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Mill Creek MetroParks board awards contract for Lily Pond improvement project
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mill Creek MetroParks board of park commissioners at a special meeting Monday awarded a contract for a project that will add a boardwalk, observation deck and trail improvements near the Lily Pond.
The board awarded a contract to the lowest out of two bidders, Marucci & Gaffney Excavating Co. The estimated project cost is $219,772.
The goal of the project, park planning and natural resources director Steve Avery said, is to improve accessibility to the Lily Pond area. Parts of the trails surrounding the pond currently are not easily accessible for wheelchairs or strollers, he said.
“Secondarily, it’s the second most-used facility in the MetroParks. It gets a huge amount of use, so the trail is degraded and the overall conditions are beat up,” he said of the Lily Pond. “These wooden structures will control where people are supposed to go, and keep the foot traffic to those areas, so it will improve the conditions for the public’s use.”
The project, construction for which will last about 10 weeks, will add an observation deck to the southern side of the pond, closest to the parking lot. A boardwalk will lead to the observation deck.
Work also will be done to improve the trails on the eastern and northern sides of the pond; the same was done a few years ago to the western side, Avery said.
On the northern end, a “floating” boardwalk will be constructed over the pond.
“For all of these years, if you visit the Lily Pond, you walk around and generally have the same experience where you’re looking into the pond,” Avery said. “This will give you the experience of walking out much closer to the water, and you can look back onto the shore. It’ll provide a different experience.”
The southern side of the pond also will get what Avery described as an “arrival node” – benches, a drinking fountain and an informational kiosk.
Construction is slated to begin in the next few weeks.