Message From Staff: Although the East Recs opening date is scheduled to be May 22nd we will not be transitioning the clubs/classes/groups until starting June 3rd as this will allow Maintenance to ensure that all equipment is placed back in the East Rec. Thank you
East Rec Progress report, revised opening date of May 22nd, “while you are here” mode…
Hello faithful followers of Oakmont East Rec progress!
The road patch on Oakmont Drive in front of the parking lot is done. There is a big patch and a small patch in the distance.
The photos below show you some of the area of the parking lot that had to be excavated to achieve the difficult low slope required for ADA parking as you enter the East Rec building.
This lower photo shows you the removed area of asphalt for achieving ADA parking for the pool area. Obviously we have a lot of new asphalt and concrete to do.
This photo below shows the area of the sidewalk from the building downhill to the swimming pool area. The existing parking lot slopes downhill and the the right. The sidewalks are downhill and must slope left. For ADA areas, the left or right slope can be no greater than 2%. The downhill or uphill slope can be no greater than 5%. And then all the parking lot grades and sidewalks have to smoothly tie into each other smoothly with no steps, as if no work was ever done.
Do you remember how much lower the bridge to the swimming pool and the swimming pool is from the level of the parking lot? Quite a bit. We have planned for an ADA path less than 5% downhill/uphill from the sidewall and new ADA parking, but high level math and plane geometry are going on!
The question posed by Tom Kendrick, our new BCC Board liaison at our last weekly construction meeting with the Nordby team was “wouldn’t it be better to do all of the East Rec parking lot now while the heavy equipment is here?” (Note-the reserve study for 2019 has budgeted for repair and reasphalting before October.) Rick Aubert, OVA maintenance manager, David Dearden and I as leaders of the BCC agree with Tom’s timely question. We will be pricing adding re-asphalting the other 2/3rds of the parking lot that is not torn out to meet ADA,….thus we need to add more time to complete before the East Rec grand opening. Otherwise, we will have to close down the parking lot again in September or October.
The other scope of work that has been an added request to the OVA Board is renovating the bridge to the pool, which is the primary pool access. The current railing does not meet code as the stile spacings are 6 inches apart instead of the required under 4 inches apart. The building department did not call this out on the permit, but they have the right to call it out when they visit for final inspection and may require us to do it.
(We had not pointed it out on the plans as part of the work, as we thought it would just be done later this year.)
This bridge repair is also in the 2019 reserve study budget and the amount to fix it now while Nordby is here is less expensive than we had budgeted for (some good news in all of these changes).
If you see below, this railing part fell out due to dryrot at the lower part of this horizontal railing top.
Trying to rescrew the fallen railing back into this rotting railing cap piece is obviously not going to work.
Other progress to report-
The pool area is ready for pouring concrete later this week. It will be done in two pours, as the area is massive. See the rebar and rock that this worker is standing in. He is working on installing the upper deck railing.
Other dryrot we are replacing is the wooden pieces lying next to these concrete steps. We are replacing them with concrete the same size as the wood piece was…because we don’t ever want to see any more dryrot at East Rec ever again…no wood…no dryrot!
When concrete is poured, how do you keep the weight of the liquid concrete from just pressing down the rebar lower than it should go?
See the little concrete block below with wire tied to the rebar? It is called a dobie. They are used throughout on a big pour.
We had an AV training session for the new equipment we have installed at the East Rec for the clubs who use the screens, mikes, music, powerpoint, movies, etc. this past Friday.
Jane Gyorgy, head of the new AV Club and David Dearden, Vice Chair of the BCC have led the charge with the trainer, Angelo Scalese from our AV installer and service company called PCD. The sound in the room is so much improved!
Having two meetings at the same time should be no problem for the East Rec now. See the sound doors below that will be closed completely during a second meeting going on while the big room is being used otherwise.
In the smaller conference room you see we have a tv screen for separate power points or AV usage while the big room is being used for another meeting.
Now for my pep talk…to myself.
It is easy to get discouraged when the rain seems to never stop. Tractors are stopped dead in their tracks.
I gave myself a pep talk about the length of time and effort this has taken. We started right after Labor Day of 2018. Summer is coming. We all want this to be done with so we can move on with our lives….and so we can be using our newly renovated facility. We are so very close…..
May 1st opening is moved to May 22nd. I hope you will come to celebrate such a major undertaking for Oakmont.
Iris F. Harrell
BCC Chair OVA
We are all in this together…2019