At its March 20 meeting, the Park Ridge City Council approved spending for the creation of the Uptown Master Plan and additional security features for City Hall.
In similar fashion to what neighboring suburbs have done by hiring architectural firms for design work in comprehensive master plans, the Park Ridge Council approved a $22,200 contract with a Chicago-based architectural firm to draw up a comprehensive master plan for Park Ridge’s Uptown central business district, and also approved nearly $90,000 for a contract for security upgrades to City Hall, using the same firm that designed the fire station near Cumberland and Devon Avenues.
City staff put out a request for bidders for the redesign of the Uptown area on Feb. 1, and directly reached out to 10 firms, according to Community Preservation and Development Director Drew Awsumb. According to city documents, Farr Associates was the only firm to bid on the master plan. Farr Associates would be responsible for creating technical graphics, maps and diagrams to illustrate a draft of the Uptown Master Plan document.
When asked why only one firm was bidding on the Uptown master plan, Awsumb said the Park Ridge plan was short-term and had a smaller budget of $25,000. He referenced Evanston’s comprehensive plan update, for which the city paid around $750,000 to hire HDR Inc., and the Village of Niles’ 2040 Comprehensive Plan, which cost the village $150,000 to hire the Lakota Group.
“In Park Ridge, we did almost all of the work ourselves, in-house, and with the elected and appointed officials, too. We feel that creates implementable, locally-specific ideas and recommendations in the plan,” Awsumb wrote in an email. “We need help drawing graphics, maps, diagrams and renderings that visualize and communicate the goals and objectives in the plan,” he added.
According to Farr’s website, Farr has experience in master plans for the Lathrop Homes on Chicago’s North Side, a former Chicago Housing Authority property, a transit-oriented development for the Village of Wheeling and the Uptown Circle for the Town of Normal.
At the State of the City address in February, Mayor Marty Maloney said that there would be safety improvements coming to City Hall. “We’ve had a couple incidents over the last couple of years… It’s a pretty open environment — open counters — and things like that… So we’re gonna take some steps to make that a little bit more secure for our employees,” Maloney said.
According to city documents, three bidders applied to provide construction management services for security upgrades at City Hall. Cordogan Clark, the firm hired by the city to redesign Fire Station 35 and oversee the construction of it, was recommended by city staff and tentatively approved by the City Council to design the safety features per a contract worth $89,498. Two other bidders also submitted their proposals at $193,320 and $139,745.
Cordogan Clark also scored the highest on the staff’s evaluation for the project, based on criteria centered on experience, quality and relevance, detailed outline and approach to project activities, overall plan for continuity of City Hall operations and overall project costs.
