City reviews design and budget for Girard Park concession and restroom building

Matt Smith, an architect with 1 by 2 architecture, presented a design-build concept for a centralized concession and restroom building at Girard Park during the Columbus City Committee of the Whole meeting on Aug. 18, 2025. The project team includes BD Construction and consultants Morrissey Engineering, Lane Structural, RW (for veil), and Confluence for landscape design.

The project would replace several scattered concession and restroom buildings with one centralized facility intended to improve wayfinding and amenities for park users and to help the city attract regional tournaments. "It's a facility that can compete with Omaha and Lincoln," Smith said, describing a modern, durable building oriented around a prominent concession window with restrooms set to the side to reduce congestion.

City staff and the design team said the site plan calls for relocating existing batting cages to improve sight lines; a small existing storage shed on the site would remain. The team proposed durable interior finishes (concrete masonry unit walls), a green standing-seam metal roof to match existing park structures, exterior rock-face CMU, covered overhangs for shade and a prominent signage face toward the parking lot. The design includes back-of-house spaces such as storage, mechanical and IT rooms and separate umpire rooms.

On budget, Smith said the design contract uses an initial construction budget of a little over $1.3 million and assumes a 3.5 percent escalation factor for a year. He said combining the building work with separate field-lighting upgrades (replacing six fields with LED lighting and adding centralized controls) brings the total of the shown package to about $1.9 million. "Once you add all that up, it's about $1,900,000 for everything that we've shown today," Smith said. He added the batting-cage relocation is not included in that price and would be a separate cost.

Council members asked about shorter-term use of existing buildings. In response to a question about what will happen to the current facilities, Smith said the long-term plan is to decommission and remove the two concession buildings, but that the team will keep them operational in the near term by backfeeding fiber and other connections until the central building is built. When asked whether the existing northern storage/pavilion would remain, Smith said that structure would stay.

A councilmember questioned the cupola and its value; the design team said it is primarily an architectural accent intended to make the building distinctive and help market the park for tournaments. The cupola element was listed as optional and the presenter estimated its cost could be in the tens of thousands; when pressed the presenter said he would confirm a precise figure (he suggested an early-range figure between $100,000 and $200,000 but said he would follow up with an exact number).

On schedule, Smith said the design team is finishing construction documents and expects to deliver a completed set to the city by the end of the month, with a follow-up meeting about two weeks later. The team said bidding and construction are expected to be pursued next year pending funding and approvals; the presenter described bidding as "late summer, early fall potentially of next year" and said construction could follow in fall 2026 if approved and funded.

No formal motion or vote on the project occurred at the meeting. The presentation closed with the design team asking for questions and confirming next steps on document delivery and further coordination with city staff.