The Ames City Council was provided an update on the Fitch Family Indoor Aquatic Center that showed lower cost estimates and square footage than presented during a meeting in March and reignited discussions about whether to add an indoor walking track to the project.  

According to city documents, the updated design development with value engineering cost is just under $28.7 million, and the alternative to add an indoor track is $1.8 million with $2.1 million in contingency. 

Mayor John Haila said that when the council discussed this a few weeks ago the consultants’ estimates “were a whole lot higher.”

“I was absolutely thrilled to see it come down,” Haila said. “But, it’s only as good as numbers on paper.”

Haila added that the Ames Parks and Recreation Director Keith Abraham assured him that the consultants were comfortable with the estimate. 

Ward 2 Rep. Tim Gartin voiced concern over the track size in the alternative version, which is just over 0.05 miles per lap—or 19 laps per mile. 

“Why would you walk around this thing 19 times when you can go to the mall and do a handful of laps?” Gartin said. “You’re gonna be dizzy walking around this thing.”

When Gartin asked Brad Rodenburg, an architect at the city-hired consultant RDG Planning & Design Architect, about indoor track sizes, Rodenburg said typically an indoor track suspended above two basketball courts is about 10 or 12 laps per mile. 

As Gartin then pointed out, that is almost half of the laps that would be needed to go a mile in the alternative aquatic center proposal. Other indoor tracks in Ames, like the four on the Iowa State University campus, are between 5.33 and 12 laps per mile, according to the Iowa State Recreation Services.

Gartin added that it will “be hard for runners to get excited” about the track, but Abraham said the city’s goal is to build a track for walkers. 

“We’re not going to get runners on this track,” Abraham said. “The main question that we get from people is ‘Where can we walk?’”

In offering a suggestion to increase the size of the track, At-Large Rep. Bronwyn Beatty-Hansen said the city could use some remote parking spots at the neighboring Greater Iowa Credit Union to remove parking spaces on the site and allow the building proposal to grow. 

“North of their building and south of their building they have 60 parking spots,” Beatty-Hansen said. “Now I don’t know if you’ve ever been into the Greater Iowa Credit Union, but even at their peak time, they maybe need a dozen [parking spaces].”

Haila said that if the council opts to use more government obligation bonds to increase the square footage, they would be within $300,000 to $400,000 of “being maxed out,” and the consultant could just come back to the council with a revised proposal that is not financially feasible.

“[If] that pushes us over what we have financially, is that what you want to do and risk taking an alternate and just saying, ‘Oops we can’t do it’ because it’s over what we have available or try and go with this that may be achievable,” Haila said. 

Ward 4 Rep. Rachel Junck said the city could receive more funding by allowing the track to be named after someone. 

As previously reported by the Daily, the site being used for the aquatic center has contaminated soil which Abraham said Thursday that it is contained to the northeast corner and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has cleared the project. 

But Abraham added that if the council wishes to extend the track north, it would expand onto contaminated soil and additionally questioned whether the DNR would allow that proposal without additional steps being taken to decontaminate the site, which would take more time. 

“If we start delaying [getting bids] and we get past the first of the year, do we start then hamstringing ourselves a little bit—-because the further we put it out, the cost will go up,” Abraham said. 

Haila then reminded the council that they needed to make design decisions Thursday because “it becomes very costly to go back and start changing things.”

At-Large Rep. Amber Corrieri said she thought that the design presented was fine.

“I think we create a domino effect even if the smallest change happens, and I think there have been enough challenges and enough time issues with this project that we need to move forward,” Corrieri said. 

Ward 1 Rep. Gloria Betcher, who attended the meeting virtually, said the cascade effect that would follow a redesign at this point in the project is “a big problem.”

“I agree that 19 times around is somewhat mind numbing for a walking track,” Betcher said. “But if people are looking for something in the winter and they’re [currently] willing to walk around the gymnasium at the Community Center then they probably aren’t going to find this any more mind numbing than doing that.”

The council made no motions for actions on the aquatic center and will decide whether to add the indoor track to the project at a later meeting. The consultants also said the track could be added at some point after construction was complete on the aquatic center after Haila asked about the feasibility of structural alterations.