By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
Despite rainy periods, construction has moved along significantly at American Legion Park over the past six weeks or so, with the pool house structure erected and the wood base for the metal roof in place.
Eddie Furlong, director of the Glasgow Parks and Recreation Department provided that information and more to the Glasgow Common Council committee that focuses on matters related to his department at the group’s regular meeting Monday evening, in the hour before the full council meeting.
“We’ve had a ton of progress there, which has been great,” he said.
The concrete floors for the pool areas have also been poured, and the stainless-steel sides are done. Footers have been poured for some of the smaller features.
“As of today, they were boring in the concrete in the filtration room to bore out to the pool to start laying pipe, so that’s going to be taking place over the next couple of weeks,” Furlong said. “Hopefully, this weather will cooperate with us, ’cause they didn’t get much done today with all the rain.”
Having part of the roofing material in place allows for some types of work to occur in the building even when it’s raining, he said, but not the interior finishing.
Councilwoman Chasity Lowery, who chairs the committee, asked about the small building nearly under construction at the front end of the park, in the vicinity of the old swimming pool. Furlong said it will contain the restrooms for that area plus a small storage space. That end will have four pickleball courts, along with some features that will be added in the next phase.
“They’ve laid all the electrical for the lights, so that’s in place,” he said of the front end. “They haven’t gotten the poles or anything up, but the electrical’s run.”
Furlong said they’ve had to cut down three more trees that weren’t in the original plan to cut because of safety and other concerns due to leaning and such.
The next progress meeting with the contractor and subcontractors is supposed to be the first week in June or shortly thereafter.
The date for “substantial completion” is still July 28.
Councilman Terry Bunnell said that if it’s not going to be ready until then, rather than the July 4 timeframe he keeps hoping for, they’ll need to decide at some point whether it would be practical to open it for such a short time before pool season ends.
Furlong said that decision does need to be made in the near future, because pool-maintenance supplies, among other things, would need to be stocked and so the community knows what to expect, but he thought the mayor would have the main say-so on that.
Mayor Henry Royse said Furlong already knows his thoughts on that.
“My decision would be that we’ve got to open it, even though we might buy enough chemicals that might be more than we would need for the length of time we would be open. But we owe it to a lot of people to open this thing up as quickly as we possibly can,” Royse said.
Bunnell said they would still have roughly six weeks in the season if that’s the opening time.
This illustration shows the plan for American Legion Park created by Brandstetter Carroll with input from city officials that was finalized in March 2024. To view a PDF version of the image that can be enlarged to better see the various elements, click here.
The next phase of construction at American Legion Park will consist of a small dog park, a large shelter at the top of the hill/rear of the park, a smaller shelter and outdoor exercise equipment near the front and basketball court with parking area toward the center, in the vicinity of the former day camp building, Furlong reminded them. The dog park may get moved uphill and slightly more toward the center of the park from the northwest corner where it is shown in the current design, he said.
Additionally, when all the other things are in place, a disc golf course that will have to be redesigned due to all the changes, will be installed with the equipment that was already at the park.
The other main park update concerned Twyman Park. Furlong said that when they built the new bathrooms there, the power was disconnected from the old bathrooms, because they were moving the power source to the new bathrooms across the creek.
“When we did that, we unknowingly disconnected the power to the shelter that’s over there,” he said.
An electrician is expected to work on that issue at the end of this week or early next week, Furlong said. He said it was supposed to have gotten done last fall, but it kept getting pushed back due to other projects.
Programwise, Furlong said the soccer league is going well but could be better with less rain.
“We’ve had one rainout each week for the last three weeks, it seems like,” he said. “Now knock on wood, we’ve been able to get, like, our first set of games in each night; then the second set has been rained out.”
Signups continue for the adult softball leagues. As of that day, seven teams had already signed up for one of the leagues and three or four for the other one. The season starts in the first or second week of June.
Day Camp signups are ongoing, with the first week in June and last week in July already full. The other four weeks range from being half full to only having a few spots left.
“So they’re filling up fairly quickly,” Furlong said.
He said he had been notified by the Barren County Parks and Recreation Department on April 29 that it would not be using the Ochell Tuck Softball Complex facilities at Beaver Creek Park this spring, so the city department opened up practice space for travel teams and the adult softball teams.
Councilman Freddie Norris asked why the county wasn’t using the fields. Furlong said the only reason he got was that they didn’t have enough officials, so they were trying to staff their own facilities first.
Royse said he’d heard that because of all the recent rain, the county ballfields at Jackie B. Browning Park had too much water on them, so the county may need to use the city fields after all. Furlong said he’d gotten a text message asking about availability over the next couple of weeks and he was checking to see what they had.
Two Concerts in the Park are scheduled for Beaver Creek Park – Cochran & Company on June 27 and Collin Raye on Aug. 22. And free Movies in the Park, a joint effort between the department and local business and nonprofit sponsors, are set for June 20, July 18 and Aug. 15.
A few random notes and questions from the voting committee members, who also include Councilman Tommy Burris, and the mayor, were addressed before the meeting closed.
Lowery asked about the search for the latest park ranger, and Furlong said they interviewed eight or nine candidates last week and narrowed the field to three, with one “head and shoulders above the rest,” and background checks are being completed for the trio. He hopes to have someone start the job in the next couple of weeks.
The driveway in the area around Richardson Stadium at Gorin Park is being repainted with arrows to indicate the correct flow of traffic. District baseball tournament play is set to begin Sunday and continue through Tuesday, Lowery said.
The condition of the tennis courts at Gorin Park was also discussed briefly, and it was determined that the nets would be removed from the two in the worst shape – Courts 5 and 6. Furlong reported he had learned that the U.S. Tennis Association grant they had hoped to apply for wouldn’t pay for a surface patch-and-fill job.
On Tuesday, Furlong met with Glasgow News 1 at American Legion Park and further described some of the coming facilities.
The pool house entry from the parking lot at the top of the hill, generally where the parking lot had already been, will be a breezeway with solid garage doors at the external entry point and the side coming from the pool. As visitors come into the breezeway, the admissions window is at the right-hand side.
Moving out onto the pool deck, to the immediate right is the admissions office, lifeguard lockers, employee restrooms and a first aid room, all subdivided within one general space. Next is the pool manager’s office and then the concessions room, which will have two windows from which patrons may be served. Those spaces have interconnecting doors between them.
At the far end of that side of the pool house is the day camp room, which has completely separate entrances and two bathrooms and a storage closet. The very end of the building will have glass garage doors that can be opened to allow for an outdoors atmosphere, and the day camp area will have separate fencing around it as well.
The opposite end of the pool house contains the restrooms/changing rooms/showers for families, men and women and then multiple mechanical rooms toward the outer end.
The aquatic center features a zero-depth entry pool, at least one social alcove, a family slide, lap lanes, two individual slides and a lily-pad bridge, as well as other miscellaneous water features within the pool.
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