As park district reworks beach plans, it may bring on another engineer

As the Winnetka Park District’s plans to refurbish the beachfront at Elder and Centennial parks evolve, the Park Board has given staff the authority to seek a new project engineer.

Following the monthly update to the Elder-Centennial project at the board’s regular meeting on Aug. 28, commissioners unanimously approved the park district’s ability to seek requests for qualifications for project engineers after disagreements between the park district and Red Barn Design & Engineering could not be resolved.

Red Barn and its founder, Matt Wright, had been working with the park district over the past several years to develop plans to improve the Elder-Centennial beachfront, and those plans have seen multiple iterations over the years. Currently, the park district paused the Village of Winnetka’s public review of its plans, which received negative recommendations from two Village commissions.

Costa Kutulas, director of parks and maintenance for the park district, said that he reached out to the project’s consultants regarding changing the plans; however, Red Barn and the district had yet to come to terms by Aug. 28.

“Unfortunately, at the time of the meeting, we still had a couple items in regards to liability concerns and indemnification that we still were not able to achieve to the comfort of the park district,” he said.

Kutulas asked the Park Board for guidance, and the consensus was to release a request for qualifications to potentially identify a new engineer, specifically one with experience in coastal projects.

Commissioner Christina Codo called it a “natural next step for us.”

“I think that can be productive for us,” she said. “It can provide some additional resources for us. We’ve enjoyed working with Matt Wright. He’s very capable, he’s produced a lot of good work that we can leverage.”

Park Board attorney Adam Simon said if the district chooses a new engineer, it would still have access to any materials Red Barn completed while under contract.

Split board approves change orders

While commissioners were unanimous in their support for finding a new project engineer, they were divided when it came to accepting change orders for the project.

Commissioners voted 4-2 to approve two change orders for scope-of-work proposals from The Lakota Group and SpaceCo Civil Engineering, two consultants on the Elder-Centennial project.

Commissioners Cynthia Rapp and Colleen Root, both frequent critics of the park district’s beachfront plans, were in dissent.

Kutulas explained that the proposals contained responses to four tasks that park district staff had sought from the consultants:

• Review and integrate comments from the village review process
• Adjustments to the plans
• Updated project timeline
• A presentation to the board of schematic plans

Additional tasks include completing hydrodynamic modeling, creating 3D renderings of the plans and being available for additional consultation.

The Lakota Group’s project scope cost is $41,300 (base scope of $17,300 and an alternate scope of $24,000) and SpaceCo’s project scope cost is $32,000.

Rapp shared a number of concerns, including the increasing amount of money the park district has spent on the project.

She also questioned why another plan was needed.

“It’s hard for me to specifically get my head around what plans are there still left to be drawn at this point that equate to this amount of money,” she said, adding, “We all collectively have literally closets of these plans, I think it’s fair to say. I’m just wondering what we’re expecting the value and output from this to be. Isn’t Lakota able to go back into their drawer and pull out some of the plans that they’ve already done?”

Root echoed her comments.

“We have so many renderings,” she said. “Why can’t we use some of those internally as staff to then work with responses to our commissions rather than spending another $50,000 in consultant fees?”

Kutulas responded that if the Park Board wants to utilize a prior set of plans for Elder and Centennial, they can do that, but the new proposals were created with the direction of the board to utilize the comments from the Village’s regulatory commissions.

Shannon Nazzal, the park district’s executive director, added that there could be challenges with utilizing an older plan, especially with bringing a new engineer on board.

“If we have to look at a new engineer of record for anything, it would have to be somebody that would agree to go forward with that previous plan that they are not the creator of, which adds an additional level of unknown because having an engineer stand behind and take the liability of somebody else’s plan is not normal,” she said.

Nazzal added that while the park district has had the comments from the regulatory commissions for months now, this is the first time staff has been given the authority to work with consultants on incorporating them.

Commissioner Scott Corley called the two proposals “fair,” while also saying it’s possible that a previous design plan could still be used.

“They have more information, could maybe get us over the hump to the next point, which is actually implementing a plan,” he said. “And I think if (the consultants) go and look at a previous plan … then they might come back after one month and present that.”

The Record is a nonprofit, nonpartisan community newsroom that relies on reader support to fuel its independent local journalism.

Become a member of The Record to fund responsible news coverage for your community.

Already a member? You can make a tax-deductible donation at any time.