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September 3, 2015 | VIDEO INCLUDED |Elk Grove swimming and diving clubs may not like hearing it, but their long-sought swimming and diving facilities took a big-belly flop resulting in yet more delays according to a recent bid opening for Elk Grove's proposed Aquatics Center. At last Wednesday's regular meeting of the Elk Grove City Council, City Manager Laura Gill announced the news that will disappoint local swimmers and divers. As Elk Grove's leading advocates pushing the City of Elk Grove's foray into the recreation business, the clubs and the public learned that while three qualified bids were received for construction of the proposed facility, none of them came in under the city's budget for the project."Unfortunately the lowest responsive bid at $23.1 million exceeds the engineers estimates by about $6 million," Gill told the council. "Staff is analyzing the bid results and the budget impacts and we will present recommendations at a future city council meeting."As recently as last September former Elk Grove Assistant City Manager Becky Craig said construction on the Aquatics Center could have started last Spring with a Spring, 2016 completion. Subsequent to her projections, Craig resigned her position with the city last March.The project, which Mayor Gary Davis has taken the lead on originally called for a water amusement park to help subsidize the operations of the facility. Aside from complaints about placing the amusement park in the middle of a residential area, the idea was sunk after the city was unable to get financing for the project though their hired consultant, P3 International. Despite that setback, Davis, who has made transforming Elk Grove into a major tourist destination a keystone of his mayoral tenure has continued pushing to equip the facility with an Olympic-sized pool and a 10-meter diving platform. Davis has reasoned these amenities could help attract U.S. Olympic qualification events to Elk Grove. “This is a public-private partnership that will come together to leverage private capital to build a facility that will serve the public, but also a facility that could ultimately house the Olympic Trials in the future,” Davis told KCRA in 2013. Elk Grove has budgeted $17 million for the construction of the facility but has been vague on who might operate the facility, how much operating cost might be, and how large of an annual subsidy for its ongoing operation will be required. The Elk Grove-based Cosumnes Community Services District, which operates recreational facilities within Elk Grove including the Wackford Community Center & Aquatic Center, has repeatedly declined to bid on operation of the city's Aquatics Center. More recently, Elk Grove filed suit against P3 International, who the city awarded a $695,000 contract to in October, 2013 to provide financing and construction plans for the Aquatics Center. In the lawsuit which was filed in April, Elk Grove alleges "The City has paid over $525,000 to P3I...Yet in return it has failed to perform the contractually required services. Thus P3I has become indebted to the City for the value of the payments made for services that were not performed by P3I." "We have also invited the representatives from the swim disciplines to a meeting to discuss the project and we have also reached out to the Cosumnes Community Services District for consultation as well," Gill also told the city council. The date for those meetings, and if they will be open to the public, have not been revealed.
