The Auburn City Council on Monday gave Mayor Nancy Backus the go-ahead to negotiate the hiring of Seattle-based ARC Architects to provide design and construction services for the youth center and the community center proposed for the north end of the Les Gove Park campus.
Stan Lokting, ARC principal, told the Council that his 38-year-old firm has worked on a number of community center projects over the years, among them the Rosehill Commnity Center in Mukilteo and the Rainier Beach Community Center and Pool in Seattle. He noted that the firm “helped program the original youth center-community center” until recently proposed for the old YMCA site just south of Les Gove Park.
“We have been around the site many times, and we really understand that it’s not just about a youth center and community center,” Lokting said. “We separate those intentionally because we understand that they are programmatically different in the way they might be operated, but they still will be integrated.
“But what we really understand is that this is a campus. And that the linking of the youth center and the community center to the senior center, to the gym, to the museum, to the rest of the park, those things are going to be important as we develop ideas about a campus,” Lokting said.
“ARC Architects is eminently qualified to do this job,” City Councilman Rich Wagner, chairman of the Les Gove Community Campus Committee, said just before the unanimous vote. “They were in on the original planning (for the community center) … years ago. You saw the resume they have. They’ve put together a Gantt chart that is very complete, and I’m very impressed with their engineers, so I’m very confident that this is the best outfit we can work with on this project.”
A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule.
The youth center and the community center represent an alternative to the long-planned Community Center on 12th Street.
In March 20014, the council decided against proceeding with construction bidding on the original community center because the expected construction costs exceeded the City’s maximum $9 million budget.
Today’s scaled-down alternative calls for the remodeling of the existing Parks, Arts and Recreation offices into a youth center and the development of an adjacent, two-story community center on the north end of the park.
Toward construction, the City has accumulated $9 million, composed of a $3 million appropriation from the state Legislature and $6 million in City funds. As of today, the $3 million appropriation has to be committed to the project by June 30, 2015, or the state takes it back.
One of the City’s hiring criteria for its architect is that it put together a highly qualified team of firms to represent the various specialties needed for the design and construction of the centers.
Preliminary plans for the teen-youth center call for:
• a dedicated hang-out space for kids;
• a computer lab for homework help, SAT prep, resumé and job assistance, college and trade school applications, training and more;
• shared game space;
• a fitness room;
• office space for teen staff;
• an updating and remodeling of the kitchen to create a teaching kitchen for youth and teen programs, which would also serve the community center as a commercial kitchen option.
Preliminary plans for the community center project call for:
• a large, three-bay community room to accommodate events for about 300 people, addressing the demand for meeting and banquet space. Along with physical support spaces such as storage and a warming kitchen, the commercial kitchen that is already there would be available for the community center and the youth-teen center;
• a lobby lounge to be the main reception area for the community center and the youth-teen center. During private center rentals, a separate entrance would provide access to the center. This area would be designed to serve all populations for social gatherings, informal activities, people waiting for transportation and registering for classes, activities and rentals;
• an outdoor patio area into the park from the multi-purpose rooms;
• two multi-use classrooms on the second floor available for rental and accommodating up to 30 people at a time for recreation, education and enrichment classes, birthday parties and senior classes;
• office space for Parks, Arts and Recreation staff on the second floor, and offices in the youth/teen center for youth and teens.
