News Articles and Press Releases

7/15/2009

Park District awards contract for conservatory

By Mike Wiser

ROCKFORD — Ringland-Johnson, Inc. was awarded a $7.16 million contract to begin construction on the Nicholas Conservatory by a unanimous vote of Rockford Park District commissioners tonight.

The conservatory is the centerpiece project of the district’s 100-year anniversary celebration that officially began March 27, a century after the district was created to oversee its first piece of public property, Sinnissippi Park.

Fittingly, the conservatory is set to go up in Sinnissippi where the greenhouses that were built in the 1920s now sit. The $7.16 million contract leaves roughly $2 million out of what the district estimates it will spend on the first phase of the project.

Tonight commissioners received a short presentation about the first steps of the project from Jim Reid, the Park District’s former deputy director of capital planning and management. Reid went over some of the features of the new building.

Those features include a banquet area with seating for 125 people, a geothermal heating/cooling system, a growing greenhouse and, of course, a conservatory for tropical plants.

The contract specifies that construction must begin by Aug. 1. John Cook of John R. Cook Associates, which is the architecture firm on the project, said construction should be completed by July 2010.

“Then you have to wait about 4 to 6 months for the plants to start going, so we’re thinking an official grand opening around Thanksgiving,” he said.

The conservatory project has been in the works for about a decade and much of that time was spent fundraising.

More than 950 people donated $9.05 million to the project in amounts ranging from $10 to millions of dollars. There were 13 people who made gifts of more than $100,000 to the project.

The only public money going into the initial $9.1 million needed to start construction is a $50,000 grant from the state.

The largest single donation was the $2.15 million donated by the Nicholas brothers, Bill, Dan and Ab. The conservatory is named for their parents.

“This will be a present that will serve our community for years to come,” Park Board Chairman Doug Brooks said following the vote. “Thank you.”