10.1. SR 06-06-2016 - Laserfiche WebLink

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ELK RIVER COMMUNITY CENTER CONCEPTUAL SOLUTIONS SITE OPTION 3: LION'S PARK The Lion's Park site is a very valuable piece of land for the city. It is the most centrally located site for the community and is in very close proximity to existing schools, churches, and other amenities. The site has a well developed trail system and offers some of the community's most desireable green space. The existing pond and green space on the site offer great opportunities for desirable views from a potential new facility,especially for the senior and community spaces. This opportunity is better reflected in the Option 2 layout for this site, where the building is laid out in a linear fashion, parrallel to the pond to allow as many spaces in the building a good view. Both options are sited to have the primary entrance facing eastward. This site also has great opportunities for vehicular and pedestrian access and circualtion. Vehicle access to the building could occur from both School Street on the north and Jackson Avenue on the west. Both layout options are shown to capitalize on this flow of traffic. Each option takes advatage of the large ice sheet volumes being placed on the north west which would help buffer the colder northwest winter winds from the rest of the building and the entrance side. Locating the ice program spaces on the north side of the building also offers some convenience for access to student athletes coming from the schools directly to the north of the site. The Lion's Park Site does come with one major drawback that cannot be overlooked. The existing soils are predominantly peat and ultimately are considered unable to carry the loads of a modern building. Using previously recorded soil data, the unsuitable soils vary in depth from 8' to 12'feet,which equates to a cost of approximately$1.5 million to mitigate the poor soil and replace with fill material suitable for supporting a building. The site is also know for having a very high water table, causing historic site drainage issues as well as sewer backup issues at the existing Lion's Park Center facility. Another concern for this site is the fact that it's central location and proximty to schools and other amenities mean that there is a greater volume of traffic on the adjacent roads at multiple times of the day wihch can pose a challenge in terms of facility access, especially for the senior populatoin. Although the Lion's Park site boasts a number of strong attributes for a potential facility, and two options presented both have some advantageuous characteristics, our reccomendation would be to avoid building on this site due to the poor and unreliable soil conditions. Even undergoing a costly soils correction process still will not mitigate the risks of the soil and water conditions on this site. The risk of this site is extremely high, especially when one considers that one of the predominant program items of the building is multiple ice sheets,which require extremely flat and techincally designed and constructed slabs and subgrade. Building on this site could compromise the long term performance of the building components and result in costly corrections in the future. 34 SITE ANALYSIS