Quincy seeks community meeting for new rec center

QUINCY — Quincy’s proposed new recreation center is slowly beginning to take shape, with Recreation Director Russ Harrington hoping to have plans in hand by the end of the year.

“We hope to start looking for grant money by the end of the year,” Harrington told the Quincy City Council Wednesday evening.

Harrington also hopes to start having community meetings in August, so city residents can take a look at the plans for the new East Park recreation center currently being developed by city officials, a citizens group of about a dozen city residents and architects from NAC Architecture in Spokane.

“We’re still looking at an East Park location, so there are not a lot of site costs,” Harrington said.

The city’s current aquatic park of two pools is located in East Park.

Harrington described a two-phase project that would cost roughly $20 million. The first phase, a 29,000 square-foot complex with five offices, a gymnasium, teen center and child center, would cost around $12 million.

The second phase would replace the current lap pool with a 14,000 square-foot covered, indoor pool and would cost around $8 million.

“I imagine the current lap pool would be out of commission for a summer, depending on how fast construction goes,” Harrington said after the meeting.

As for the cost estimates, Harrington described them as “very rough” and based on the square footage of comparable buildings — primarily schools and recreation centers — that NAC has experience designing.

However, Harrington said that because the city would be replacing current park land with a building, the city will “need to buy more open land” somewhere to offset the loss.

The Quincy Recreation Department should announce a date for the first large community meeting on the proposed recreation center soon.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.