,255,700 to $3,123,083.

The Request for Proposals and bids did not include the pump track construction itself, because the POA already had a design and proposal from American Ramp, who also designed the highly-praised Temecula Pump Track. The POA will be contracting directly with American Ramp, to avoid additional markup on that large line item by the General Contractors.

“The current state of the economy, extremely high material and fuel prices, a busy construction market, inflation and several required and expensive design elements are all part of why the bids landed where they did,” Eric said. “The bids ended up being higher than estimated months ago.”