Federal COVID-19 money could bring a new beach house to Bass Lake. The Starke County Park Board wants the county council and commissioners to earmark $1 million of the county’s $4.4 million American Rescue Plan allocation for that purpose.
During last week’s park board meeting, Board Member Rik Ritzler noted that there are already preliminary plans from Constellation of Starke’s 2019 Stellar Communities application. “We already have the first couple steps done for this,” he said, “so it wouldn’t take a whole lot for a consultant designer to do the design of a renovation or a replacement, based, roughly on what is here.”
Beyond that, the project already has broad public support, according to county attorney and Constellation of Starke Executive Committee member Marty Lucas. “It is really the crown jewel of the landscape of this area,” Lucas said, “but that’s not so much relevant to this as the fact that we did extensive vetting with the public, outreach with the public about the public support for it, and we found – I was somewhat surprised by the breadth and depth and the consistency of the public support for doing that.”
The county commissioners were open to the idea when Ritzler presented it to them Monday, but county officials still want to see the full impact that COVID-19 ends up having on local income tax revenues. County Council President Dave Pearman also wanted to make sure the project would meet the requirements for American Rescue Plan funding.
While the preliminary plans allow for either the renovation or replacement of the current beach house, officials think the replacement option might cost less and better meet the county’s needs.
