McMinnville officials haven’t flushed the idea of installing bathrooms at two parks. Bids will be taken on the projects.
The 2016-17 fiscal year budget of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department was $25,000 for building ADA-compliant restrooms at Riverfront Park and $25,000 to build restrooms at Pepper Branch Park.
Parks and Recreation Committee chair Ben Newman got the construction ball rolling with a discussion Tuesday night.
Parks and Recreation director Scott McCord presented a drawing of what the bathrooms would look like.
“These are just generic bathrooms small enough for a couple of stalls,” said McCord. “They would be 10 feet by 20 feet, 200 square feet.”
The location of the new bathrooms is up for debate. City administrator Bill Brock urged the committee to stay away from areas that flood.
“I don’t know where you are planning on putting them,” said Brock. “It does flood down there so you have to keep that in mind. If you don’t take them to the top of the hills, you will be in a flood plain. There is sewer line right there as you turn off to go to the river (at Pepper Branch Park), but that area does flood occasionally.”
The area under consideration at Pepper Branch Park is located to the right as people enter the park and it is a parking area with sidewalks on either side.
That area, said Water Department director Anthony Pelham, would not be acceptable.
“The inverted siphon itself would not be a good place to connect to sewer, just because of the way that it works,” Pelham said. “If it’s in a flood plain that is generally not an accepted practice due to you creating an infiltration point directly into the sewer. In reality, you should not build sewer facilities in the flood plain.”
The entire park was built on a flood plain which would leave the city no choice but to build up on the hill past the gazebo.
“When we put the gazebo down there, it is in a flood plain,” said Brock. “The electricity is high enough to be out of the flood plain. If you look at the electricity pole, it’s about four foot off the ground and up the hill a little bit.”
The church across the street from the park would be the appropriate elevation level, says Pelham.
“You would have to get close to the finished floor of that church, I think it’s the Church of God, in elevation to be above the flood plains and be safe from flooding,” he said.
The new ADA-compliant bathrooms at Riverfront Park would be located at the entrance to the Barren Fork Greenway, an area above possible flooding, and the existing restrooms would remain open.
Committee members unanimously agreed to go out for bids on the two projects.