The city of Concord has never had a true community center. The Green Street center, a former armory, comes the closest. It has a large gym with locker rooms and showers and several small rooms upstairs that host nonprofit organizations.
The West Street Ward House still serves as a polling place and site for senior activities, but, though architecturally interesting, it’s tiny.
The East Concord center across from Merrill Park is even smaller and, in season, waders are needed to access its basement.
And most recently there’s the Dame School, which closed in 2012 and was sold to the city for $1 the following year.
The 1940s school and its 1960s addition need a lot of work, enough that some city councilors wondered whether it would be better to tear it down and start from scratch. The estimate for that plan, which initially called for an 81,000-square-foot center, rose as high as $17 million. That, given all the other city priorities, was too much.
On Monday, the council embraced a $6.5 million plan to refurbish some of the school and tear down less useful portions to make room for a high school-size gym. The plan is an appropriate compromise between needs and wants, and the Monitor supports it. But as with all compromises, the council had to make sacrifices.
Not in the plan is the indoor turf field for lacrosse and soccer with a walking track above it. Gone, too, is the satellite studio for Concord Community Television, which also has a studio at Concord High School.
The proposal for a full branch library has been pared down to a small satellite service staffed by library techs. Its services would include adult and children’s programming, a limited supply of onsite books, an inter-branch loan service and access to some computer technology.
The more ambitious plan called for CCTV to pay rent, and for revenue from renting the turf field to clubs and teams to subsidize the operating costs.
Wisely, the council rejected all the various turf field proposals in favor of pursuing, at a later date, the construction of a full-size field capable of hosting league games at Terrill Park. All plans for an indoor turf field were for a small, nonregulation field of 21,500 square feet. The economics for that didn’t work out.
The annual cost to taxpayers of operating the Dame center, once revenue from city leagues and programs and rental fees are subtracted, comes to an estimated cost of $137,371 in year one. The center, which is sorely needed by the Heights population, is expected to open sometime in 2017.
The Main Street Project is on time, and minus the additional cost of burying utility lines on South Main, on budget. The Sewalls Falls Bridge replacement is going well. But the list of the city’s needs and priorities remains long.
Loudon Road needs repaving and, we hope, reconfiguration. The streets in the neighborhoods sorely need work; a new or expanded library should be built; and extensions are planned for Storrs Street and the Langely Parkway.
Going forward with a reduced but serviceable Heights Community Center was the right decision at the right time.