City names Time Check Recreation Center committee

The city's Parks and Recreation Department has named 12 people to a committee to help decide where to put a new Time Check Recreation Center.

The existing center took on 14 feet of water during the June 2008 flood and has been closed since then. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has concluded that the building sustained more than 50 percent damage, which allows the city to demolish it and rebuild it elsewhere.

The Recreation Center Site Selection Advisory Committee now will pick three possible sites for a new center, while FEMA also will develop costs figures for keeping the recreation center at its existing site, Julie Sina, parks and recreation director, said this week.

Sina said the advisory committee first will develop a list of traits it wants a recreation center site to have. The current site, for instance, is in the 100-year flood plain, which is not desirable, she said.

Sina hoped the committee would recommend a site and send it on to the City Council in January with plans to have a new center in place by the end of 2012, she said.

Advisory Committee members are Sina, department employees Jeff Kraayenbrink and Rob Wagner, neighborhood association members Richard Campbell and Linda Seger, council members Chuck Wieneke, Don Karr and Kris Gulick, city Recreation Committee members Jackie Thompson-Oster and Tim Polk, and Karl Cassel and Nancy Ryan.

City Hall has used similar site selection committees for the new central fire station and the new animal care and control shelter.