MORGANTOWN — Lombardi, a general contractor based in Follansbee, has been selected to construct improvements to the Morgantown Ice Arena.
The Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners approved the firm’s bid of $3,155,000 during its most recent regular meeting.
The selected proposal was the lowest of eight bids and is comprised of the main project ($1,910,000), an alternate bid for an additional 2,000 square feet to create two new party rooms and a Zamboni/mechanical area ($775,000) and the replacement of the building’s roof ($470,000).
The roof work will be paid for by a West Virginia Land and Water Conservation Fund grant.
The Morgantown Ice Arena began life in 1978 as a canopy over an outdoor sheet of ice.
These improvements will include a new exterior and roof, upgraded mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, an improved dasher board system, rubberized flooring and other ice-related amenities.
It will also include the installation of a new chiller and dehumidification unit, which had to be purchased for $400,000 roughly a year ago due to lengthy delivery schedules.
BOPARC Executive Director Melissa Wiles said the chiller is on site and the dehumidification unit is expected in the next week or so.
Construction will begin in early February and conclude in late summer or fall of next year.
Commissioner Jenny Selin said the awarding of the ice arena contract caps a banner year for recreation in Morgantown.
“This has been a really important year for BOPARC for putting our plans into operation – getting out bids and clearing the way not only for the project at the ice rink that we accepted tonight, but also getting lower Marilla poised and ready to go, and, obviously, completing the new pool project,” she said “It’s really a credit to our board, our administration and our work force that we’ve managed to get this far … It’s really taken us from theoretic – we have these funds available – to the reality of having these projects completed.”
In other BOPARC news, the recreation commissioners have approved an application to the national nonprofit Old-Growth Forest Network to designate the 14 wooded acres between E. Brockway Avenue and White Avenue in upper Marilla Park a “Community Forest.”
Rick Landenberger, a science and land management specialist for the West Virginia Land Trust and member of the Mon Valley Green Space Coalition, previously said the forest is in a kind of “Goldilocks zone” in terms of moisture level and temperature, allowing it to develop a complex, multi-layered canopy that provides habitat for a diverse array of species.
Further, he said there are trees in the forest approaching 300 years old.
Wiles said she was able to walk the woods with a representative of the Old-Growth Forest Network.
“It was really pretty neat to see a person who goes all around the east coast and looks at these forests say, ‘Wow. This really is a nice place. You guys need to showcase that,” she said, adding, “We do value green space as much as we value development, and we want that space to be noticed by our patrons, and visited and utilized.”
While the “Community Forest” designation does draw attention to the forest as a vital asset, it does not prevent future development of that property should the city choose to do so.
“It’s giving attention to [the forest] more than anything. I’m not sure, legally, if you guys would be able to stop future plans to any great degree,” attorney Matt Elshiaty said. “As far as this designation, I don’t think you could go down there and wave it and say, ‘You can’t develop here.’”
