City Park will get a second pavilion next year

If you’ve enjoyed City Park’s newly refurbished pavilion this summer, you might be twice as happy now.

The borough recently approved a construction contract for a new pavilion in City Park, and the best part: Wrangell hardly has to pay anything for it. The new pavilion replaces the structure that was destroyed in a November 2021 windstorm. It will be built exactly where the old one stood, a couple hundred feet south of the pavilion upgraded this summer.

Following the storm, the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management allocated around $130,000 to Wrangell for a new pavilion. When Capital Projects Director Amber Al-Haddad reported the lowest bid at nearly double the price, she and Borough Manager Mason Villarma were concerned about the viability of the project, Villarma said.

Al-Haddad decided to reach out to the state to see if it might fully fund the project, something Villarma jokingly admitted he thought would never happen. Instead, the state said yes and gave Wrangell an additional $145,479 to move forward with the endeavor.

The new timber-framed pavilion will generally resemble the one upgraded this summer, Al-Haddad said. However, whether the structure will include a fire pit is still undecided.

The assembly last week approved spending $15,000 in borough reserve funds for a fire pit additive alternate in the construction contract.

The assembly at its Aug. 27 meeting approved a $263,000 contract with Sitka-based McG Constructors for the pavilion. Al-Haddad hopes construction will begin toward the end of January 2025, though that could always change.

While the borough relied only on local contractors for the upgrades to the existing pavilion and fire pit this summer, it was required under state funding rules to solicit and accept bids from any contractor for the second structure.

“Over the summer, we were really trying to stretch the dollar,” Villarma said, in reference to the affordability of the summer upgrades, using multiple local contractors for different parts of the job.