Floor Removal Underway

Workers Replace Damaged Floor in the New Gym at Rec Center

A project to replace the wood floor in the new gymnasium at the Palisades Recreation Center began July 19 and is scheduled to be completed October 19. ‘If all goes according to plan, we’ll be able to start running practices and playing games in there by the third week of our fall basketball leagues,’ said Rec Center Senior Director David Gadelha, who transferred from Barrington Park Recreation Center in June. The floor’s wood surface was warped beyond repair in January when a basketball struck and ruptured a pressure gauge located four feet beyond one of the sidelines at the east end of the basketball court, causing water to gush out and flood the gym within minutes. In the spring, the City Council, at Cindy Miscikowski’s request, voted to allocate $45,000 to the Department of Recreation and Parks to replace the floor. The City hired a private contractor, Hur Hardwood Flooring, to complete the 90-day project. Wasting no time once the project was underway, workers pulled up almost half of the water-soaked floor by last Saturday, and two-thirds of the old floor had been removed by Tuesday afternoon. ‘It’s usually a crew of one to three guys,’ Gadelha said. ‘They arrive here around eight or nine in the morning and work until three or four in the afternoon. All week they’ve been cutting the floor into 6 x 6 sections and carting it out.’ Once the entire floor has been removed, the gym will be cleaned, vacuumed and aired out for two weeks before work can begin to lay the new wood and nail it in place. Gadelha insisted the facility will not be reopened until some sort of guard or security grate is installed around the pressure gauge to prevent the possibility of flooding in the future. ‘The last thing we want is a repeat of what happened in January,’ Gadelha said. ‘I also want to put some padding around both the gauge itself and the surrounding pipes so we can eliminate any safety concerns.’ Despite not having access to the gym, Gadelha and his staff have made due without it so far this summer. While he remained hopeful the gym will be ready on schedule, Gadelha insisted the fall boys, girls and co-ed basketball leagues will be played in the old gym and outdoors on the blacktop courts until the new gym is available. ‘The season starts the first week of October and runs through the middle of December,’ Gadelha said. ‘When the new gym is ready we will start moving practices and games for the older kids in there. Until then, those teams will be playing on the outdoor courts.’ While reopening the new gym has been his top priority since he took over, Gadelha also plans to get more local schools involved in programs at the park and increase numbers in the T-ball, five-pitch baseball and minor/major junior basketball leagues. The Rec Center will be hosting a youth basketball skills challenge the next two Sundays (see page 9). Palisadian Kurt Toppel earned Citizen of the Year honors for spearheading a three-year effort to build the new gym, which opened in July 2000. Initially, there were a few small kinks, like bubbles in the floor caused by heat after the air conditioning malfunctioned. Despite the minor problems, the gym had remained open seven days a week.