by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
St. Joseph residents can get a sneak-peek of plans for the proposed community center at a public meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 6 at the St. Joseph Government Center.
The public-information meeting was announced at the March 20 city-council meeting.
Murray Mack, president of HMA Architects, will present architectural drawings of options for the facility, which will be constructed primarily with regional half-cent sales-tax funds. It will be retrofitted into the building that once was Kennedy Elementary School and that is now, temporarily, Colts Academy.
Mack has already presented preliminary designs and layouts at the Feb. 7 council meeting, but the new plans have been fine-tuned based on input Mack received from the council based on what residents would like to have in the center.
As to exactly which amenities the center will house, nothing has been decided with certainty. Nonetheless, a consensus is beginning to emerge as the council, city staff, residents and architect pool their ideas. The following are the amenities that stand a good chance of being included as part of the center:
- Space for youth activities.
- An area for senior-citizen activities.
- Two gyms with an elevated walking track.
- Up to a 5,000 square-foot area store and display artifacts in the collection of the St. Joseph Area Historical Society.
- A place for electronics (computers, games, movies and more).
- A meeting-greeting lobby area that can also be used for a social gathering space.
- Possibly a library-service area where items could be picked up and dropped off from the St. Cloud-based Great River Regional Library system.
- A banquet room with kitchen for weddings, reunions and other large gatherings.
- Smaller meeting rooms for such needs as safety-and-health programing, community education, St. Cloud School District educational programming.
- Possibly a place for relocation of the St. Joseph Food Shelf.
- An office for the city’s parks-and-recreation department.
- A concessions place.
- Outdoor spaces for recreational uses and for flea markets, farmers’ markets and other special events.
An architect’s drawing of possibilities for a St. Joseph Community Center will be tweaked and fine-tuned during the coming months. This conception is just one possibility.
Murray Mack of HMA Architects is fine-tuning lay-out plans for the St. Joseph Community Center, based on input from residents and staff of that city.
