New rec center to be meeting place

Columbus plans to take the first steps toward transforming recreation centers in struggling neighborhoods into places where other public and private agencies and nonprofit groups can reach residents.

Buried within the $860 million capital-improvement budget that the city plans to release on Monday is a $2.2 million line item to begin planning the city’s first “Center for Opportunity” in Linden Park. That’s part of $16 million in new money that the city is earmarking for recreation and parks projects in 2017.

The city plans to tear down the 25,000-squarefoot recreation center there and replace it with a 35,000- square- foot facility with space for recreational activities and for other agencies to work.

“We’re going to involve the community in this and come out with a final design everyone is excited about,” said Tony Collins, director of the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks. “We’re looking at a number of different possibilities.”

More than two years ago, the city started exploring a “focus center” concept for 11 recreation centers in areas with high infant- mortality rates. It wants to work with other agencies to provide services in city space.

The Linden center will be near a pre- kindergarten center in the neighborhood, Collins said, so it probably will tie into the neighboring building.

Collins said he has started talking to the YMCA, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Columbus and other organizations that could work out of the Linden center. Centers in each neighborhood will look different and offer individual services based on what residents want or need.

Planning will kick off this summer and could take about a year, Collins said. Construction is expected to start near the end of 2018.

Mayor Andrew J. Ginther and members of the Columbus City Council are to release the capital budget Monday at the Indian Mound Community Center, 3901 Parsons Ave., where the city will spend $ 7.5 million this year on renovations and an expansion. The community center will more than triple in size, from 10,000 square feet to about 32,000 square feet.

“It’s a real transformation,” Collins said. “You’re going to see a completely different facility.”

Indian Mound has a gymnasium, a small classroom and a third, small room. By spring 2019, it is to have a renovated gymnasium, a multipurpose room, two dedicated art rooms, a fitness room, a teaching kitchen and a game room.

It also is to have dedicated space for senior programs, Collins said.

“We’re going to be able to offer a balanced offering of programs for everyone from 8 to 80,” he said.

The remaining new money in the capital budget for recreation and parks will go to bike trails, smaller-scale improvements at recreation centers around the city, and the replacement of street- side trees lost to the emerald ash borer, he said.

Collins said the city plans to build more connectors between neighborhoods and the city’s trail system.

“We’re making sure we’re investing in neighborhoods equally around the community,” he said.