By Dylan Marsh
EAGLE TIMES STAFF
NEWPORT- On Tuesday, May 10th, 2022, the town of Newport voted down Article 6. With a yes vote of 642 and a no vote of 652, the article fell short of reaching its 2/3rd majority vote needed to pass. If approved the article would have allowed the town to build a new community center at the Meadow Park site.
The total project budget for the proposed community center would have come to $8,651,000. While $4,651,000 of that total amount would come from private donations, public and private grants, and a number of potential other sources, the remaining $4,000,000 would have come from municipal taxes. The tax impact of which would have been figured into the 2024 budget with an estimated tax impact of $.74 per $1000 of property tax.
“It’s extremely disappointing. Somehow I’d like for the community to see the benefit of this kind of facility,” said Newport resident Todd Fratzel. “It’s hard when you see a municipal project with 50% of the backing not supported at the polls.”
The current Newport Recreation Center, originally built, and intended, as an armory, has been utilized as a community center for the last 55 years. As it stands now the Rec Center is not ADA compliant and will require a wheelchair lift to fix their compliance issue. The center also currently has a single bathroom and will require structural work to bring it up to code. In addition to these issues, the basketball court at the center is not regulation size.
The Breadloaf Corporation, an architectural construction company, was brought in to create a conceptual design of the building that would have it meet all code requirements. The cost to the town for those renovations would come to a total of $3,895,100.
“We’re obviously saddened by the vote, but life moves on. We have our next session programs ready to go and we’re not going to miss a beat,” Recreation Director PJ Lovely said of the voting outcome.
At the Meadow Park recreational complex stands an ambulance storage building as well as a groundskeeping shed. Had the proposed community center been approved those structures would have been torn down and the community center built in their place. To accommodate for the need of those buildings, they would have been built at the site of the current recreation center once it had been demolished. The Rowell Caplan Ball field, also known as the little league field, would have also seen some restructuring to make room for the new building.
“The town only owns the land the rec center sits on. You couldn’t add a ladder without encroaching on someone else’s property,” Fratzel said.
The Community Center Committee made up of 13 Newport citizens created a list of needs and goals for the proposed building back in 2019. The goals of the new facility would be to support the current vision of the recreation department; to support community, wellness, and recreation. Also to support after-school programs, multi generational users, and multiple events. They also wanted a new building, which would have included a gymnasium large enough to accommodate a regulation basketball court and seating for roughly 500 spectators, and the new little league field.
This will be the second time in recent history that the town has voted on a new community center. In 2019, a vote was held with a proposal to build the new center for a cost of around $6.5 million. At the time, estimated renovations for the existing rec center would have cost $2.9 million.
“When something is voted no, and then it comes around again, it upset people the second time,” Newport Fitness Owner Jeff North said. “We love Newport, we love PJ Lovely, we love the rec center. I just think in the end, right now, no one wanted to hear that anything was going to cost more money.”
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