MORGANTOWN — Your family.
Your community.
Our commitment.
That’s the working motto for the BOPARC Foundation, a soon-to-launch nonprofit fundraising arm of the city’s park system.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Denver Allen told members of the city’s Board of Parks and Recreation. “But we have a group of people put together who are committed to the cause … And we’re just about ready to go.”
Allen said the foundation is putting the finishing touches on a website, which will be one of the avenues through which donors set up gifts — be it an annual giving program or a one-time donation in support of a specific project or program.
Funds that don’t come with a use specified by the donor will be directed through a “hand-in-hand” relationship between the foundation and BOPARC leadership.
“This foundation is set up to help the quality of life in our town. Quality of life is a big issue for the university; quality of life for recruitment and quality of life for the people who live here,” Allen said. “Nothing spells quality of life better than your parks and recreation. BOPARC has been around for a long time serving this city, and this foundation will be here, in place to help that.”
It was also explained that one of the early initiatives of the foundation will be reaching out to what Allen described as “BOPARC alumni,” meaning the hundreds of former employees, many of whom worked seasonally at the pools, in the ice arena or cutting grass.
Allen himself began working seasonally at BOPARC at age 14. He went on to become a longtime member of the board.
He said working for BOPARC helped many people pay for rent, tuition, books and other expenses.
“There are some very, very successful people out there that BOPARC made a difference for at a time when they needed money,” Allen said, later adding, “I think this is going to be one of those things people will really rally around. Like I said, it’s a quality of life issue.”
In other BOPARC news, Executive Director Melissa Wiles said the single bid received for improvements to the Dorsey’s Knob Lodge deck was “way over budget.”
This is actually the second time bids for work on the lodge have been beyond what BOPARC is willing to pay.
“These jobs that we have, they’re not large enough for big contractors, but they’re too large for very small contractors,” Wiles said
The first bid process was for a larger slate of needed lodge improvements.
“It was too big for small contractors and we had a couple contractors bid on it, but I think they overbid it because it was a smaller job and they were trying to get as much money out of it as they could,” Wiles said.
Similarly, BOPARC has twice attempted to bid out a Krepps Park tennis court resurfacing project and has yet to receive any bids.
In both instances, it was explained BOPARC will likely end up doing as much of the work in-house as possible.
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