by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
The Sartell Community Center is on track, on budget and well on the way to its anticipated opening next August.
A memo, dated Jan. 2, was presented to the Sartell City Council by Bob Strack of Strack Construction, which is doing the $11-million project.
A long-time dream of Sartell residents, the community center is being built in the Town Square area of south Sartell. It will consist of three gyms, locker rooms, an elevated walking track, a large public meeting area, kitchen-serving facilities, a senior-citizen area, a kids’ play area and learning-innovation areas. The center will not house a branch library, as many had long hoped for and had voted for, but it’s expected to contain a drop-off and pick-up facility provided by the Great River Regional Library system.
Pre-cast concrete panels for the center are supposed to arrive in mid-January. After that, the facility can be sealed off so it can be heated and work can proceed inside.
So far, the foundation and footings have been 100-percent completed, as have all the rough grading, almost all of the curb and gutter, the base of bituminous outside and from 15 to 20 percent of the masonry, plumbing and electrical work. The structural-steel work is about 75-percent completed. The rest of the work will go much faster once the building is able to be closed off from the elements and heated.
The project, Strack noted, is on schedule and on budget with no anticipated problems forthcoming.
The center is being paid for with a bond that will be repaid over time with revenue from Sartell’s portion of the half-cent regional sales tax.
