Water park bid is chosen

The Portland Water Park project has the green light.
Portland Park Board on Monday selected the low bid of $3.21 million from RLTurner of Zionsville in a meeting that lasting barely more than a minute. It chose to include an alternate — the addition of a second slide — for another $77,000.
The fundraising committee then got a boost today, as Tyson Foods, Inc., made a donation of $100,000 for the water park.
The board chose RLTurner’s bid, which came in just under a $3.22 million bid from MacDougall Pierce Construction of Fishers. Muhlenkamp Building Corporation ($3.296 million) of Coldwater, Ohio, was the only other bidder for the project.
“It’s really with great pleasure from all of us up here and a lot of excitement too around our community that we are able to vote today to award the Portland Water Park construction project,” said park board president Rod Ashman. “We can get this done and get it underway.”
Board members Kristi Betts, Holly Tonak, Shauna Runkle and Ashman voted to select the bid with Donald Gillespie absent. Construction is scheduled to be complete by the fall, with the water park to open in 2016.
A meeting with RLTurner representatives is scheduled for Wednesday at city hall, and Ashman said he expects to have a more definitive timeline for the project at that time. The company will oversee demolition of the 55-year-old Portland Pool as well as the construction of the water park in its place.
Tyson announced its $100,000 donation to the project at a ceremony this morning in council chambers at the fire station. That money pushes the fundraising total over the $1 million mark.
“It’s really great,” said Ashman. “It’s humbling that a company like that would want to kick in to our local economy and to our local pool project. I’m just grateful for it.”
Monday’s meeting marked the culmination of more than two years of study and planning for the new facility. Portland City Council approved $2.25 million in funding for the project in May, and the design for the water park was finalized in December.
It will include a lap pool, dump bucket, lily pad walk, lazy river, 25-meter lap pool, zero entry and two slides. The majority of the facility will be 42 inches deep, with 6 foot depth at each end of the lap pool to allow for diving entries.