If all goes well, Iola’s Recreation Community Building at Riverside Park will be ready for the public by early summer.
Iola City Council members are expected to look at bids April 22 to redo the flooring inside the building, which has been closed to the public since it was flooded in October.
From there, Assistant Iola City Administrator Corey Schinstock said, it should take a few weeks to get the flooring installed.
“We should be looking at the end of May,” he said.
Schinstock’s answer was in response to this week’s Ask the Register query from Iolan Jessica Fernandez, who asked when the building will once again be open to the public.
IOLA received a $300,000 insurance settlement to pay for the repairs, plus another $4,000 for furnishing and equipment.
Council members voted in January to pay $3,000 to Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture of Wichita, the same firm that assisted USD 257 with its successful school bond vote, to come up with flooring specifications.
An epoxy-style floor, hopefully impervious to water damage, is the aim.
As Schinstock noted in January, the park’s location and surrounding terrain — the Neosho River is a few yards to the west, and water drainage has been a traditional headache — means more flooding could be a downpour or two away.
“It’s not a matter of if, but when, we’ll get water in that building again,” Schinstock told Council members in January.
Iola city officials will decide later this month on who will install new flooring in the flood-damaged Recreation Community Building. The aim is to have new flooring and the building reopened to the public by the end of May. REGISTER FILE PHOTOS
Aside from lost activities — morning walking and senior-cize classes among them — many of the other Rec Department programs continued at alternate locations.
Rec Department employees have been moved to City Hall until their office flooring can be repaired.
