Moon Township officials are asking the state to help pay for a study to determine the feasibility of building a township recreation center.
Township supervisors earlier this month agreed to have township Manager Dawn Lane submit a grant application to the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to fund part of the study.
Scott Brilhart, the assistant township manager and planning director, estimated the study could cost anywhere between $80,000 and $100,000. If the township’s grant application is approved, the state would pick up half the cost.
Brilhart said the DCNR Community Conservation Partnership Program – or C2P2 — grant program is competitive in that not every municipality that applies for funding receives it. According to the DCNR website, grant awards vary based on federal and state funding sources, but the program usually awards roughly $50 million for projects each year.
Individual grant amounts also vary, with typical awards ranging from $50,000 to $500,000.
The grant application period is open through the last day of April and Brilhart said the township likely wouldn’t hear back from the state until later this year. As a result, the study wouldn’t be done until 2027 even if funding becomes available.
Although the township has its share of recreation facilities, it does not have one central recreation center. Facilities that are available include the School House Activity Center, which contains a fitness room and meeting rooms available for rental, and Robin Hill Center, which also has rooms available for rent for weddings, parties and other functions.
The township also boasts several parks, and residents also utilize Moon Area School District facilities for some activities.
But the township has no dedicated indoor recreation center.
That’s a need that township residents expressed when a pair of surveys were circulated last year – one as part an effort to update the township’s parks master plan and one that was tied to a project to update the township’s comprehensive plan.
More than 1,000 responses were submitted for the parks master plan survey and about 80 percent of them came from township residents. One of the questions asked, “If the park system can be further developed, which of the following facilities should be added or enhanced?”
Nearly half of the 978 people who answered that particular question rated a swimming pool as the top priority, but an indoor or community recreation center was No. 2 with more than 300 responses.
Brilhart said those comments from residents are in part what triggered township officials to go the Board of Supervisors with the C2P2 grant request idea.
The survey associated with the parks master plan was circulated late last summer and a community open house was held in November to review the progress of the plan and obtain input from the community. Work on that plan is ongoing.
The separate comprehensive plan sets the township’s vision and priorities for the next 10 to 15 years. These priorities include future development and housing strategies, transportation and infrastructure enhancements and the maintenance and development of community amenities.
A survey was sent out to gauge residents’ thoughts on those elements, and one of the sections asked residents to prioritize objectives related to the environment and recreation in the township. One of those questions specifically brought up the idea of building an indoor rec center.
David Bachman, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, said the township received roughly 1,500 survey comments, and those comments prompted him to support the idea of submitting a grant proposal for the state to pick up half the cost of doing a recreation center feasibility study.
“A lot of the responses were asking for a community center,” he said. “And while the board is leery of the cost of such a center, we also understand that we serve the people and we owe them at least a study for which we only pay half the cost of.”
Bachman said one reason that the current board and previous boards of supervisors have been reluctant to fund a large community center is that the township has many smaller venues “that provide excellent facilities and programs, albeit not a large recreation building.”
The township’s parks and recreation master plan would lay out a vision for recreation in the township for the next 10 years and would replace the current plan adopted in 2005. A draft plan is expected to be posted online sometime in the summer.
The draft comprehensive plan update, which would replace the current plan adopted in 2015, is expected to be presented for public comment in August and formal adoption is expected to occur in September.
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