The City Council held a work session on October 27, 2025, receiving a comprehensive update on the Parks and Trails Bond projects, discussing a request from the Sober Grad Night Committee, and hearing council communications and the city manager's report.
All right. Welcome to the October 27th, 2025 City Council work session. First up, we have our Parks and Trails Project Udate. And I believe I see a few people in the audience. Thank you. Good evening, Council President Pratt and members of Council. My name is Justin Schule. I'm the Parks and Education Director here in Twalton. And joining me tonight is Kira Hine, our project manager, and she's going to walk you through our bonds and project update for uh this kind of fall quarter. Lots of really fun, exciting things going on currently, and then a little sneak peek as to what's to come at Twalton Community Park. So good evening, Council. I'm excited to be here this evening and just update you on how the progress are going since last April. It's been six months, and so we've made a lot of progress since then. So excited to keep you updated on what's going on. And so as you know, the Parks Trail and Bond, there are six areas that it funds. And so we have the trail connections, the river access, the athletic field improvements, upgrades, natural areas, and play equipment. And so what I like to call the big three, the three remaining. We have obviously the trail connections, the riverfront park, and then the athletic fields. And then before I get too into detail regarding the projects, I just wanted to reiterate these are the avenues of communication that we've been using to keep the community updated. And so if for some reason you don't aren't getting any of these that you've signed up for, please reach out to us tomorrow, sometime later this week, and we can get you updated and making sure you're getting everything you need. And then, of course, we have the future riverfront park, so it's that big blue sign off of Boons Ferry across from the city library. And then we have the Athletic Field Investments along with the Tiger Twalton School District partnership remaining left of the Parks and Trails Bond. So first up, we have the Niber Creek Trail. And so what is really great about this location is that the interconnection between Petas Park with Rolling Hill Apartments and that neighborhood over there, and then because this is a uh two-part trail, this is phase one of that eventual two-part um trail connection. And so the photo to the upper left hand, so that is the excavation work done right behind Rolling Hills and Orchard Hill Condos. So the right is where the condos and apartments are, and then the left side with those straw waddles on the left, um, you'll overlook the wetlands there. And then the bottom left-hand side, we have a photo of the view from 72nd, so the side of the side entrance of Orchard Hill condo, and if you're looking up to Sagart Street, that is that trail path there. And so we actually did our first concrete pour last week. So fast, fast and going right there. And so it is an eight-foot-wide path, and it's a local trail, not a regional trail. And so it'll be all concrete, it'll be three-quarters of a mile long. And so this went under construction at the beginning of September. And so for us to be able to have our first pour last week, and with our second pour actually scheduled for this Thursday, um, is a really great feat. And so um Nuttercore was the awarded contractor for this project, and we have been um happy working with them so far, and they know what they're doing just with their similar background in roads. And then the bottom right hand photo is we put up these banners. Our office assistant Bella, she makes these really beautiful banners for us for each project in um English and Spanish, and it just gives a briefing of what the project is, what the are the amenities of them all, um, and it just you know has our logo and our parks trails bond logo as well, so people know what what form of funding that this project is funded from. And then the top right hand corner photo is the view from 65th, and if you're just going to look straight across. So it actually looks quite different now. Um it looks more like the far left photo, um, but that just gives you a different angle of what this what this trail will look like. And so um we're under construction right now, and we're hoping to be completed with this one in the spring summer of 2026. So these are some great photos here for the future Riverfront Park. And so we will be working with Sid and his Cora work and specifically with the timber tectonics this year. So we will be working with architect students from the University of Oregon and the engineers from Oregon State University. And what they are tasked with this fall is to essentially build and design some park features for us. And so the first one is we'll have them design and build like a park shelter out of sustainable materials. And then the second, the second feature will be like a boat kayak rental area. And so it will be made out of sustainable materials, and they present their final project to us in December, the early December. And so we'll either go down to Eugene or they'll come up to us and essentially present what they've designed for us. And the idea with that is we'll eventually, once we have our design firm on board, we will take the students' work and ask the firm to build upon that and design park features with that design in mind along with the rest of the park. And then of course we were able to take these students out on a tour a few weeks ago of the six acres.