PINE BLUFF -- The city's aging Merrill Community Center is getting a three-quarter-of-a million-dollar face-lift in what city officials have dubbed "Merrill Center 2.0."
"This has been a long time coming," said Samuel Glover, director of the Pine Bluff Parks and Recreation Department. "A long time coming."
The building, formerly known as the Seabrook Youth Center, contains a community area, a boxing gymnasium, and a basketball court, and in the 60 years since it went up in 1960, has fallen into disrepair.
The renovation, which will include upgrades, is projected to cost $780,000 and to be completed by the end of the year, with funding being provided by the city, the Go Forward Pine Bluff organization, Simmons Bank, and insurer State Farm.
Mayor Shirley Washington and architect Fred Reed both agreed with the parks director that the building's renovation has been a long time in the making.
"I was looking back at my notes and I saw that I was working on this seven years ago," Reed said. "I did some estimating at the time, so it has been a long time."
Reed noted that the Merrill Center building was designed by Reed Willis Architects, the precursor to the Reed Architectural Firm, a partnership between James P. Willis and Reed's father, D. Ashley Reed.
"I've got a little more personal involvement with this project," he said. "It is a good building in terms of the structure the bones we have here, and there probably hasn't been much done to it in the 60 years it's been here."
Reed said the renovation will involve the basketball court, boxing gym, and the community center -- about 27,000 square feet of indoor space.
Washington said the plan for the facility is that once renovations are complete, it will serve as a community cultural center.
"When this center reopens it will reopen with programming," she said. "It will be a center of purpose."
Improvements planned for the community area of the Merrill Center include an arts supply space, a computer lab, and a teaching kitchen.
"They're going to have it for kids to work out of and learn how to cook and stuff like that," Reed said. "There's a dance area and study areas and space for after-school activities. And of course there'll be basketball here and the other gym they have will be for boxing."
Reed said that one of the pressing needs is upgrading the restrooms because the original design of the building did not include facilities for girls.
"Originally this was the Pine Bluff Boys Club so there weren't a lot of restrooms and stuff for the girls, so there's a lot of things like that we need to update," he said, adding that the city took the center over about 12 years ago and has operated it as a community center since then. He said the center has a lot of supporters, many of whom have two or three generations of family members that have frequented the facility.
"People have talked to me in the community who have grown up with this place and they really want to see something done with it," he said. "It has a lot of ties that people are interested in."
One of those people, 33-year-old Nicholas Swiney of Pine Bluff, said he has been going to the center for nearly 30 years.
"It's meant a lot to me," Swiney said. "It's kept me out of trouble. It gave me something to do after school. I like to play basketball so that kind of kept me here, too. A lot of my friends that went here with me, we grew up together and some of them still come here with me to this day."
He said he was glad to hear that the city was able to secure the funding to renovate the center.
"This is a good place for the kids," he said. "It will help keep them out of trouble."
State Desk on 02/23/2020