City of Newport to make $64K park upgrade

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Newport City Council members last week OK’d long-delayed repairs to the city’s only tennis courts.

Heavily cracked, the tennis courts at 67-acre Loveland Park, the city’s second largest park, have been essentially unusable since 2010, the city says. A plan to fix the courts that year was derailed after Newport missed out on grant dollars it had hoped to secure for the project and the estimated cost of the work increased higher than officials expected.

The City Council last week awarded a $64,800 bid to Dermco-Lavine Construction of Minneapolis to install a new tiled surface for two tennis courts and one basketball court that the city says will be more resistant to wear and cracking than the current cement surface.

“We believe this the best solution, the best bang for the buck,” said Public Works Director Bruce Hanson. A previous refurbishment effort of the current surface was unsuccessful, he said, when cracks again appeared relatively quickly.

Though the council approved the bid last week, work will not begin until 2013, City Administrator Brian Anderson said.

Tags: updates, newport, government