Wheeler Ranch park closer to reality

Residents in Wheeler Ranch are now only months away from having a park in their south Yuba County neighborhood, after years of frustration and waiting.

The Olivehurst Public Utility District board of directors approved Thursday night opening a bid process for a park near the subdivision's entrance, with construction set to start as soon as six weeks from now.

"If you get a good contractor, it can be done sooner," said OPUD Public Works Director John Tillotson, adding the most recently built park in Plumas Lake, Bear River Park, was built in about three months.

The district will begin accepting bids for the 2.1-acre park next week, and the board would select from those bids at the next regular meeting in mid-April. Tillotson said work could start about two weeks after that.

When completed, the "wraparound" park would be on the southwest corner of Winter Rock Drive and a traffic circle, north of the entrance of the subdivision on Plumas-Arboga Road.

But it won't be the last park in the neighborhood. In the northwest part of Wheeler Ranch is a 5-acre parcel slated to eventually abut a school, have a park of its own — and possibly, be home to a south Yuba County skate park.

"This is a good-size park," OPUD General Manager Tim Shaw said Thursday in response to a board query whether the 2.1-acre park would work for skating. "But a skate park would need more of a buffer."

The 5-acre parcel, by comparison, is more removed from homes and would be next to an as-yet unbuilt school that would only be occupied part of the day, so it might better suit skating, he said.

Yuba County officials have said they may try to establish a series of small skate parks across the county, with the first set to be established this summer in West Linda.

But any park at all is likely to be welcomed by Wheeler Ranch residents, who've had block parties of a sort in the street and in empty lots where a park is designated, for lack of anywhere else to do so.

The neighborhood found itself so denied when the original builder for Wheeler Ranch went bankrupt, but not before residents paid millions in taxes to build the park, though the builder held the deed to the park land itself.

Through a negotiation completed last year with bankruptcy trustees, OPUD got deed to the land in exchange for about $2.7 million, and negotiated lower parcel taxes for Wheeler Ranch residents as well.

A bankruptcy judge signed off on the deal in September.

CONTACT Ben van der Meer at 749-4709 or bvandermeer@appealdemocrat.com.