A meeting was held to discuss a Rexburg rec center. Here’s what happens next.

REXBURG — Officials from the city of Rexburg invited the community to a virtual gathering Thursday to discuss the possibility of building a recreation center. It’s a hot topic in Rexburg, where some residents have been hoping for such a center for decades.

The meeting had 112 participants logged in to learn the ins and outs of planning for the proposed facility.

Mike Svetz led the meeting as a representative of PROS Consulting, a firm that specializes in planning management for governments and not-for-profits. Svetz is a principal consultant with the firm. He was joined by Kevin Armstrong of Barker Rinker Seacat Architecture, a design firm that specializes in community improvement projects, such as recreation centers. The popular Provo Recreation Center in Provo, Utah, is among BRS’s previous projects.

Thursday’s meeting was the kickoff event for a feasibility study, initiated and funded by the city of Rexburg, to take place over the next several months. The study aims to gauge community interest and willingness to fund the project.

Armstrong took the group on a virtual tour of options for the potential recreation center, divided into categories: athletic, aquatic, fitness, community use, classrooms, and alternative programming, such as a golf simulator or a space for electronic gaming. The audience was polled after each category as a way to begin assessing the needs of the community.

An initial poll was taken to assess which categories were most important to those in attendance.

“Over 50% of you who answered this question indicated that aquatic spaces, fitness spaces and gymnasium spaces were of the highest priority,” Svetz said.

Svetz made it clear that the informal polling was only a starting point and more official polling would be done in the coming months.

One main focus of the meeting was the need for more year-round indoor recreation in Rexburg. The city’s outdoor pool, Rexburg Rapids, was constructed in 2011 and is only available for a few months each year.

Armstrong presented indoor aquatics options including a recreational pool with slides, shallow entry, play features and a lazy river; as well as competition and therapy pools and a “raised spa” with extra accessibility features to help those with limited mobility to easily use them.

Athletic facility options included gymnasiums that could be used for a variety of programs, such as gymnastics, cheerleading or martial arts meets, basketball, pickleball, futsal, tennis, etc.

Fitness space options included rooms of varying sizes—larger spaces for group fitness or smaller spaces for smaller groups or more privacy for individuals. Armstrong presented spaces dedicated to cardio, weight machines and free weights, as well as options for functional fitness (similar to CrossFit).

When polled specifically about fitness areas, 87% of those in attendance prioritized having an indoor walking/jogging space.

Anderson emphasized the importance of “balancing recreation amenities with revenue potential,” by having a mix of high-, medium-, and low-revenue areas. He gave the example of a party room as a high-revenue space that helps support the lower-revenue spaces. A childcare area was given as an example of a low-revenue area that helps support the rest of the facility.

PROS Consulting will conduct more official studies over the next few months to learn the needs and wants of the community, as well as the general willingness to fund the project.

“We look to engage all walks of life in Madison County,” Svetz said.

He said they’ll first conduct a random sampling by mailing surveys throughout the community.

“That random sampling needs to reach all geographies and all demographics within the community,” Svetz said. “Potential users and potential non-users.”

Svetz said the random sampling would be followed up by an online survey open to all community members, and that PROS would then merge the results of the surveys. Those results will be supplied to BRS to create design proposals. From there, it will be up to Rexburg city officials to decide how or if to move forward.

Svetz said existing services and businesses would also be studied in an effort to answer the question, “What niche would it fill without necessarily taking away from any of the existing businesses?”

Specific potential costs of the project were not discussed at Thursday’s meeting. Rexburg Recreation Director Jeff Crowther said costs would be estimated after the city gathered more information from citizens.

“Really, what we’re trying to figure out at this point is what the community would want, as far as specific amenities, in a rec center,” Crowther said. “Then we can get really accurate information on how much a facility would cost to build and how much it would cost to operate.”

If city officials decide to move forward after surveys and designs are submitted, funding for the proposed facility could come in a variety of ways, Crowther said.

“At this point, it sounds like this could potentially be a city, county or multiple county project,” Crowther said. “We’re really not ruling out any options at this point. Again, we just want to consider anything that we could potentially do as far as what a rec district boundary would look like.”

Crowther said the city decided to initiate the feasibility study because of feedback from community members. He said recent studies indicated that “indoor winter recreation was lacking in the community.” He said the city had received “tons of feedback from the community about an indoor aquatic center.”

Crowther said feasibility studies would be completed by this fall.

“At that point, it will be up to city leadership to decide if the community is very favorable to putting it on the ballot and paying for a facility like this,” he said.

Crowther said November 2023 would be the earliest that the proposal would be ready to be voted on by the community.

“We would need a full year to get everything in a row to make sure we are really ready and prepared to put everything on the ballot,” he said. “There’s a lot that could happen. That’s pretty much the earliest we would consider.”

Thursday’s meeting was held over Zoom and was recorded. It will be available for public viewing on the city of Rexburg website starting March 22.