4.0. SR 04-03-2000 - Laserfiche WebLink

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CIP - Community Facility April 3, 2000 Page 4 of 5 expansion. A ma]or reason why I am leaning in this direction is because I believe that the large meeting room space may/should be the foundation or Phase I of a larger community center facility that could include a pool, theater, youth center, etc. In order to fully analyze the situation and reach a sound conclusion, I think that we should hire a professional to help us decide if we should be partners with the school or not. A professional will help us look at our city needs and the functions of a shared or larger meeting room facility. Essentially this means working with the City Council on "programming" so that we will really understand what we want and need and how it can be best accomplished. In this regard, I would suggest the city obtain an hourly proposal from Gary Tushie. Gary has been through this process with other communities and will be able to ask the right questions in order for the city to come to some reasonable conclusions for what is best in our particular situation. This programming process will most likely take three, or maybe four, meetings. I think that once we get into the programming process we will also end up looking at our municipal facilities plan in order to identify what should be located at the City Hall complex (this may add a meeting or two to the process). Since my March 7 meeting with Gary Tushie, a lot has transpired on the Community Center issue and on the school pool issue. First, Don Heinzman did an editorial in the March 15 newspaper regarding the need for a civic center. In this article it was mentioned that the Chamber of Commerce "has begun to study the operations of successful centers in Chaska and Shoreview." In a conversation with Chamber Executive Director Renee Sande I learned that this study is coming out of the Chamber's Economic Development Commission, but is not part of the chamber's or commission's 2000 work plan. In this regard, some members strongly believe that a community center and an arts center would be beneficial to the city, and are gathering information on this topic. A newspaper article was also written on the recent efforts in the city of Buffalo to get special legislation passed to help fund a community center. Representative Anderson has sponsored legislation in this regard, but it was not successful. Reports on this proposal has spurred other people on into thinking that Elk River could get a community center partly financed with state monies. In fact, this is very unlikely. The Buffalo legislative effort is not unlike the Elk River effort on behalf of the Minnesota Sports Federation proposal in 1998, where Representative Anderson and Senator Ourada sponsored special legislation for that Elk River community facility. This proposal was also not successful. In today's political climate, the Governor is pointing to such things as the Hastings community center request as an example of what is, and should be, a local project and not included in the state bonding bill.