Andy’s Unity Park in Santa Rosa on track for construction to begin in the spring

Three years after the shooting death of 13-year-old Andy Lopez, Roseland’s park project created in his honor will begin around May, with completion slated for fall 2017.|

After living in the Moorland Avenue neighborhood southwest of Santa Rosa for 46 years, Esther Lemus will finally have a community park by fall 2017.

Andy’s Unity Park, to be specific.

Working with a community steering committee on the design, Sonoma County Regional Parks put out bids for construction companies in October, three years after the shooting death of Andy Lopez propelled the community to create a park where the 13-year-old was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy.

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors had intended to award the construction bid at its Dec. 13 meeting, with construction beginning around May. But a last-minute bid protest from a competing construction firm instead led the board to reopen the bidding process and give construction companies a second chance to submit proposals.

The delay in awarding the bid won’t derail the timing of the project, Supervisor Efren Carrillo said. More importantly, the board committed to finding the money to fill the $2.6 million funding gap that remains.

“The most important part, for me, was ensuring that the commitment to carry out the project was at least reached tentatively,” said Carrillo, the outgoing board chairman. “The getting it out to bid and actually putting the shovel into the ground and constructing the actual park, that will come.”

Carrillo has long been a champion of creating a park in the vacant grassy lot where Lopez was killed by a sheriff’s deputy, who mistook the teen’s replica weapon as real.

Carrillo said he hopes reopening the bidding process will give developers the opportunity to “sharpen their pencils” and look at where they can cut expenses. The lowest bid from the first request for proposals came in at more than $3.3 million from Argonaut Constructors of Santa Rosa, but the three lowest bids were all within $36,000 of each other.

Sonoma County Regional Parks Planning Manager Steve Ehret said the new bid will be awarded by March.

“Our goal is to break ground once the weather backs off in the spring,” he said. “We didn’t miss the construction season, that’s the key.”

Plans for a park in the area were originally proposed two decades ago as the neighborhood grew.

“It was a forgotten area of the county,” said Lemus, 70, who served on the committee. “After the Andy Lopez tragedy, that’s when our community came into focus.”

Lopez was carrying an Airsoft BB gun as he walked down a Moorland Avenue sidewalk on ?Oct. 22, 2013, when Deputy Erick Gelhaus, now a sergeant in the Sheriff’s Office, saw the boy from behind and mistook the ?BB gun for a real weapon, he told investigators.

Gelhaus ordered Lopez to drop the gun. When the boy didn’t, and instead turned toward him, Gelhaus fired.

“Since that tragedy, the county has been wonderful in hearing us out and being there,” Lemus said.

When Lemus first moved there to raise her five children 46 years ago, the area was mostly rural.

Now the area it has multistory apartment buildings, single-family homes, people walking dogs and bicyclists making their way around the neighborhood.

“The park is going to mean a lot,” Lemus said. “Right now, kids play ball in the street. For people who don’t have a yard, they’ll be able to have little picnics in the park. People will be able to enjoy family time. Kids will have a place to run. It’s going to make a big difference for the community.”

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