St. Joseph Regrouping on Future Community Center Plans

ST. JOSEPH -- In order to make sure it's done right, St. Joseph is regrouping on their plans for the future of their community center.

As part of that regrouping, the council approved a feasibility study at their meeting Monday night. Fair Winds Consulting, the group hired, will now be provided with a list of names, community and regional players who've donated to similar projects in the past.

Mayor Rick Schultz says, they'll interview those players, and see what they think of the project.

"They take that name list and then do interviews. They do the due diligence to see who's interested in participating in this community center project."

After the interviews, the firm will come back and tell the city whether their goals are doable or not. This does put the fundraising project behind. The original goal was to have $3-million raised by May of next year, now that's when the feasibility study is set to be wrapped up.

Schultz says plainly, they should've done this a while ago.

"In June or May, we finally said we need to hire a professional. We need to find out how other fundraisers have done things like this. Because this is not in our wheelhouse."

That professional help will cost $25,000. St. Joseph taxpayers won't see anything added to their bill, however, since the city will use already existing half-cent sales tax dollars on the study.

As of now, the community center will continue to be used as is.