URBANA -- Park board members Tuesday night approved spending $18,890 for preliminary engineering and design work to repair and renovate the nearly 100-year-old pavilion at Carle Park in central Urbana.

The vote by the Urbana park board was unanimous.

"This is something important to the Carle neighborhood," said board member Nancy Delcomyn. "But this also is a feature that affects all of Urbana. It's hard for us to get a grasp of how strongly people feel about this feature."

Still, board member Deborah Rugg said she wanted assurances that the park district could do something about the ongoing vandalism that has plagued the pavilion for years.

She suggested the repair and renovation would cost at least $100,000, the amount the park district spent on a similar repair in the mid-1990s.

"It does press the issue of whether we should regularly spend $100,000 on this," Rugg said.

Park district officials said they would meet with neighborhood members and others to try to come up with ways to minimize vandalism. Some of the ideas already mentioned include installing video cameras and wi-fi service, and doing more to prevent people from gaining access to the balcony of the structure, which is believed to date to 1919.