City of Waldport thinks it has a “smoking deal” for playground surface at new Southworth Park

By GARRET JAROS/YachatsNews

WALDPORT — Something out of the ordinary happened when Waldport city manager Dann Cutter began casting about to find a contractor to install a special surface for the playground planned for Louis Southworth Park.

He knew it would be expensive but did not realize just how expensive. He had previously informed the Waldport city council that a rubberized surface would likely cost north of $300,000 to purchase and install.

“I started looking at contract costs and what other cities are paying and frankly, got a little scared,” Cutter reported to the council at its meeting last week.

The city of Albany paid $35.50 a square foot for its 6,000 square-foot playground surface. Keizer paid $34 a square foot. Corvallis caught a break at $24 a square foot.

“We have 14,000 square-feet,” Cutter told the council. “We have a huge playground that we are doing. And so I started doing that math and I really kind of freaked out.”

At best, Cutter re-estimated the city was looking at spending between $343,000 and $507,000.

But then that something remarkable happened — a “smoking deal,” as Cutter put it.

He was on the phone with the playground’s equipment provider GameTime when he “threw down the gauntlet,” he told council. He said if GameTime could come in with a price below the state-required threshold that mandates the surfacing contract go out for competitive bidding, he would recommend it to council.

He realized it “was a huge stretch that I thought had no chance at all,” he told the council. But then GameTime came back with an offer of $17.50 a square foot for a top-of-the-line ADA-compliant “pour in place rubber surfacing” – the kind Lego Land and other top playgrounds use ­­– that is hard enough to roll a wheelchair across while also being soft enough to cushion falls.

The $250,000 contract was unanimously approved by the city council.

The city received a $750,000 state grant in 2022 and is spending $200,000 of its own money to develop the park on the former site of Waldport Middle/High School that it acquired in 2013. In addition to the playground area, plans call for four picnic shelters, two pickleball courts, a basketball court, a pavilion, a hard-surface walking trail around the outside, a dog park, restroom, and a timber skills competition area.

The playground, a multi-colored plastic and metal structure made of materials meant to last decades, cost the city $413,000 and will have 15 separate slides, 13 swings, merry-go-rounds and all kinds of climbing activities.

Homeowner associations

Starting in July, homeowner associations in Waldport will be notified they must register as a business with the city and provide information regarding contacts, bylaws and minutes of any elective actions so the city can stay abreast of any changes in the associations’ legal representatives.

The issue came to a head after the city was contacted by multiple people claiming to represent the same association or associations without the city having any means of verification.

“One of the real challenging things is knowing who we are supposed to be actually talking to when dealing with an HOA,” Cutter told the council.

There are approximately seven associations in Waldport but only three or four that the city hears from. And some have gone defunct. The most active are the Township 13, Ocean Hills and Alsea Highlands homeowner associations, Cutter said.

Establishing guidelines and rules for the associations will come back to council for review and eventual passage of an ordinance that regulates some of the associations “responsibilities in dealing with the city.” Registering with the city is free for nonprofit associations.