Community Center Gets Major Facelift

Writer / Michelle Kaufman

The Greenwood Community Center hadn’t seen an upgrade in 23 years. When Greenwood Parks Director Rob Taggart took the position three years ago, he made renovating the community center one of his goals.

That goal recently became a reality as a $2.8 million renovation project, which began in April, 2016, was finally completed. The renovated design and new features were unveiled at a grand re-opening January 14.

Taggart said the decision to shut down the Community Center in April was hard because it’s not his, but the community’s.

“Once it got started, we knew what the final outcome was going to be and it really got exciting,” Taggart said. “Everything got renovated … every single floor, every single wall, every single ceiling.”

While the exterior remains the same, the inside of the building was gutted. Vibrant paint colors are now on every wall. Kid City is a two-story activity zone includes places for art, a play grocery store, music area and more. Luckey Climber, a climbing structure for kids, stretches over both sides of the main staircase. The fitness room was also expanded and modernized, and meeting rooms were upgraded and can host everything from exercise classes to homeowners association meetings to wedding receptions.

“I think people are going to realize the flexibility of this space and they’re going to come to us for events as well,” Taggart said. “We’re still going to have our normal Easter events and our Valentine’s dance and our Halloween events, but I think we might be able to do those in kind of a different way now. “They’ll be able to better interact with the building as opposed to what they were before.”

Taggart looks forward to the surprise on people’s faces when they visit the renovated Community Center. Day passes, punch cards and memberships are available for both Kid City and the gym.

“It’s absolutely a priceless reaction,” he exclaimed. “There’s a lot of staff in this, and it’s a lot of listening to what the public needed, and it’s a lot of what we recognized as some deficiencies in the city that we put in this building. We’re really excited to see how people react to it.”

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