After no action was taken on the Rickeman Field grandstand replacement project during the June 1st meeting, the Dell Rapids City Council voted to submit the project for bidding after hearing from Dell Rapids Baseball Association board members during their regular meeting on Monday, June 15th.
Several members of the DRBA spoke in favor of replacing the grandstand in hopes of having the council change their mind on the project. DRBA board member Bruce Mogen mentioned that the grandstand has been in place since the early 1960s, and the north side addition has been in place since the late 1960s.
Mogan said, “Two questions I kept hearing about…’Does Rickeman Field get used?’ I know between two amateur teams, a legion team…four teener teams…we have somewhere between 50 t0 60 baseball games during the summer. We also host many tournaments. Second question is, ‘Is there value?’ I think the value is again for the fans. All those people that come to town, they spend their money at our businesses.”
Councilman Mike Geraets thought another project should be done first before replacing the grandstand. “There are some repairs that need to be done (to the grandstand). But it’s still useable to me. It looks like we need to update our comfort station, and we have the ability to do that now that we have the sewer across the river.”
Councilman David Sommerfeld agreed that a comfort station is needed, but felt the grandstand should come first. “I agree with Mike that we need a comfort station, but I think right now we need to take care of the bleachers. One thing is our insurance company doesn’t like it. This has been talked about with our insurance company for the last three to four years.”
City Administrator Justin Weiland mentioned to the council that the grandstand has been brought up to the city by the insurance company for the last nine to ten years. Recommendations were made to do a structural report on the grandstand dating back to 2006.
Seating capacity for the new grandstand would be estimated at around 175 with four handicap accessible spots in the front. The current grandstand currently is estimated to hold 250 people including the north stand.
“We are talking about replacing just the main section of the grandstand, not the north/south piece. That can go away until we have a future need, and I don’t think we will see that for a while,” said Clarence Fjellanger.
DRBA board member LeAnn Kerzman added, “One little thing to consider too, we used to take a stipend for the DRBA, and we quit doing that a few years ago. And that’s when we started doing the improvements in the rest of the parks…We did give up our annual request in order to see budget improvements to the park capital assets.”
Sommerfeld motioned to put the Rickeman Field grandstand project out for bid. Mary Klockman seconded the motion. The motion passed by a vote of 6-1.