Temporary parking lot at Riverfront Stadium to be built by Wind Surge opening day
Parking at Wichita’s new downtown baseball stadium should be a little easier for the Wind Surge’s opening day next month than it was this past weekend.
The Wichita City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a $54,415 bid from Dondlinger & Sons Construction Co. for temporary parking lots in the Delano area. The lots will be at the southwest corner of Sycamore and Texas, a couple blocks from the main stadium entrance.
City Council documents did not detail how many parking spaces will be created, but staff said the lots are expected to be completed before the start of the Minor League Baseball season.
Opening day for the Wind Surge is May 11, which will be the first game for the team since the Baby Cakes left New Orleans and changed their name. The team is now a Double-A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins.
The first baseball game at Riverfront Stadium was played in front of 7,509 fans on Saturday, a 10-1 win by Wichita State University over Houston.
The new downtown ballpark replaced the demolished Lawrence-Dumont Stadium. The Eagle previously reported that the new stadium will have about half as many on-site parking spaces as the old ballpark. A city advisory board has recommended “bike valets” to encourage biking to games.
Council member Bryan Frye said the winning bid on the temporary asphalt lot was about $90,000 less than the engineering estimate.
“Are we concerned that that’s too low of a bid?” he asked. “That seems to be a pretty wide stretch.”
City engineer Gary Janzen said the bid information was put together in a short amount of time without knowing “all the particulars.”
“This is not really normal for this type of parking lot to be built,” he said. “We initially reached out to some contractors just to get a feel of what the cost might look like, and I think those came in really high. Because of the timing factor and wanting to be ready for opening day, we did not want to be the low bidder. We had no concerns certainly with this contract and the work that they’re going to do.”