Brookfield is one step closer to completing its goal of renovating Ehlert Park.
At the village board’s July 22 meeting, trustees approved a contract with Friedler Construction, a firm based in Chicago, for construction work on the southwest corner of Ehlert Park in the amount of $896,800.
Friedler beat out three other contractors that each submitted bids upwards of $1 million. Documents from the meeting’s agenda packet did not include an engineer’s estimate of the construction costs, but village officials projected last March that the project would cost $1.26 million in total. That same month, the state awarded Brookfield $600,000 in grant funding for the park’s facelift.
Those documents, however, did show that Wight & Company, the architectural firm responsible for designing the renovations, checked Friedler’s references and concluded that its construction and communication are of high quality and the firm “consistently completes [its] work on time.”
The contract between Brookfield and Friedler states that construction work on Ehlert Park can start as soon as Aug. 5 and must be completed on or by Oct. 30. At the end of May, Parks & Recreation Director Luke Gundersen estimated that construction would begin around July 22 and reach “substantial completion” by Oct. 30 before being fully done by Nov. 15.
In March, when Brookfield partnered with Wight, village staff estimated ground would break in July with the goal of completing construction by March 2025.
Planned renovations to the park include a new playground with rubber surfacing and accessible play structures as well as redone soccer and baseball fields to improve drainage. Gundersen previewed Wight’s final design for the renovations at the village board’s May 28 committee of the whole meeting.
