Bids going out for Fulton community sports center

<p>Jenny Gray/For the News Tribune</p><p>This is the overhead view of a planned community sports center in Fulton. The other picture is a aerial of the buiding’s interior.</p>

Jenny Gray/For the News Tribune

This is the overhead view of a planned community sports center in Fulton. The other picture is a aerial of the buiding’s interior.

Fulton residents got a peek this week at what their proposed community center might look like.

Parks and Recreation Department head Clay Caswell said bids for the facility will be due July 11, with results presented July 23 to the City Council.

Plans are to build the community center on the corner of East Eighth and State streets, the southwest corner of Veterans Park.

Pictures show a two-level facility with a basketball/volleyball court, a "turf" fieldhouse and a kitchen/banquet room capable of seating 140 people plus outdoor seating.

Caswell said it is being planned as a metal building with a covered entrance and brickwork. There is space for a future swimming pool, he added.

There also are three planned changing rooms and showers.

"For staffing, we would depend a lot on part-time high school or college kids," Caswell said, adding a building supervisor to work nights and weekends, plus a janitor, may be considered.

The facility would not be a designated storm center.

In April 2016, city voters approved a half-cent sales tax to help pay for stormwater control plus a community recreation facility. The vote was 792-479. City officials are also discussing a baseball/softball field complex off Tennyson Road they said could be a tourism draw.