A Louisiana company was the only bidder to replace the splash pad at Catfish Row.

Planet Recess of Baker, Louisiana, submitted a bid of $536,617 to rebuild the pad, which was demolished after it became too expensive to repair. The Board of Mayor and Alderman approved the bid pending the review by Landscape Services, the Tupelo-based landscape architect firm hired for the project. The goal is to have the new splash pad in operation by May in time for summer.

The company’s bid is $311,617 more than the project’s $225,000 budget, but South Ward Alderman Alex Monsour, who oversees recreation, said there were some “contingencies to make it work.”

The 15-year-old splash pad was a popular and well-used attraction for the city, but was shut down last year for almost one month, from June 30 to July 26, while city workers installed rebuilt pumps and filter motors.

City officials closed the splash pad in June after the filter motor locked up, requiring a new part to be ordered and installed. However, as workers prepared to make the repairs, other problems occurred, forcing the city to bring in a crew from Jackson to examine the problem.

Monsour said in October the problem became worse as the season went on.

“The old design pad, even though we fixed it and got it all running, the pipes that are under the concrete by the end of the summer had apparently broken loose and the only way for us to get under there to fix it was to break the concrete and get the pipes fixed,” Monsour said.

“We had so much water going out from underneath it so bad and going into the street that we didn’t have a steady flow up top. We were losing water faster than it was coming out.”