Aubrey will continue to make improvements to Veterans Memorial Park after accepting a bid for nearly $1.3 million from Pavilion Construction.
The work will include a bathroom, storage room, picnic tables, marquis sign, shade near the stage and additional parking near the stage.
“I do want to touch a little bit on some specific items,” Parks Superintendent Kurt Karnowski said. “And so this building was modeled to look similar to the Aubrey Train Depot station that was here many years back. This is also a climate-controlled bathroom, and it’s something that is desperately needed in our park.”
Karnowski also showed the council what the proposed sail shade structures near the stage would look like to provide relief from the sun during downtown events.
“Whenever we do have our summer music series, we do have some severe sun that goes right into our entertainers, and so that can be a little tough as we’ve seen some 100-degree temperature here lately,” Karnowski said.
Pavilion Construction’s bid of $1,291,148.99 was the lowest of eight bids the city received, which was approved unanimously.
Tim Heitman, vice president of the Aubrey Municipal Development District, stood before the council to discuss the MDD budget proposals.
“The board met on July 8,” he said. “We reviewed the budget, we debated the budget and so what we have here is the proposed budget that we all agreed on.”
He added that the strategic plan developed earlier in the year helped guide the board on what it hopes to fund.
“We want to start a business accelerator program,” Heitman said. “Most of the cities around us, whether it be Dallas, Frisco, McKinney, Denton, they all have one of these programs.
“It’s basically an incubator program where you bring in entrepreneurs or newly started businesses, and it’s a 10-week program where they have mentors and speakers and things like that.”
That line item is for $10,000.
Marketing, property development and feasibility studies are also on the horizon for the MDD in addition to its traditional grants and economic incentives.
The council took no action regarding the MDD budget at the July 24 meeting.
Also in the meeting, the council voted unanimously to issue a little over $71 million in Certificates of Obligation for municipal projects, which is set to close on Aug. 21 after the Texas Attorney General reviews the sale.
“I’m pleased to say that S&P confirmed our AArating,” said Jim Sabonis with Hilltop Securities. “More than just confirming it. It was a very positive report. … Not only is it a rapidly growing area, but really positive for our community is that while we’re growing, our household income per capita demographics are increasingly significantly.”
Each of the action items proposed were approved unanimously with the exception of item 13, changing the zoning of an area that was previously unzoned to a planned development district on 3.77 acres with a base zoning of commercial, with Chuck Fikes voting no.
