LEED Silver Rec Center Expected to Revitalize Neighborhood

ST. LOUIS — On the city’s north side, work is under way on a $22 million, 79,000-square-foot recreation center designed to achieve LEED Silver certification.

 

The O’Fallon Park Recreation Complex, scheduled for completion by the end of 2011, will be the second community center built in the city since the 1970s. The facility is being touted as a revitalizing effort for the impoverished North St. Louis, according to city officials. 

 

“We don’t have a YMCA or anything over here,” says St. Louis Ward 19 Alderwomen Marlene Davis. “[The recreation center] gives hope to this community, too, to see something of this scale.”

 

Inside the two-story O’Fallon Park Recreation Complex will be an indoor aquatic park; two full-sized basketball courts; an indoor track; 5,780 square feet of fitness and weight room space; an indoor/outdoor dining area; and several multi-purpose rooms. Outside the building will be a lap and splash pool.

 

Funded by a 1/8th-cent sales tax that voters passed in 2006, the O’Fallon Park Recreation Complex took two years of negotiating with local organizations to set a minimum 40 percent minority contractors participation level, and a minimum 32 percent minority workforce participation level, for the project.

 

The project has been designed by St. Louis architecture firm KAI Design & Build, and constructed by general contractor and construction manager S.M. Wilson, also of St. Louis.

 

 

 

Edited 10-14-10