The $2.4 million work will be completed this summer and includes $300,000 from the state for the playground area and splash pad project. Public Works Director Ben Mann said the excavation and grading of the area is “really starting to take shape” to match the plans. Demolition of the old shelters and clearing of some trees in this upper portion of the park began in October. The weather started to slow the project’s progress in January and February due to the precipitation.
In a previous phase of the project, the city had received a collective $700,000 from the state to help construct the Harbin Park pavilion and the loop trail.
Lower Harbin Park’s redevelopment is in the conceptual stage, said Mann, who’s department is working with the Park and Recreation Department on the project. Mann and Parks Director Mandi Brock will give themselves through May to get the final plans completed before going out for bid and construction. Lower Harbin’s construction would start sometime in September, with the goal to get it mostly completed by May 2025 “so the residents would not miss a summer.”
Mann and Brock said residents and visitors would have the summer of 2024 to enjoy the park before the construction, and then even if it’s not completed by May 2025, they’d still be able to use the park.
“There’s a potential that it wouldn’t all get done,” Mann said, “but it wouldn’t be something where the residents couldn’t enjoy that area of the park.”
Lower Harbin Park could also get a fishing pond. Mann said there is a pond that’s out of the way that needs to be mucked out and deepened to give the area proper stormwater management. Brock said that pond would be seven to 10 feet deep and would be fully stocked.
The pond would be needed because of all the new and replacement concrete being added because “there’s a good amount of hard surfaces,” Mann said. He said it would be an amenity to the area, but would be more of a “hidden find.”
Lower Harbin Park’s new look is needed as there are several areas, including the underused tennis courts, aren’t amenities residents can fully enjoy. Fairfield City Manager Scott Timmer said, “If we’re going to attack lower Harbin the way we’d like to, I really don’t want to leave anything in its current state.”
Fairfield has a little more than $1.3 million allocated for the redevelopment of lower Harbin Park, and while that price tag won’t get the city everything in the concept, Man said “it will get us a nice project.”
“We may need to feel out exactly what’s most important to us, what fits the best,” said Mann, adding they’re in the process of getting cost estimates. “We have to start weighing some of those things. What do we need, what do we want? We’re going to have to balance it all out.”
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