WORK UNDER WAY ON $4 MILLION PARKS PROJECT

A $4 million parks and recreation project commenced this week with the start of grading work at Shawnee Park in south Cape Girardeau.

The $623,000 dirt-work contract with Dumey Excavation will be completed within 90 days, weather permitting. It includes the necessary grading at the city's newest park, Osage, at the intersection of Mt. Auburn and Kingshighway.

"Right now, there's a 90-day timetable that they should have the basic grading work done," said Dan Muser, Cape Girardeau's director of parks and recreation. "He's got about seven land levelers and a couple (bull)dozers down there, so they're at it pretty heavy."

Dumey Excavation was the lowest of seven bidders on the excavation contract. The bid was well below the engineer's estimate for the work, which was about $880,000.

"We got some really good bids, and that's a big plus," Muser said. "That's an unknown for any project, but it was a real unknown with this one because there were so many possible ways of doing the excavation work."

The parks and recreation proposal will include construction of softball and soccer fields at Shawnee Park; development of the 56-acre Osage Park, where a 32,000-square-foot, multiuse building will be built; and completion of a fitness trail through Arena and Osage parks.

The building will be used for a variety of youth and adult recreational and sports activities and also will be available for conventions and meetings.

The project is funded by bonding excess tourism funds, which are financed by a quarter-cent tax on motel and restaurant receipts, and through donations to the city's Parks Development Foundation.

The total project is expected to be finished by 1995.

The architects for the project, Tony Sebek and Dave Alberson, proposed a terraced landscape at Shawnee Park, with the softball complex on one level and the soccer fields on another.

That design will enable contractors to take advantage of the park's natural contour and move less dirt.

"There was some savings on the amount of dirt by doing it by that configuration," Muser said. "It wasn't going to be detrimental to the project as a whole in any way, and if there were savings involved, then of course we wanted to go ahead and do it that way."

Muser said Dumey will do the grading at both the Shawnee and Osage parks sites, but started at Shawnee where most of the work will be done.

He said Sebek and Alberson are developing future stages of development plans, including construction of the softball complex and the multi-purpose building.

"As those plans get completed then we'll start looking at probably letting bids on some of the other work that has to be done," Muser said. "As it looks now, the grading will be the primary focus for the fall. Anything else we'll be able to do depends on the weather more than anything else."

The work in Shawnee Park won't effect the various soccer teams that use the park now, Muser said.

"They won't be on that side of the park at all with this work," he said. "The only time they'll be in that area is when they put the bridge route in, and that won't be for a while yet."

At Osage Park, the architects previously said they were unsure whether grading would be a problem. They feared that there might be a lot of rock beneath the top soil.

Those fears apparently were put to rest when core samples were taken in the area.

"The engineers decided it wasn't likely that we'd run into any kind of problem with rock over there," Muser said. "Also, they think there's sufficient dirt to do the work that needs to be done at both sites without hauling dirt in.

"That was another big question mark."

Muser said he's relieved to see the work get under way. "If we get the grading work on all of it done this fall, then I'd say we'd be in pretty good shape," he added.