Osceola City Council members granted approval for the Osceola Parks and Recreation Board to continue planning the addition of a recreation building in the rec complex in town.
The complex is currently located in the northern part of town near Clarke Community High School and includes an aquatic center, track and baseball and softball fields.
“What the park board has done is look at other potential sites around town,” said Ty Wheeler, Osceola city administrator. “At their last meeting, they ultimately concluded the site next to the pool and high school is the site they wished to proceed with.”
The property is owned by the city already, but the parks and recreation board members wanted approval by city council members before continuing with their plans to erect the building.
“We don’t have a rec center in Osceola right now, so all of our events are spread out throughout the community,” said Osceola Mayor Thomas Kedley, “which is putting a strain on our school buildings because we’re using their facilities right now.”
The rec building could possibly have a track, racquetball court, weight room and other amenities to accommodate the local population. The next step, though, is to determine those specific functions by creating a needs assessment.
“There were three or four sites we had them (parks and recreation board members) investigating, and they decided to go with the original site that they wanted years ago,” Wheeler said. “Now, we’ll have architects and people like that to help see it come to term.”
Together, the building and other outdoor amenities will be considered the recreation complex. Other amenities included in that are a disc golf course, skate park and soccer fields.
“We have an outdoor swimming pool, a skate park, a nice bike trail going through there with disc golf, so the only thing we’re missing is an actual recreation building,” Wheeler said. “That was kind of the idea behind it anyway, but the actual rec center part of that whole initiative has kind of stalled for several years. But, when (Thomas) Kedley was elected mayor, his big initiative was a rec center, quality of life stuff.”
Once the needs assessment is done, more plans will be made for what the center will include, and the parks and recreation board members will continue creating the plans for the building. Those plans will then go to the city council for approval, then to the local community. From there, city employees are looking at many options to pay for the building, such as grants.
“Osceola is at a perfect moment right now because it can build a building now without going against the debt capacity,” Kedley said. “We’re just trying to build the rec center to boost the quality of life.”
Concrete
City council members approved a contract with Sternquist Construction out of Indianola with a price of $1,343,917 to pave about eight blocks in Osceola.
The locations are the entire road of Lakeview Drive, the 200 and 300 blocks of South Delaware Street, the 500 and 600 blocks of West Cass Street and the 300 block of South Vale Street.
“Currently, those roads are either gravel or they’re a very old chipped-seal asphalt road, so they don’t have any storm sewer,” Wheeler said. “Part of this contract will actually replace all of the water infrastructure that’s currently there. So, really, we call it an improvement, but in this particular case it’s a reconstruction.”
Water lines and storm sewers will be built, and the road surfaces will be improved to also include a concrete curb and gutter.
The board members approved the bid for the contract, as well as the form of the contract. The executed contract is to be approved at the next city council meeting. Construction will begin at a later date to be decided and completed by Nov. 1.
Property
After a closed session, Osceola City Council members motioned to continue discussion surrounding a property located near the Osceola depot on North Main Street.
“This goes back to when we were first starting the renovation on the depot project. We considered with the kind of investment that was made, there was some interest in acquiring the adjacent properties to control the site,” Wheeler said. “But, they weren’t anxious to acquire property from an unwilling owner. As they became available, that’s when they wanted to address it.”
The owner of the property was told when he was interested in selling to talk with a city administrator. Now, the city council members plan to have the property assessed before continuing with the purchase.
“We have no specific plans for the property,” Wheeler said. “But, if the city acquires that, and a couple of the adjacent properties, then you’ve got something that can potentially be for future use.”