Task force not interested in linking rec center to Harrison's future

A new, second-try City Hall task force convened Thursday and expressed no interest in building the city's new west-side recreation center on Harrison Elementary School property as a way to get the school off a school-closing list.

Instead, the recreation-center task force members made it clear that they want to focus their attention for a new $3-million-plus recreation center on spots along the main traffic artery through the northwest neighborhoods, Ellis Boulevard NW.

Such a placement will fuel “the reflowering” of the Ellis Boulevard commercial strip and the Time Check and Harrison neighborhoods along with it, City Council member Monica Vernon, a task force member, said.

How can the city expect the private sector to risk building along Ellis Boulevard NW if the city isn't willing to do so? council members Don Karr and Chuck Swore, both task force members, added.

Sufficiently strong, in fact, was that focus on Ellis Boulevard NW that the task force said it remained open to building the new facility on elevated ground in the 100-year flood plain, an idea that a first task force and city officials earlier had rejected because of extra cost.

Vernon, though, noted that city demolition contractors have moved and continue to move plenty of dirt as part of the city's flood recovery and so the cost to do it at a spot along Ellis Boulevard might not be so great.

“We put people on the moon, maybe we can figure this out,” Vernon said.

Even so, task force members also made it clear that they are waiting to see if voters on March 6 agree to extend the city's 1-percent local-option sales tax for 10 years, revenue from which will help pay to build a flood protection system on both sides of the river. Property now in the 100-year flood plain, such as much of it along Ellis Boulevard NW, will no longer be at that level of flood risk with a flood protection system, task force members noted.

Dale Todd, co-chair of the task force and a former City Council member, said he wanted a see what city-owned properties along Ellis Boulevard NW were in the 500-year flood plain and outside the 100-year flood plain.

The eight-member task force is comprised of five of the nine City Council members, a council majority. As a result, Karr noted, any task force recommendation that all five council members on the task force support will win subsequent council passage.

One of the council members on the task force, Scott Olson, floated the idea of putting the new recreation center on Harrison school property, and on Thursday, Olson was on vacation and not able to push the idea.

The other task force members, though, said the school district should take Harrison school, at 1310 11th St. NW, off the closing list in any event.

Vernon noted that City Hall currently is directing millions of dollars in federal disaster money into the Harrison area to build homes to replace what was lost in the 2008 flood. The last thing the city and the school district needed, she said, was a “half-baked” Harrison school, part school and part recreation center, that wouldn't be able to handle what the city expects will be a growing population of children in the neighborhood.

Council member Ann Poe, a task force co-chair, said trying to use part of the school for part of the city's recreation center would be no different from what the city has at its east-side Ambroz Recreation Center, which is in an old school that the city has been trying to get out of for years.

Both Vernon and Poe noted that Harrison school is out of the way. In contrast, they said putting a recreation center along busy Ellis Boulevard would let the city “showcase” the building. Such a location also would put it near a trail and next to the “greenway” along the river where flood-damaged homes once stood. No new construction can take place in the greenway, and so part of it is apt to become ball fields. Ball fields next to a recreation center makes sense, Vernon said.

At the close of the meeting, though, the task force stopped short of turning its back entirely on the Harrison school option and so did not move ahead on Poe's motion to eliminate the idea from consideration.

The new recreation center, which the city has been working to site for more than 18 months, will replace the flood-ruined Time Check Recreation Center, which was demolished this week.

A first task force settled on three possible sites for the new facility, all of which were in or next to Ellis Park. The council rejected those earlier this month and called for a new task force.

Karr said he was open to using some revenue from the city's existing local-option sales tax to help pay the facility's costs if they exceed more than the current budget of about $3.4 million.