All-purpose gym, center taking shape at Auburn’s Les Gove Park

Published 12:05 pm Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Today the Activity Center and Gymnasium at Les Gove Park is a shell – impressive but empty except for the small army of construction workers running about.

But by mid-June when the Auburn Activity Center for Youth and Teens opens, the floors will be all-a squeak with the pleasant sounds of tennis shoes on hardwood floors, and the grunts and colorful phraseology of fierce but friendly competition will fill the air.

Those just happen to be some of the best noises that Daryl Faber, director of Auburn Parks, Arts and Recreation, can imagine.

“We’re scheduled to open prior to (the June 24) KidsDay,” Faber said of the 9,850-square-foot center. “We’ll have a full schedule of summer and fall programs for youth, teens, adults and seniors, including pickle ball, volleyball and basketball. We’re initiating a large birthday party package, and it’s selling like hotcakes. We’ll have an outdoor climbing wall program and leagues and clinics for youth and adult senior sports. We’re really excited.”

Features are to include a covered connection to the existing Senior Activity Center, parking for 68 cars and four vans, and a drop-off zone. It will share an entrance with the present Parks, Arts and Recreation Administrative Building, which one day in the not-so-distant future will become the Teen/Tween Center.

Hours will be 8 a.m. to about 9:30 p.m. daily.

“During the daytime it will be used for senior programs, adult programs and everybody,” Faber said. “From 2:30 to 7:30 when school starts up again in the fall, there will be camps and clinics, tutoring, homework assistance, healthy eating programs and a huge climbing wall off of the back of it for those type of classes.

“There will be a transportation plan with the school district, and it will be an after-school meal site of the school district so that those kids who come here after school will be able to get their free snack, which is awesome,” Faber said.

On July 4, the City will use the gymnasium for expanded programs for art galleries.

BLRB Architects, a Tacoma-based architectural firm, designed the building, and the general contractor is Christensen Inc. The total cost for the building is $2,896,200. City officials had expected construction to be complete this spring, but the unusually wet weather delayed opening day by about two months, Faber said.

Construction on the Auburn Community Center, phase 2, of the overall campus construction project, is slated to begin later this year.

The activity center and gymnasium are to complement the 21-acre recreational and educational Les Gove Community Campus. The cluster of amenities includes a library, the Parks and Recreation Administration Building, the Senior Activity Center and White River Valley Museum.

The campus includes the popular Rotary Spray Park, public art, bocce courts, horseshoe pits, a softball pit, and the 32,000-square-foot Barrier Free Playground. A half-mile paved trail encircles an attractive bermed and treed lined area.