EDWARDSVILLE - The Edwardsville City Council voted in favor for the approval of an agreement with Crawford, Murphy and Tilly for supplemental services at Plummer Family Park at Tuesday night's council meeting.
The service agreement will include phase three for excavations at Plummer Family Park after a well and a cellar were found at the site during the previous phase of the cultural research study.
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“There was some discussion in committee that we could just bypass this area, which is a small area,” Alderman Art Risavy said. “But after discussing it we decided that it’s actually a small dollar amount when you consider the project, so it would be in the best interest just to move forward.”
The four-step data recovery process will include creating the agreement between the city of Edwardsville and the Illinois Historic Preservation Office, field investigations, summary of findings and finally research, analysis and reporting.
The estimated time schedule for completion of the excavation process is about two weeks and is anticipated to start by February or March. However weather could play a role in slowing down the process as the fieldwork can’t be done under certain conditions.
The section of the site is small portion of one of the rear baseball fields.
“Now is the time to do it,” Alderman S.J. Morrison said. “If we plan on doing anything with this property in the future it’s never going to be cheaper than it is now, so let’s just do it so that it doesn’t limit us moving forward.”
“This is just possibly a single home dwelling,” Mayor Hal Patton said. “I’m not sure what significance we’re going to find inside of the cellar, but at the end of the day $61,000 is the best we could do and we are using some internal help to keep the price down.”
Council said if anything is to be found on the site they will look into seeing if the items can go to a local historical museum.
