Community input = community center

BENTONVILLE — Until now,there’s been no visual to go along with the community center Bentonville is talking about erecting.

That changes Monday morning, when a collection of random resident surveys and comments, collected over the past month by an outside firm, comes back to the city. Designers will immediately put pen to paper.

And on Tuesday evening, you, the residents, will have an opportunity to start molding those rough sketches with your own input.

The city will host a public dropin meeting from 5 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Wal-Mart Room at the Bentonville Public Library, 405 S.Main St. This session will serve as an opportunity for the public to provide input for the types of amenities it would like to see in the facility.

“Our architects are going to come up with some rough designsfrom their brain-storming session the day before, and they’re going to throw them up on the wall,” said David Wright. “But this public meeting is where we really start to put this thing together. Everyone who comes through the door gets a notepad and can walk around the room, jot things down, make suggestions and talkwith the people who will be planning this thing. This is truly going to be a ‘community’ center because the community will provide theinput to shape it.”

The Bentonville Community Recreation Center will be erected near the southwest corner of Arkansas highways 12 and 112. Split by the realigned Southwest I Street with Arkansas Highway 112, the remainder of the property will house both an indoor community recreation center as well as an outdoor athleticcomplex. An early concept drawing showed softball fields, but Wright said the community will determine what ends up there. Such amenities tossed around for the indoor portion of the facility include swimming pools, a therapeutic pool, basketball courts, meeting rooms and more, but the public will dictate that as well.

In the end, the finished product will serve as a centerpiece for the fast-growing Bentonville Parks and Recreation system, according to Bentonville mayor Bob McCaslin.

“This will be the No. 1 building for the parks department for years and years to come,” McCaslin said. “It’s very exciting because Bentonville hasnever had anything like this. We’ve gone from wishing we had one all the way to the planning stage now. We’re very early in the process, but this is a very big project for Bentonville.”

And, while it will be a center for the entire community, it will bring a longawaited amenity for the southwest side of town.

“One can make the argument the south and southwest side of town are not only underserved, but basically unserved,” McCaslin said. “This changes that. There are a lot of residents in that part of the city ands this community center will be right there.”

The project will be funded through the parks portion of a previously approved bond.