Parkersburg City Council committee to consider recreation center location
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PARKERSBURG -- The location of a proposed $13 million activity and recreation center will be considered by a Parkersburg City Council committee next week.
Discussion of the center and its location is the sole item on the agenda for the Public Works Committee meeting scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Monday in the executive conference room on the second floor of the Municipal Building.
The site of the nearly 100-year-old, 10,500-square-foot pavilion in City Park was pitched as the location when the project was introduced in March. Feedback from the public suggested looking at other places, with some residents concerned the project would disrupt the park or not provide enough opportunity for additional, related development.
The city commissioned a site feasibility study by Pickering Associates, which is designing the facility, and it determined the park was the best fit out of six locations considered. In addition, no property owned by the Parkersburg Urban Renewal Authority provided the roughly 3 acres, including parking, the project needs, the study said.
Public Works Committee Chairman Chris Rexroad said the committee will review the study Monday.
"The goal is to nail down a final location so that plan is set," he said.
Any decision by the committee would be forwarded to the full council for review. And Mayor Tom Joyce noted Tuesday that the project is not fully funded.
"We don't have the adequate funds appropriated yet to build anything anywhere," he said.
About $4 million has been allocated to the project so far.
Joyce maintains that City Park is "the best location, the most logical location."
"I think this would make for an improved location for what goes on in the park," he said, referring to festivals and other events.
Joyce said he's heard some people say the construction of the center would "ruin" the park, a suggestion he finds "ridiculous."
Council President Sharon Kuhl also supports the park as the site of the project.
"I'm excited about it," she said. "I think that if people would sit back and really look at it and see what kind of impact it will have on our city, they would be too."
Kuhl said she's fielded calls from residents concerned about building the center in the park, but some have thought the facility would be bigger than actually planned or would not have enough parking. After she's provided the correct information and shared material from the feasibility study, many have changed their minds, Kuhl said.
Rexroad said he too has gotten a good deal of feedback from constituents about the project.
"I plan on voting the way my constituents have conveyed to me that they feel about it," he said, declining to add which way that might be.
A representative from Pickering has been invited to the meeting.
Committee meetings generally do not offer an opportunity for public comment, and Rexroad said that will be the case Monday.