CONWAY — The Selectboard has approved a design contract for the Conway Grammar School playground.
The roughly $20,000 contract allows the design firm, Berkshire Design, to move forward with a multi-phase plan that includes further site analysis, creating a final master plan, creating construction and bid documents, and finally, conducting the bidding and design operation.
“If there’s any additional work for design needed beyond that ($20,000), they won’t move forward without providing us additional information with quotes,” Shelley Poreda, director of business services for the Frontier Regional and Union 38 school districts, told the Selectboard during its meeting Monday. “And then we would decide if we need to add those additional things.”
The town took its first steps toward the development of a new playground earlier this year, when the Community Preservation Committee voted to recommend a related article on the spring Annual Town Warrant.
During a subsequent Selectboard meeting in March, a review of the firm’s assessment priced the project at roughly $335,000. The assessment included a review of the play structure’s condition — which noted much of the current playground is not in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 — and noted safety hazards related to the asphalt surface.
Annual Town Meeting voters in June approved using $250,000 of Community Preservation Act funding for the project. In March, Selectboard members explained the tentative plan once those funds are depleted is to dip into a pair of trust funds the board oversees to make up the difference.
Mary Byrne can be reached at mbyrne@recorder.com or 413-930-4429. Twitter: @MaryEByrne