CARLSBADCARLSBAD — Pickleball courts, a dog park and other amenities proposed for two Carlsbad community parks will be delayed a few months after construction bids came in about $2 million over budget, city officials said.
The Carlsbad City Council rejected the bids Tuesday. City officials now plan to spend several weeks refining the proposal, before going out to bid again with more details about the work that needs to be done, Parks Services Manager Kyle Lancaster said Thursday.
The city also plans to expand the 30-day bidding period to 45 days to allow contractors to spend more time preparing their proposals, he said.
“They were literally rushing to put their bids together,” Lancaster said. “They looked at the pickleball courts, and didn’t have enough clarity on the specific materials and the overall detail of the courts.”
The project calls for a single contractor to build the city’s first outdoor pickleball courts, its third dog park, additional play areas and a multi-sport arena at Poinsettia Community Park, and a new catering support room, restrooms, a shade structure, fireplace and more at Aviara Community Park.
The city engineer’s estimate is $5.6 million for the work, a city staff report states. The bids received were from: Palm Engineering Construction Co., Inc., $7,543,669; Ohno Construction Co., $8,111,169; and Byrom-Davey, Inc., $8,867.237.
None of the proposed park improvements has been eliminated, Lancaster said, but the second round of bidding will extend the completion time by a few months. Work is still expected to begin later this year.
Carlsbad residents have been asking for outdoor pickleball courts for several years. A previous plan to convert some of the tennis courts at Laguna Riviera Park failed after tennis players objected to losing the space. Then a proposal to build them at Calvera Hills also fell through over competition for space there.
A separate Carlsbad parks project, one of the biggest in years, appears to be on track at Pine Avenue Community Park, the downtown home of the city’s Senior Center.
Acceptable bids have been received and a recommended contractor will be presented to the City Council for approval at its Jan. 24 meeting, Lancaster said. That contract also will include several improvements, the largest of which will be an 18,000-square-foot, two-story community center to serve the surrounding Barrio neighborhood.
Construction could begin about a month after the council approves the contract and would take about a year, Lancaster said.
The Pine Avenue center will include multi-purpose gymnasium, a meeting room, offices, restrooms and a courtyard. A teen center with separate rooms for studying, computers and games is planned for the second floor.
Elsewhere at Pine Avenue under the same contract, construction plans included a drought-tolerant ornamental garden, a community plaza, and the city’s third collection of community plots to be leased by recreational gardeners.
Construction at the Pine Avenue Community Park is expected to cost about $11 million.
philip.diehl@sduniontribune.com
Twitter: @phildiehl
