TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Community Shapes Plan

ADVERTISEMENT

By KATHY STEELE, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 17, 2007

SULPHUR SPRINGS - Adults weighed in on the design of the city's planned Springhill Park community center; next, the neighborhood's children will have their say.

About 20 residents met with parks and recreation landscape architect Laurie Potier-Brown at this month's Sulphur Springs Action League meeting.

The L-shaped center will be about 12,000 square feet, including a 7,400-square-foot gymnasium. Potier-Brown said the city anticipates the community center, 1100 E. Eskimo Ave., also will attract residents outside the neighborhood from north of Busch Boulevard and south of the Hillsborough River.

Residents say more than 3,000 children live in Sulphur Springs.

"We need as much as you can put in there and then some," league President Joseph Robinson said.

Residents volunteered to ask children from Sulphur Springs Elementary School and the George Bartholomew North Tampa Center about activities and facilities they want at the community center. They also referred Potier-Brown to a children's survey done about four years ago by the Hillsborough Planning Commission.

The information will be needed by mid-December to meet a January deadline for two design proposals, Potier-Brown said.

"We'll come back to the neighborhood and what we'd like to do is hold a larger meeting," she said.

The city has $3 million in the fiscal year 2008 budget for the center but there is no construction schedule.

The center will have space for a kitchen, computer lab, two classrooms, a reception area and lobby, two offices, parking and a multipurpose room that can be split into two rooms. A splash pool or interactive fountain is possible.

A building at the park will be torn down and the basketball court removed. No changes are planned for the playground, and Potier-Brown said a multiuse court would replace the basketball court.
Initial plans include a kitchen with a microwave and refrigerator, but residents said that would be inadequate.

"It really needs to be a full kitchen," Ed Ross said.

"Something to feed a small army," added Linda Hope, publisher of the Penny Saver.

Residents also requested outdoor bathrooms and water fountains.

Lynda Purifoy suggested two bathrooms: one in the park and a second at the center with access from outside and inside the building.

Flag football coach Lorenzo Brown said about 200 children with the Sulphur Springs Cowboys use the park. He asked whether the ball fields could do double duty for baseball and football.

"It's being used year-round," Brown said.

Potier-Brown said planners will consider the suggestion.

Robinson asked whether the center could also serve as an emergency shelter, especially to help seniors.

"Instead of trucking them all over the area," he said. "It would benefit everyone in the neighborhood."

Reporter Kathy Steele can be reached at (813) 835-2103 or ksteele@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT