Design theme picked for $20 million Poway community center
The proposed Mickey Cafagna Community Center will have a mission-style design and could end up costing $20 million to build.
Meeting Tuesday night, the five city council members unanimously agreed on the design choice and didn’t seem to flinch at the “ballpark” construction estimate offered by Development Services Director Robert Manis.
Manis said that the combined senior/community center at Community Park might cost $17.5 million, including site preparation work and construction, plus another $2 million to design and engineer.
Six years ago, when design work first started on improvements to Community Park, a very rough estimate of $12 million for a new community center was kicked around. Public workshops were held, a few designs were prepared, but the project was shelved twice, when the recession hit and then later when the state eliminated local redevelopment programs.
Interest in replacing the aging senior and community centers in the park resurfaced about two years ago. A contemporary exterior design was rejected last fall, resulting in three design themes being presented Tuesday for council review: mission, craftsman and modified contemporary.
It wasn’t even close: the mission design was backed by all five councilmembers and by two members of the Cafagna family in the audience. (Cafagna was a former mayor and councilmember who died in office in 2009.)
Still to be resolved are how to pay for the new center and how best to continue senior programming during construction.
Within the next month or so the council will discuss how best to spend about $17 million in reserves. Part of that might go toward the new center. Other options could include earmarking savings realized by the recent refinancing of redevelopment bonds and/or the use of revenue bonds, much like what was done to build City Hall.
The council will also eventually decide whether to build the new center while keeping the old senior center in operations as long as possible, or having senior activities move to another location during the estimated one-year construction period. An off-site move would save both construction time and costs, the council was told.
Manis said that if all goes as planned, ground could be broken in a year and the new center would be ready for occupancy in early 2017.
In other matters, the council:
• Introduced an ordinance to provide an expedited, streamlined permit process for small residential rooftop solar systems.
• Received a one-year update on the city’s amateur radio antenna ordinance. Two antennas have been constructed in the past year. Both are under 65 feet.
• Adopted a resolution amending the city’s Landscape and Irrigation Design Manual pertaining to defensible space against wildfires.
• Heard a presentation by a representative of the San Diego Association of Governments on the Integrated Corridor Management Project.
