The Royal Palm Beach Village Council approved security cameras, parking lot paving and pathway expansions at Royal Palm Beach Commons Park on Thursday, Oct. 15.
Village Manager Ray Liggins said the security cameras will be scattered throughout the park, especially in the parking lots, the commons area and the driving range. The cost is not to exceed $150,000.
Paving, at a total cost of about $1.3 million, will come primarily from two different funds in the village budget.
“One is our recreation fund that is a charge to developers,” Liggins said. “In lieu of dedicating land, they can pay a fee, and we can use that for park improvements.”
That amount would be $300,000. Another source, about $700,000, will be from the sales surtax fund collected from the county.
“There are three separate projects at Commons Park,” Liggins said. “Two of them are parking lots, and the third is the widening of the pathway around the south side of the park.”
He explained that the existing 12-foot path splits into two 6-foot paths in certain areas.
“Those two 6-foot paths really didn’t work well for our 5K,” he said. “We do have a certified 5K route out there. It requires everybody to narrow down from the 12-foot-wide pathway to a 6-foot-wide pathway, so we’re taking those areas where it narrows down to 6 feet and making it 12 feet all the way around the 5K path.”
The other two areas are grass parking lots that are not holding up well from the traffic.
“Our most popular parking lot is the first one you come to right before the sporting center,” Liggins said. “It holds about 20 to 25 cars. The grass lot next to it is one of the next most popular areas to park.”
He explained that the village’s grass parking lot ordinance requires that grass parking be infrequent enough that the grass is allowed to grow back.
“Clearly, that’s not the case there, so we are paving that parking lot and making it an area for people going to the dog park,” Liggins said.
The other area is on the other side of the sporting center in the overflow parking east of the driving range.
“If you remember in the budget, we added two corporate pavilions,” he said. “There are a couple of things that we are doing there. One, we are adding some paved parking that will be close to the corporate pavilions, and we are adding a little bit more paved parking and some paved drive aisles for the grass parking over in that area.”
Liggins said he felt the paving bid of $1,379,277 from Almazan Construction was a competitive bid among five other applicants, within 15 percent of each other, and recommended accepting the bid.
Councilwoman Selena Samios made a motion to approve the items, which carried 5-0.
