Bootleg Canyon Park drainage project under way

By Jean Reid Norman

Monday, Aug. 31, 2009 | 1:59 a.m.

Heavy equipment is rolling at Bootleg Canyon Park in Boulder City to complete a drainage project that will turn the former Boulder Sand and Gravel pit into a detention basin.

Pipe has to be laid through the park and the Animal Shelter grounds to provide an outlet for water to escape the basin after a heavy rain, Regional Flood Control District General Manager Gale Fraser said. The system will connect with drainage that runs near Veterans Memorial Drive to disperse storm water safely, according to plans.

“If we didn’t build an outlet, it would not act as a detention basin,” Fraser said. “It would just be a hole in the ground. The last thing we want is to have a hole in the ground full of water and another flood comes along.”

A delay in funding postponed the project, originally conceived in 2004, meaning the construction will have to go through landscaping that stands as a legacy to the late urban designer Damon Ohlerking, who died three years ago.

The prospect concerns his widow, Luci, who noted that Ohkerking brought an artistic eye to the project.

“My main concern is that it won’t be put back together the way it was designed,” she said. “They may be taking photos and may be doing their best to recreate what they destroy, but I don’t know if they would do it with an artistic bent.”

It was a matter of unfortunate timing that brought the projects into conflict. The original plan was to put in the drainage before the park, Public Works Director Scott Hansen said.

The Regional Flood Control District first signed an interlocal agreement with Boulder City to do the drainage project in 2004, but it was not funded until 2007, and the design was changed a couple of times after that, city documents show.

At the same time, the city was under a deadline to complete Bootleg Canyon Park or it would lose funding from the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act. The park was opened in December 2007.

“We were hoping to get it constructed before the park was finished,” Hansen said. “But it didn’t come through that way.”

His department did have the foresight, however, to install drainage pipes underneath the streets that lead to the park, so at least those will not have to be torn up, Hansen said.

There was another time pressure in completing Bootleg Canyon Park, Parks and Recreation Director Roger Hall said. Ohlerking’s health was failing. He died of prostate cancer in July 2006.

Throughout 2006, as he got sicker and sicker, Ohlerking would go up to the park site daily and direct the placement of boulders, Hall said.

“He was so exhausted, but he worked to the end,” Hall said. “He was up there every day.”

Landscape architect Stuart Adams oversaw the completion of the park, and he said Ohlerking designed it knowing the drainage pipe would be coming through.

He designed the park in such a way that the project would do it the least amount of damage, Adams said.

Hall said he has been at the park every day during construction and has seen that crews are taking great care to return things to their original state.

Photos were taken documenting the placement of all of the plants and rocks, Hansen said. Hall said he had been told that the company even recorded global positioning system locations on the items.

“The contractor is doing a great job of making sure things stay the way they are,” he said.

CORRECTION: This story was updated to correct Damon Ohlerking's date of death. | (September 2, 2009)