Fulton rec center construction on track

<p>Helen Wilbers/For the News Tribune</p><p>Progress continues at the future home of the Fulton community recreation center. Construction workers are currently pouring slabs and completing a wall near what will be the basketball courts.</p>

Helen Wilbers/For the News Tribune

Progress continues at the future home of the Fulton community recreation center. Construction workers are currently pouring slabs and completing a wall near what will be the basketball courts.

Despite winter weather and soggy soil, construction at the site of the future Fulton community recreation center is on schedule.

Kyle Bruemmer, Fulton’s interim city engineer, provided an update on the $8.89 million project during Tuesday’s Fulton City Council meeting.

The Fulton City Council voted to move forward on the project in September with winning bidder River City Construction, based in Ashland. The city also has contracts with an architect and a cement-testing company. Fulton city employees are providing some labor and services, too.

“We have city folks doing inspections, utilities and other site work,” Bruemmer said.

Eventually, the recreation center will include a basketball court, a fitness center, classrooms, event spaces, a turf fieldhouse, changing rooms, a kitchen/banquet room capable of seating 140 people plus outdoor seating and more. There’s space left over for the future addition of an aquatic center.

But all that’s a long way off.

Work on the site, located at the corner of East Eighth and State streets in Veterans Park, began in earnest in November, with storm drains and excavation and site leveling.

“We had to remove and replace a fair amount of unsuitable soil,” Bruemmer said. “That has to be done to make sure we have good footing.”

The removed clay-based soil was too soft to support the foundation of such a large building, he said. It was replaced with more than a foot of “low-volume change material.”

Workers completed a sizable drainage swale in early December. Just before Christmas, they started in on the building’s foundation, positioning reinforcing rods and preparing to pour concrete.

Now, in January, concrete work is continuing, including on a wall next to the future basketball court.

“The contractor’s dealing with weather,” Bruemmer said. “They’re working whenever they can work — they’re pushing hard to get the concrete in.”

These next couple of months are vital for keeping the project on schedule, he said. The main building’s components, made of pre-engineered metal, are due to arrive in April. A wet spring could cause construction delays.

“It all hinges on getting that pre-engineered metal building here on time and at the right time,” Bruemmer said. “As of now, the contractor feels like he’s on schedule to hit that November or December completion date.”

Also during Tuesday’s meeting, Fulton City Council members brought up the possibility of beginning to price and sell memberships to the future recreation center.