Teen-Community Center ‘on schedule, and on budget’
Published 1:26 pm Wednesday, March 23, 2016
If everything were to go as it should, City leaders said at last year’s groundbreaking, Auburn’s Teen-Community Center would open in in June, in time for KidsDay.
“So far, everything has gone right,” Daryl Faber, director of Auburn Parks, Arts and Recreation said Monday. “It looks cool.”
“We’re on schedule, and on budget. This summer we hope to introduce people to it at open houses, and in September start real programming like leather work, laser cutting and comedy nights,” Faber said.
Auburn is building the 13,700-square-foot community center at the north end of Les Gove Park to create opportunities for public and private events, classes and city-wide celebrations.
A total of 21,000 square feet of the space is to be devoted to educational, cultural and social activities, offering broad views on Les Gove Park
The community center is a from-ground-up project. At its heart a 3,500-square-foot multi-purpose room, offering enough space for 200-275 people and dividable into three rooms. Shared spaces between the buildings are to include a lobby, some outdoor gathering areas and a teaching and warming kitchen, which the project realizes by renovating and expanding the kitchen.
There’ll be a fitness room with cardio and resistance machines with storage, offices and work areas for Parks, Arts and Rec administrative staff.
Taking up 7,300 square feet, the youth center is rising out of the existing Parks, Arts and Recreation administration building. It will offer an arts classroom; a computer lab; youth center staff offices; room for structured programs like dancing and spoken-word events; a dedicated computer lab; an art room; and room for informal activities such as gatherings, games, tutoring and socializing.
Faber said the repurposing of the existing Parks and Recreation Administration building is both fiscally and programmatically the ‘right thing to do’ for the teens, and the new community building with a strong fitness element will meld perfectly with the existing Senior Center and gymnasium.
The budget breaks down into a $3 million appropriation from the state Legislature and $6 million in City funds.
Stan Lokting, principal of ARC Architects, began design work in November of 2014.
