The steering committee for the Poulsbo Event and Recreation Center doesn’t know what it’s going to look like, but it knows what it won’t look like.
It won’t have a 70,000-square foot building because that’s too large and too costly.
The committee also is leaning toward one field and one building.
ARC Architects of Seattle outlined the possibilities for PERC by Olympic College-Poulsbo, providing a number of site options and costs.
The first option was to prioritize sports fields having two and a small (2,000-square-foot) track house as opposed to a large gym-like venue. The two fields would be 230×380 square feet with room for walking paths around them and potentially room for a playground. That cost would be $8 million.
The second and third options presented a single multi-use sports field, an outdoor pool, community recreational building between 29,000- and 70,0000 square feet, along with an outdoor plaza connecting to walking paths and a potential playground. The difference between the two options is the location of the building, which would impact parking.
Those costs would range between $25 million for the 29,000-square-foot building, $41 million for 46,000-square feet, and $58 million for 70,000-square feet.
“The things that change within these buildings to make up the small, medium, and large designations are the size of the event space, size of the gym, the size of the pool, and whether it’s indoor or outdoor and to a lesser degree some of the outside features of the building,” principal architect Paul Curtis said.
Project manager Emily Wheeler said there are basically two options — one at the north end and one at the south.
“If we want to fit a building on here we really need to focus on one field and one building, and we looked at how to make sure all the parking and access to parking was not looking at an easement with the college or other negotiations,” she said.
She said the ultimate choice needs to be reasonable.
“What we wanted to do today was frame our discussion about how big should the building be, but keep in mind how big the site is. There’s going to be a really nice meeting of the minds here between what fits and what is reasonable for the site and what is reasonable for the community,” Wheeler said.
Curtis also went over the costs for the different event spaces within the building as well as the fields, depending on their size, including the size of the gym and the pool if it were indoor or outdoor. The indoor event spaces will cost anywhere between $4 million and $8 million. Same with the gym, which will run between $8 million and $13 million, and the pool, which will run between $8 million and $17 million.
The estimated total costs for outdoor field space and other outdoor amenities are just over $5 million.
“There’s the reality of the site, it’s not that big of a site. It looks giant but it’s really not once you put a giant field on there,” Wheeler said.
After making its presentation ARC heard feedback from committee members and decided it would rework the options and come back to the committee later in August for another review as well as a financial discussion.
The main elements discussed were the feasibility, both size and operations cost for a pool, size, and use of event spaces, the gym, and the fields, and how to get the most out of the space available while meeting as much of the communities’ wants as possible.
