Spanish Fork City isn't waiting around any longer for the stagnant building market to perk up before making progress on at least a portion of the North Park development. By summer 2010, the city hopes to hand over to the public at least the park part of North Park, a business/recreation project that has essentially been in a holding pattern since its 2007 approval.
The old North Park was torn up in the fall of 2007 with the idea of reconstructing it alongside a new 500,000-square-foot retail development. Westfield Development was to construct both the new park and the retail area, with the city reimbursing the cost of the park. Home Depot was the only company, however, that officially hopped on board before the bottom dropped out of the construction market, and Westfield's plans for North Park were suddenly frozen.
Rather than wait on Home Depot, which can do little more than sit on its 10 reserved acres for now, or future rumored tenants, such as Best Buy, Target and Chili's, Spanish Fork administrators decided to move forward with North Park's recreation area and surrounding infrastructure by contracting the work themselves.
"The razing of that park was a controversial issue," Spanish Fork assistant city manager Seth Perrins said. "The intent all along was to replace the park with something better, but the longer that that park was not there, the more negative sentiment there was about what we had done."
The City Council approved $4 million from city reserves to fund the project. Eventual sales tax revenue from North Park's retail area will repay the reserves, city finance director Kent Clark said.
"We're saving money because now we don't have to pay the developer the interest," Clark said. "Instead of the developer fronting money, we paid it ourselves."
Spanish Fork Parks and Recreation director Dale Robinson said the 10-acre park's promised features are all on track, including a large pavilion that will hold 320 people. The pavilion will have a rest room and 10 garage-style doors that can be rolled down during inclement weather.
The park will also have a plaza area with tiered grass seating, akin to large concrete steps with grass across the tops. The plaza will have an interactive water feature wherein children can play in jets that shoot water from the ground. The park also will have two playgrounds, including a traditional playground for younger children and a modern "Evos" playground for older kids.
All told, the park will have a large open space, shade structures, trees and bushes, a garden area with a gazebo, walkways, picnic tables, a sand volleyball court, barbecue grills and a trail system that surrounds the entire complex.
The 33 acres of commercial development, meanwhile, may just have to wait. Westfield is hoping to have some buildings up and running by 2011, Westfield project coordinator Joe Johnson said, but it's difficult to predict.
"The economy is kind of the limiting factor with being able to do anything right now," Johnson said. "As soon as we get tenants willing to open new stores, we'll see the project move. There's plenty of interest. People are speaking very positively about the site."
Waiting on that expected sales tax revenue isn't going to break Spanish Fork's bank any time soon, Perrins and Clark both said, but it is a source of growth that the city needs and looks forward to. They said the announcement of UDOT's planned overhaul of the city's Interstate 15/Main Street/Highway 6 interchange over the next few years makes the location even more viable.
Matt Reichman can be reached at (801) 344-2907 or mreichman@heraldextra.com.
