Auburn is about to expand Les Gove Park.

City officials say Big Daddy’s Drive In, Butt’s Tobacco, what had been a temporary library, a vacant retail store and their respective parking lots off Auburn Way South are in the way and have to go.

On Monday, the Auburn City Council awarded Groat Brothers, Inc. the $180,284 contract to demolish the Herr Properties buildings.

Work should start next month.

Of the two responsible bids contractors submitted, Groat’s bid was 32 percent below the City engineer’s estimate, according to City officials.

Tasks call for salvaging specific components of Big Daddy’s landmark carport, the removal and disposal of hazardous materials from the properties, the severance of existing utilities that serve the properties, the removal and disposal of asphalt pavement and erosion control and site restoration.

The City’s intent is to keep the blue poles under Big Daddy’s canopy, the radios attached to those poles and the roofing structure above that. Ultimately, the plan is to turn the site into a commemorative drive-in for car shows and the like.

The City’s arts department is working with artists to decide what to do with the Big Daddy’s sign.

“That barrel-shaped sign is the big, significant visual for that space, and we want to maintain it in some way, shape or form, whether that means taking it all the way down to whatever’s inside of it and rebuilding something, or doing some sort of memory art around it,” Dana Hinman, director of administration for the City of Auburn, told the Auburn Reporter recently.

A project budget contingency of $97,659.00 remains in the Les Gove Park Improvements Fund.

Although the overall plan for Les Gove Park is loose and flexible at this stage, a number of key strategies are likely to guide what eventually happens there.

Strategy one calls for a series of design changes to set the park apart from Auburn Way South and 12th Street, to “make it pop,” starting with a vegetated edge that runs down the block past the Auburn Youth Resources complex and expands closer to the Auburn Library and 12th Street South.

Related suggestions call for a mural on the wall of the Auburn Youth Resources building, overlaid with project art and public announcements, and for reimagining the old Big Daddy’s restaurant property to allow the greenness of the park to reach all the way to Auburn Way South.

Another principle calls for “Constructing the Crescent.” That is, having arrived at the park by car, foot, bus or bike, the main circulation route is the reimagined Deal’s Way, which creates an intuitive, direct pedestrian connection between the parking, all areas and buildings of the campus and the nearby neighborhoods.

The plan makes the main pathway through the park “special” with interesting paving elements and rhythmic lighting. The main connections between buildings, gathering areas and parking are lit at night with glowing down lights to avoid light pollution affecting homes to the east.