Plans for a new Boone County Parks Department facility are budding.
The facility’s end goal, said county administrator Matthew Weber at Tuesday’s fiscal court meeting, would be to house staff, programming and equipment storage in one central location.
“Current facilities are inadequate to support an operation of our size and we have significant deficiencies with federal and state access requirements,” Webster said. “It is very clear on its face that the two programming buildings that we are currently utilizing have significant deficiencies.”
Lack of available square footage, public access, disabled access and staff support space have spurred the need to plan for a new venue, officials said.
“The age and condition of the former single-family residences that we are currently using as repurposed offices make it impossible to remediate those issues,” Webster said, adding the proposed facility would enhance the department’s ability to train personnel and bolster efficiency.
The effort to explore new site designs will be entrusted to Hub+Weber Architects. That would be followed by a formal presentation, with a contract enabling the Court to see what the design costs would be, officials said.
“I took a tour, as recently as this morning, of the parks buildings,” Boone County Fiscal Court District 3 Commissioner Jesse Brewer said. “I don’t know how they’ve been operating. There’s no storage, no room for anything. They’re doing what they can with the space they’ve got.”
Parks department staff should be commended for not recommending an upscale new site, Boone County Judge Executive Gary W. Moore, said.
“We’re talking about a work building, basically,” Moore said. “It’s a very practical building that we think will come back to us. Have Hub+Weber take a look at what is appropriate to build for longevity.”