by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
An architectural firm has been chosen to design a Sartell Community Center.
The Sartell City Council at its last meeting unanimously selected the St. Cloud-based HMA Architects.
Earlier, the council had interviewed two bidders for the job – HMA and GLT Architects. The final selection, council members agreed, was very difficult because both firms gave excellent presentations to the council.
HMA, they agreed, had a slight edge because it has worked with the City of Sartell so successfully currently and in the past and has designed so many other buildings in the Sartell area.
A community center, long on Sartell residents’ wish lists, is expected to be built starting as early as the spring of 2016. The city has earmarked $1.6 million in sales-tax revenue for a center, and more sales-tax funds for the center could well become available because area voters approved an extension of the regional half-cent sales-tax to 2028.
Before the architectural design process even begins, HMA will consult with the council, city staff and residents to get a firm grasp of what they want the facility to contain and where they want it built. An orderly schedule has been approved for every step of that process so that by the end of 2015, all involved should have a clear-cut vision of the center, which HRA can then translate into an attractive and functional design.
HMA stands for Hagemeister and Mack Architects. Murray A. Mack was the principal founder of the firm in 1988 and is now the company’s sole owner. A co-founder with Mack, Richard Hagemeister, retired in 1993. HMA has a staff of nine people.
HMA is an award-winning architectural firm well known for its creative, innovative buildings for a wide variety of purposes: offices, medical facilities, governmental buildings, entertainment-recreational venues, apartment complexes and churches.
Some of the HMA-designed buildings in Sartell include First United Methodist Church, Grandview Estates, the ProSource office complex, the SilverCrest Office and Training Complex, the Regional Diagnostic and Vein Center and Sartell Pediatrics, which won a major award for its innovative retro-fitting in what used to be a bank and then a bar.
Other notable buildings in the greater St. Cloud area designed by HMA are the Herb Brooks Hockey Arena, the River’s Edge Convention Center and the Rejuv Medical Center in Waite Park.
Murray A. Mack is the owner of HMA Architects, the St. Cloud-based company recently chosen by the Sartell City Council to help plan and design a community center.
The First United Methodist Church in Sartell is one of the most recent Sartell projects designed by HMA Architects of St. Cloud. HMA was recently hired by the city council to help plan and design a community center for Sartell.
