Photo by James Short.
Editor's note: images of the plans can be viewed at the bottom of this submission.
As Whitpain Township announced a handful of times over the past year, our community is the beneficiary of an extraordinary $10 million gift to fund construction of a community center for use by all.
This transformative donation, made anonymously, was done near the end of 2022. The township agreed to three stipulations related to the donation:
We agreed, and here is what we’ve been up to since that time.
We split the money in half and invested it in secure instruments, backed by irrevocable letters of credit. As of April 30, the original $10 million has grown by over $645,000. This is one instance in which high interest rates are working to our advantage. Indeed, Whitpain is earning approximately $46,000 per month on the money, and that means if interest rates remain relatively stable throughout 2024, the township should earn approximately $1 million on the original $10 million donation — which is simply astonishing.
During the first half of 2023, we sent out a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) to secure an architect. Our RFP generated over 20 responses from design firms. We carefully reviewed the responses, interviewed the finalists, and selected Phillips & Donovan Architects, LLC to lead our design and engineering team.
With our architect selected, we began by meeting with as many community stakeholder groups and individuals who were willing to speak with us. We received valuable insight about what indoor space is needed and what the shape of that indoor space should look like. Those discussions led to three options, with slightly different sizes and configurations.
Our goal is a community center with as much space as our budget can support. As with any project, we will work with a cost estimator to turn cost estimates into as close to cost certainty as possible. To illustrate, if the building is at — or close to — $300 per square foot, we can obviously get a larger footprint than if the costs roll toward $400 per square foot. Our current sketches have a large gym which can be subdivided in half and further broken up into pickleball courts, an elevated walking track above the gym, a large community room, as well as separate spaces for workout equipment and related offices and storage facilities.
We also needed to select the best site for the project. To that end, we held an open forum last year and have taken comments at other board meetings. After our review, two sites made the most sense:
To be sure, some commenters asked us to demolish and/or purchase unused or underused buildings in other parts of the township for the community center. In the end, however, we determined that buying land — whether vacant or with a building already on it — would significantly diminish the donation as the land acquisition and preparation costs would be extremely high.
While there were strengths to each site, particularly given the estimated $300,000 to $500,000 in extra costs related to widening Arch Street Road, installing a new turn lane as well as increased parking needs, the Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to select the Dog Park site for our community center.
Now, for the many of you who use our Dog Park, have no fear: as a part of this project, Whitpain will relocate the Dog Park to the Mermaid site across from Arch Street Road.
Quite a few of the community groups we spoke to indicated a desire to construct a larger building, with more space for athletic use by people of all ages, from youth basketball, soccer, volleyball, scouting, baseball, softball, and cheer programs to senior pickleball, yoga, and Pilates. We expect to rent the space out to leagues of all types for tournaments, games, and practices, in addition to hosting parties/events as well as individual memberships. Importantly, we want to also have space so our fine police officers and fire fighters can train indoors, either in the evenings or when kids are in school.
Remember, this is Phase One of our community center project. We have also applied for two grants which, if successful, will help us fund Phase Two — which is knocking down the back wall of the current design and adding up to two full gyms and/or similar spaces. We hope to hear about the state grant money later this year, but in the interim, we are proceeding with Phase One. Phase Two, if we are successful with our grant applications, will follow.
In a perfect world, we will construct both Phase One and Phase Two at the same time. You will have to stay tuned. Of course, there is a community center Phase Three, but we don’t even want to speculate a timeline on that.
Whitpain welcomes comments on the three interior designs. We want to hear from the community and get more precise costs before we vote. The board hopes everyone remains as excited as we are: a $10 million donation, growing to $11 million (with that extra million to help Whitpain pay for soft costs, including architect fees, engineering costs, legal expenses, and permitting fees, along with the costs of relocating the Dog Park), with the hope of state grant money to construct Phase Two.
Where does something like this happen? Right here in Whitpain Township.
Signed,
Scott M. Badami
Chairman, Whitpain Township Board of Supervisors
