by Dennis Dalman
Excitement is building about the long-awaited Sartell Community Center, which is expected to be the site of a grand opening sometime in late August or early September.
The time and date will be determined and announced soon.
Construction of the $11-milllion center is on schedule.
It is being built in south Sartell next to a holding pond known as Lake Francis east of Pinecone Road and south of the PineCone Marketplace shopping mall. The Chateau Waters senior-living apartment complex is located near the center. That entire area has been designated by the Sartell City Council as Town Square, which will contain a mixture of retail businesses, recreational amenities (including the center) and residential dwellings. In the future, Town Square is supposed to become the “downtown” Sartell, the heart of the city.
The Sartell Community Center will play a huge role in the social-recreational-retail functions of Town Square. The center will attract thousands of people year-round because of its amenities. They include three full-size gymnasiums that can be used for other purposes, such as arts-and-craft fairs, concerts, trade shows and other special events. There is an elevated walking track located above and around the gyms. The center also includes a senior-citizen center, a kids’ play area, a pick-up and drop-off site for library items from the Great River Regional Library System, a public meeting space with kitchen facilities, locker rooms and rooms for flexible uses.
The project’s designer is Hagemeister Mack Architects of St. Cloud, and its construction manager is Bob Strack of Strack Construction Co., Sartell.
The center was purposely designed so it can be expanded for additional uses, if need be, in future years. There could, for example, be an outdoor swimming pool or perhaps a rock-climbing wall added. The parking lot will have about 250 parking spaces.
The center was also designed so people who go there can interact with the outdoor world – walking trails, skating on the holding pond, to name just two examples. The building itself contains some spaces with massive walls of glass, allowing for a visual indoor-outdoor interaction. There will also be a large patio on the shore of the holding pond.
The center will be paid for over a 25-year period by using revenue from Sartell’s half-cent regional sales-tax.
The following is a time line of situations and conditions leading to the construction of the Sartell Community Center.
1990s
Surveys in the mid-1990s and since indicate most people in Sartell very much would like a community center that could possibly house a branch library, recreational amenities, public meeting spaces, a senior-citizen area, a place to house and display historical artifacts, a kitchen and lounge areas. City-council members through the years endorse a community-center concept.
1994
A community-center task force is formed. Focus-group meetings take place, there are visits to other community centers and members explore the chances for collaboration with the school system and other groups. More surveys are conducted.
1999
Sartell voters approve the half-cent regional sales tax, which brightens hopes the revenue can someday be used to build a community center.
2000
A referendum effort to raise $9.9 million through a general-revenue bond fails on a vote of 2,972 to 743. Passage of the referendum would have raised residents’ property taxes.
2001
The Bernick’s Ice Arena is built in Sartell, a collaborative project involving the Sartell Youth Hockey Association, the City of Sartell, a $250,000 Mighty Ducks grant and other contributors and volunteers. At one time, an ice arena had been proposed as one of the amenities in a community center. Total cost of the ice arena: $3.4 million.
2002-2003
GLT Architects is hired by the community-center task force to develop a concept for a center at Pinecone Regional Park near where city hall is located.
2003
The council approves construction of what it calls the “first phase” of a community center – an outdoor ice rink, ice-grooming machine, park shelter, warming house, playground equipment, landscaping and irrigation.
2006
Sartell voters approve an extension of the half-cent regional sales tax from 2006 to 2018.
2014
Sartell voters again approve an extension of the sales tax, through the year 2038.
2015 to Present
Work begins in earnest to find the best location for a Sartell Community Center. After considering possible sites throughout the city, the Sartell City Council on a 3-2 vote chooses a southern site, not far from the border with St. Cloud. That site precludes the possibility of a branch library because it is too close to the libraries in St. Cloud and Waite Park. Thus are the rules of the Great River Regional Library System.
Library enthusiasts in Sartell try to convince the council to choose a more central site for the center, allowing for a branch library. However, the three members of the council who voted for the southern site (Mayor Sarah Jane Nicolls, council members Steve Hennes and Pat Lynch) remain adamant.
A Friends of the Library group presents the council with a petition and at one council meeting pickets outside of city hall, showing their displeasure that the three council members have consistently brushed off the idea for a branch library in the center. The other two members, David Peterson and Amy Braig-Lindstrom, are consistently pro-library throughout the ongoing controversy.
There are input meetings at the council as to what people prefer to have in a community center. At one of them, the council chamber is filled with athletic supporters saying there is a need for more gyms in the city.
Later, the design of the center starts taking shape, with help from the construction manager, architect and council members. It will contain three gyms, a senior center, public meeting rooms, a kitchen, a kids’ play area and an elevated walking track but no library service.
After talks with the staff of the Great River Regional Library System, an agreement is reached to install library-item lockers at the center. Sartell residents will be able to order online items from the Great River Regional system, and the items will be delivered to the lockers. Items can also be dropped off for pick-up by Great River Regional employees.
For the first year of its operation, the community center will be meticulously monitored by the council and others to fine-tune its hours and days of operation, its fee schedule and the kinds and frequencies of activities that occur there. The monitoring will also include a review and adjustments to how the building is maintained and cost of maintenance.