No Plans In Place For Sparta Splashpad But Applicants Are Stepping Up To Design

Getting an architect in place to help design Sparta’s new splash pad project will be a major step for the long-awaited project.

The city is currently accepting qualifications from prospective applicants. Sparta Mayor Jerry Lowery said some social media speculation said the project has been designed and the plans are in place. He said that is false.

“There’s no plans drawn out, I’ve not seen a plan yet, we’ve got to get all these steps in place, then meet with the architect that is hired and that’s not even happened yet,” Lowery said. “And then however long it takes them to draw up the plans, then we will look at that and tweak it. And once that’s happening, I promise you, I promise the public we will release that plan, the official plan to the public as soon as we’ve got it. And then let everybody start seeing what it’s going to look like. But that’s in the future.”

Lowery said once city officials receive all the applicants, they will grade the qualifications and make a decision on who will design the project. He said he expects that to happen in the next several weeks. That will lead into assessing the potential costs of the project.

“The government wheels often move slow and we got to do these certain guidelines,” Lowery said. “And when this much money is involved we have to just make sure that everything is above board and we’re not trying to hide anything from anyone. So that’s what’s happening right now. And once we get all those bid qualification things in then we will hire one of those firms and then they will meet with us and we will kind of lay out what we’re looking at. They will take that and then we’ll design it. We will then look at the design that they brought forth and tweak it if needed.”

Lowery said though the process will take some time, it is good to see it moving.

“This is one of the things that the people of Sparta have requested,” Lowery said. “They’re going out of town. I’ve heard it every day this summer that ‘hey, I went here,’ ‘I went there.’ And we’re going to have that right here in Sparta. I think that it’s just going to be a great addition to our nice little town here.”

Lowery said he would love to have the splashpad operational next summer.