Construction work that began in the spring at Eastside Park in Red Bank appeared to stall last month.
What’s Going On Here? Read on.
Plans for Eastside Park include restrooms alongside the basketball court. (Image by CME Associates. Click to enlarge.)
The 2.3-acre park is set to get its first-ever restrooms in a prefab concrete structure. The building comes with a large roof overhang to provide some hard-to-find shade, similar to the one in Marine Park, and will include picnic tables, borough officials said.
The park, on Harrison Avenue, will also get a new asphalt walkway connecting Mechanic and Marion streets.
But the project is behind schedule, consulting engineer Laura Neumann, of CME Associates, told the council at its workshop session last Wednesday.
Under the $427,325 contract awarded last October to GR Masonry Work LLC of Belleville, the project was to be completed by July 1. The sum also included work at Mohawk Pond, where GR last week completed asphalt paving of perimeter walkway and parking area, officials said.
But the Eastside Park portion is “outside the time frame” of the contract, Neumann told the council, and so she has sent GR a time-is-of the essence letter. Neumann said she has also scheduled weekly onsite status meetings, with the expectation that the project will be completed in August.
Mayor Pasquale Menna, however, wasn’t satisfied. He directed borough Attorney Greg Cannon to also send GR a letter “to let them know we’re serious.”
Last Friday, construction work had resumed.
This project is not to be confused with one Neumann outlined at a council meeting last September, when the council authorized her to apply for a $250,000 Open Spaces matching grant from Monmouth County.
That grant would have helped pay for a new backstop, fencing and engineered mulch for the play area, Neumann said at the time.
The application was denied over a “technicality,” Neumann told redbankgreen last week, and the borough was encouraged to try again this year, which it will do in the September submission round for the annual competition, she said.
