With limited financial resources, the Emporia Recreation Commission appears to be poised to shelf the idea of a new recreation center.
Renovations to the existing Lee Beran Recreation Center also probably won’t happen anytime soon.
Emporia Recreation Commission staff and board members had lunch Wednesday with the Emporia City Commission and city administrators. Although the discussion was informal and friendly, none of the 13 people at the table were advocating building a new recreation center, or proceeding with substantially fixing up the current one.
“I have not heard an outcry in the community for a new one,” said Commissioner Jim Kessler.
Commissioner Joel Phipps also preferred concentrating on improvements to ballfields.
“I coach baseball and travel a lot so I see what the other cities have to offer,” he said. “We are 25 years behind everybody else, which affects the city directly in terms of transient guest tax.”
ERC board member Mike Helbert said what he was hearing from the commission is they should take care of what they have now and upgrade the outdoor facilities.
“Once we are past that step, then we can begin to look at long term capital improvements,” he said.
The ERC started receiving additional property tax money this year, which has sparked months of debate on how to repair, consolidate, remove or build recreation facilities.
A series of retreats in November 2010 led to some priority planning and a December decision to hire two architects, one for ballfields and one for either building a new recreation center or renovating the existing one.
In May the ERC board heard presentations from four different architect firms. A week later the board chose VSR Design to come up with plans to renovate existing ballfields and for a new baseball/softball complex.
The board delayed picking the recreation center architect twice until after getting input from the city commission.
ERC board chairman Jim Markowitz asked Wednesday if they should retain one of the architects for the future or just cut them both loose. The consensus was to let both know they aren’t needed.
The ERC is paying $12,180 to VSR to examine seven parks in town, including Jones Park and the land next to Jones Aquatic Center. The architect will present design ideas and costs.
Tom McEvoy, ERC director, said the report should be ready in a couple months. He said a new complex could cost $4 million to $8 million.
Roger Hartsook, ERC board member, said the new property tax will only raise $7 million to $8 million and a portion of that money has to go to maintenance and programming. Thus, the ERC may need the city’s help to borrow money to construct whatever ballfield projects are chosen.
Hartsook said he’s really interested to see what the architect comes up with for Whittier Park.
“There’s a whole area there we just basically mow,” he said. “We are interested in his concept for that area. Other than that we just don’t have a lot of space to do things.”
hometownkid (anonymous) says...
Gosh I can't believe someone came to there sense's. If we can't afford to maintain what we have how are we going to be able to afford something new??
And what I have learned about public projects if it's projected to cost 4 to 8 million. It will end up costing by the time it is finished about twenty to thirty percent more than the original number. So prepare yourselves emporian's We will be getting a new rec center some time and it will be built out by the aquatic center...that way it will cost us more money to bus kids out west to use it.
then there will be less people using it and then people will be setting around wondering why ???
July 29, 2011 at 12:33 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
hottopics (anonymous) says...
I hope they learned their lesson from the Aquatic center. Yes a new ERC would be nice but its just not a necessity at this time for the town. But those rocks sure were a great investment instead of upgrades elsewhere.
July 31, 2011 at 11:11 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
create (anonymous) says...
Absolutely hottopics. Those dang rocks are going to be an albatross around this city's neck for a long time to come. I know I'll be sure to bring it up often and mightily.
We can thank all members of that committee that proposed it and PUSHED it through without consulting anyone, certainly not the public. They insited on having their way, like spoiled children. Now we can see how far a hundred grand can go towards upgrades.
Spoiled children need a good whack on the a$$ when they act up.
July 31, 2011 at noon ( permalink | suggest removal )