ABOVE: The pickleball courts at Veterans Park in Fairmont. The Fairmont Park Board on Tuesday recommended a plan that would move pickleball from here to where the Skate Park is currently. A park shelter would replace what’s currently there.

FAIRMONT – A plan presented to the Fairmont Park Board for movement of some city amenities was recommended by the board on Tuesday.

Public Works Director Matthew York said this discussion began when examining the skate park. The company they talked to said the area is larger and would be more expensive to rebuild on than most of the projects they do. If they made the skate park smaller, then there would be unused space.

“We came up with a couple of different scenarios,” York said. “One we fell on was, it’s not in the right spot where it’s at. Let’s try to move it to a spot that has more children’s recreational amenities. We thought the area south-ish of the parking lot at the aquatic center we own would be a great location for the skate park.”

That then leaves the space near Winnebago Diamonds open. York said the area has several advantages for pickleball, which would avoid the costs of tearing up and rebuilding pickleball courts at Veterans Park.

“[Winnebago] has lights out there,” he said. “We have power out there, a nice parking lot. Maybe that becomes our pickleball courts. We remove the pickleball courts from Veterans Park, put them out at Winnebago, which allows us to not have noise issues that come with pickleball.”

The current pickleball courts are in the middle of a residential area, while Winnebago Diamonds are in a non-residential/recreational area. York said there is one minor hitch to this plan.

“There are no restrooms in that immediate vicinity at Winnebago,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there can’t be in the future, there can be some sort of portable.”

While there are restrooms at the Winnebago Diamonds, they are not close to the skate park where the pickleball courts would be.

With the space left by the pickleball courts, York said they can put a shelter house and situate it so they don’t have to incur costs from digging up in the area where they demolished the old school.

City Council Member and Park Board liaison Randy Lubenow asked how much space they would use for the new pickleball courts. York said it would be four new courts worth, and all of the old cement the skate park is currently on would need to be removed.

All York was looking for now was feedback from the park board to see if he had its blessing to move forward with this plan. Board Member Jeff Coquyt signaled his approval first.

“It fixes a couple things we’ve been talking about for a while,” he said. “We move pickleball, maybe there’s a better spot. As soon as I saw that, I was like, ‘That’s a great idea.’ There’s not a whole lot of housing there. I know that’s an issue if you get big pickleball courts and stuff going on. I would give my blessing on it.”

Board Member Craig Nelson gave his approval as well.

“This makes more sense than anything that’s ever come before the board,” he said.

Nelson asked if the whole thing would be in the budget for next year or if there would be prioritization. York said some things would have to come first.

“We’ll introduce the concept,” he said. “We have some money in the budget for this year so we can start working on some stuff, maybe hold over some of that money for next year. We’ll plot it out. If we had the design in place and the pathway laid out, it would make things a lot easier.”

Board Member Jane Kollofski made the motion to recommend the presented plan, with Coquyt seconding the motion. The recommendation was passed unanimously.

In other news:

— Public Works Superintendent Nick Lardy said there is some money slotted in the capital improvement plan for dugouts at Winnebago Diamonds. He said this would be in line with improvements to bring more games to the fields, such as the scoreboard. The board approved reaching out to the baseball association to work on a plan for dugouts.

— The Fairmont Triathlon organization donated $1,000 to the parks department. Organization Representative Eric Johnson said they had talked over the move at their last meeting.

“You guys provide us with so much support for triathlon, 5k run, youth triathlon events,” he said. “We wouldn’t be able to do it without all the work you do in those several weeks beforehand in getting everything ready.”