Plans for a playground memorializing former Haines School teacher Jenae Larson have hit an unforeseen financial hurdle.
The project has raised about $330,000 to date, but a Southeast Roadbuilders design-build bid – the only one submitted for the project – came in last month at $668,000, including $458,000 for construction and $197,000 for playground equipment and fixtures.
Driving construction costs is a requirement to pay prevailing wages on the project being built on the school grounds.
“We thought we were doing so good. We didn’t think about the cost of Davis Bacon wages,” Kim Larson, Jenae Larson’s mother, said this week.
Larson, who has donated $25,000 to the project, said the $330,000 raised to date “is amazing for this sized town.” She noted that the playground ranked high on a recent public survey of local projects.
“We’re hoping the borough will kick in some more money,” Larson said.
Donations to date include a $150,000 from a GoFundMe page, a $57,000 discount from Southeast Roadbuilders, $20,000 from Aspen Hotels, and free design services by Corvus Design of Juneau. The Haines Borough School District has set aside $157,000 for the project, which was launched in August 2021.
The initial design included tricycle trails, a sledding hill, log balance beams, sandboxes with fossils to dig for, a dock pier with a boat play structure and a shorefront landscape with boulders, play canoes and a humpback whale’s tail.
“Jenae loved humpback whales so behind the boat is going to be the tail of a humpback whale,” Kim Larson said in a December 2021 interview. “We’re just trying to do all the things Jenae liked to do.”
Kim Larson said this week that some elements of the project may have to be scaled back. The bid shows a $11,000 price tag on an envisioned lighthouse element and $24,000 for landscaping planting materials.
“It’s still going to happen. We may have to cut some things from the project,” Kim Larson said.
Recent project discussions also have broached the question of using donated labor, Haines Borough Manager Annette Kreitzer said this week. Haines Borough school board members recently said construction of the project likely will be delayed until 2024.
Jenae Larson grew up in Haines and was working as the Haines School’s kindergarten teacher when she died in a landslide on Beach Road on Dec. 2, 2020. Kim Larson said her daughter talked more than once about improving the school playground.
Team Jenae, the group organizing funding of the project, will hold a barbecue pork bowls dinner fundraiser 5-7 p.m. at the Haines School cafeteria on Saturday, April 1. The dinner will include rice and vegetables and to-go orders will be available.