Danville’s City Administration has released a full proposal to the Danville City Council concerning the city’s allocation of $24.7 million in American Rescue Plan Act COVID relief money. This plan, presented during Tuesday evening’s Council meeting, has more than half, over 13-million, going to the complete renovation of Garfield Park and the Garfield Park swimming pool.
The architectural Farnsworth Group from Champaign made a presentation that included a brand new football field for multiple uses, structured and unstructured play areas for various ages, space for pavilions, a new bathhouse for the pool, and a pool renovation that includes attractions such as water slides. And then there’s infrastructure work, such as for stormwater.
There’s also $800,000 allocated for a new fire truck, $500,000 going to the Southern Illinois Healthcare Foundation and their plans for a Federally Qualified Health Center at the old St. Elizabeth Hospital site, $500,000 for improvements at the Danville Tennis Center; and then there’s $600,000 being set aside for after hours and weekends youth activities, available to any organization that’s tax exempt as a 501c3 organization, where they can apply on a “notice of funding opportunity” (NOFO) basis..
The proposed revovation of Garfield Park and the Garfield Park Pool will use an estimated over $13,000,000 of the city’s allocated $24,700,000 in American Rescue Plan COVID relief money.
When it comes to the plans for Garfield Park, Danville City Engineer Sam Cole says, yes, this takes up a big chunk of the ARPA money, but the Farnsworth Group said during their presentation that Cole pushed them hard to get costs down as much as possible. He told us afterwards, yes he did.
Audio PlayerAUDIO: (You want to) do good but not frivolously, and we’ve whittled that down a lot already. But yet still included is the purpose of the project; which is to vastly improve the park, vastly improve the pool, you know add a slide, do things like that.
(Left) Danville City Engineer Sam Cole addresses the City Council during Tuesday night’s presentation of the city administration’s ARPA funds spending proposal. (Right) The Danville Tennis Center, allocated for $500,000 in improvements as part of the plan, brought a significant amount of members to Tuesday night’s meeting.
Approximately 40 percent of the space needed for this Garfield Park renovation would require the purchase of around a dozen surrounding properties. Cole says, the funding for that can be done, but it would not come from the ARPA money pool.
Audio PlayerAUDIO: The funds are available. It would be through local dollars, you know, other budget items, things like that; rather than using these ARPA funds to do that process. It’s between 10 and 15 properties; some of which are vacant lots, others are not.
Then, there’s the part of the ARPA spending plan that calls for $8.7 million in infrastructure work. They are targeting general areas; two examples would be “Porter Street area drainage improvements,” or “Dawn Avenue upper and lower area drainage improvements.” Cole says, funding for all this is complicated because if you find something that does not specifically qualify under ARPA guidelines, you still go to the ARPA category of “Replacing Lost Public Sector Revenue.” So there’s a lot of very specific planning here.
Audio PlayerAUDIO: But you’re still wanting to create community impact throughout with the infrastructure stuff as well, and deal with a backlog of needs. And that’s really what we’ve tried to do, is propose broad projects that make big impacts. You know, stretch the dollars as far as we can.
The schedule put forth by Danville mayor Rickey Williams, Jr; and agreed to by the Council; is that public comment will be taken on this plan as part of the May 3rd Danville City Council meeting. Then, a vote would be taken at the May 17th City Council meeting.
