Municipal Facility Focus Group finalizes recommendations for Board Consideration

The Municipal Facility Focus Group, consisting of seven local residents tasked with evaluating needs and developing a plan for a facility needs including a new city hall, community center, and pool, met for a final time on January 7th to finalize recommendations for the Board of Aldermen to consider.

After lengthy review of potential plans and amenities to be included in a proposed new city hall, community center, and pool to be located at the former Sni-A-Bar Farms site in south Grain Valley, the focus group winnowed down their recommendations to fit within bonding capacity of $25-27 million. With an average cost of $23.5 million for the community center, $8.2 million for city hall, and $8.2 million for a pool, the group had difficult decisions to make.

Recommendations sent to the Board of Aldermen from the Focus Group:

The current aquatic center, community center, and city hall are outdated, well-worn, and undersized and lacking key features to meet the current and future needs of a rapidly growing Grain Valley population.

The design concepts created by Hoefer Welker architects address all of our goals and priorities, which we believe the majority of the community will share in, and we encourage our city government to adopt and act upon as many of our goals, priorities, and recommendations as practicable.

The former Sni-A-Bar Farms is an ideal location for a new municipal facility complex, and it allows for future expansion to meet growing community needs.

Efforts should be made to recognize and celebrate historical significance and heritage of Sni-A-Bar Farms with any development of the property by the city government.

The city government should move deliberatively forward to develop the new municipal facilities as quickly as possible as city finances permit and avoid raising property taxes in doing so.

The city government should sell or lease the current municipal complex property for commercial development to help offset the cost of the new municipal facilities and grow the city’s tax base.

The priority for developing new facilities are the Community Center and City Hall.

The city should develop the new aquatic center within 3-5 years, acknowledging that the existing pool will remain open until the new aquatic center is built.

The city should use their bonding and other budgetary resources to complete the buildings to the recommended design expectations. 

The Board of Aldermen will meet at City Hall Thursday evening at 6:00pm for a Facilities workshop to consider recommendations. 

An open house for residents to review proposed plans is scheduled for February 4th at 6:30pm at the Grain Valley Police Department.