Community center project keeps slowly moving along

Monday, April 12, 2021
Architect’s drawing illustrates what the proposed Greencastle Community Center might look like when complete.
Courtesy photo

Albeit slowly, the Greencastle Community Center/YMCA project is moving along, the City Council was told at its April meeting.

The next step in the project, City Attorney Laurie Hardwick reported, is going out for proposals for construction management services on the project.

The Greencastle Redevelopment Center (RDC) is undertaking that and will be sending out requests for proposals “within the next couple of weeks,” Hardwick said, detailing the project status for the Council in the absence of Mayor Bill Dory Thursday night.

The request will be out for roughly a month, Hardwick said, before a committee -- ostensibly composed of members of the RDC, City Council, the mayor and community center partners Putnam County Hospital, and the Wabash Valley YMCA -- reviews the proposals and whittles down the candidates to a final two or three.

“The top candidates will then likely come in and make presentations to the committee,” Hardwick added.

The construction management route is a relatively new method of bidding out construction projects, an idea universities, schools, non-profits and other groups have been successful using.

“Municipalities are now doing it,” Hardwick said, “and it’s been very successful.”

The chosen construction management firm will work with the architect on engineering and plans for the building and layout, the city attorney said, to help keep prices down and find ways to implement economies of scale.

“It’s economically advantageous for entities to hire contractors this way,” she added, noting that when prices are negotiated the city will end up with a maximum guaranteed price on the project. “Then everybody knows where we are.”

That includes project partners PCH and the YMCA, who once the maximum price is determined, can sign contracts on the community center.

Councilor Stacie Langdon asked about the timeline on the long-awaited project.

“Are we talking three months? Three years?”

“It will take a while,” Hardwick conceded without being specific, “to get the bids with all the specifications for everything that goes into it, including counter tops, wiring and the telephone system, things like that.

“The basics have already been done and we’re working with an architect (Tom Salzer of Bona Vita Architects ) who has experience with YMCAs.”

The community center/YMCA is conceived as being built near the southwest corner of the 73.26-acre site north of State Road 240 and east of Ballard Lane, purchased from the Ballard family. The community center is expected to be built on 15 acres (plus or minus a couple).

Size of the facility has been suggested as up to 51,000 square feet with enough room left for future growth and adequate parking. At that size, with construction cost figures predicted at $200 per square foot, cost of the facility has been estimated at $8 million to $10 million.

Hardwick was asked if the layout is still the same as suggested when the project was unveiled to the public at a May 23, 2019 meeting at City Hall. Some 75 local residents were in attendance at that open forum.

“Generally, yes,” she responded, “the concept is the same.”

As designed presently, the building would include a 6,100-square-foot area reserved as leased space for a health care facility, which architects said might be a prompt or urgent care center, a family practice office or an office hosting rotating specialists. Putnam County Hospital has been involved in project discussions but its board has not taken action on the issue.

Other spaces include a teen center, child watch area, two (possibly three) basketball/volleyball courts, community space (which could be converted to locker rooms if a pool is ever included in a later phase of the project), workout area and offices. Also, a two-lane walking/running track will go all the way around the second floor of the facility with its distance calibrated at 8.5 laps to a mile.

“I don’t want to be Debbie Downer here,” interjected Councilman Adam Cohen, chairing the meeting in the absence of the mayor and Council President Mark Hammer, “but we have to have realistic expectations on what we can afford to build and want we can afford to maintain.

“We have to also have to be realistic about what the final product is going to look like. And more importantly, how much it’s going to cost.”

Asked if another public meeting on the community center could be scheduled, now that nearly two years have passed, both Cohen and Hardwick were open to that idea.

“I’m in favor of as much public input as we can get,” Hardwick said. “As far as public engagement, anytime is a good time.”

Cohen said he understands, in talking with Mayor Dory, that the city plans to reintroduce the community center venture “in some fashion, but not go back to start-the-process-over fashion, but at least reintroduce the building and scope of the project in some type of public meeting or forum.”

Councilors Cohen and Langdon were joined at City Hall for the April City Council session by Councilors Dave Murray, Veronica Pejril, Cody Eckert and Jake Widner.

The next regularly scheduled meeting of the City Council is set for 7 p.m. Thursday, May 13.

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