Prairie Village plans to gauge resident opinion again about the prospects for a new community center near Harmon Park, but when that survey will happen remains up in the air.
Driving the news: On Monday, the Prairie Village City Council tasked the city’s recently reconstituted ad hoc civic center committee with reviewing a community survey that was last given to residents in 2019 and showed broad resident support for a new community center on the site of the Paul Henson YMCA.
The upshot: The move Monday pushes back for now any major action on moving forward with the city’s evolving plan for a broader “civic center” plan that would encompass a new community center along with Harmon Park and the city’s municipal campus on Mission Road.
- The city also wants to see if residents’ opinions have changed in the intervening two-and-a-half years, when the community center conversation was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
ICYMI: Prairie Village restarted its conversations around a new “civic center” and relaunched the ad hoc civic center committee in February after a two-year hiatus prompted by the pandemic.
- The civic center idea does include a potential community center where the Paul Henson YMCA currently sits, but it encompasses the block between Delmar Street and Mission Road and 75th to 79th Streets.
- It also includes the idea to relocate the Johnson County Library Corinth branch to this block, which city hall, the police department, Harmon Park and Shawnee Mission East already occupy.
- The 2019 survey found broad community support for the idea, including support for funding the community center with sales or property taxes.
- YMCA owns the land the Paul Henson Y sits on, and that space is operating at an annual deficit of $200,000.
- Read the Post’s timeline of civic center conversations here.
What’s new? The city council on Monday approved referring what would be a $30,000 feasibility study and a memorandum of understanding with the YMCA back to the ad hoc committee for review.
- The move delays for now finding out where residents stand on the community center portion of the civic center concept.
- Councilmember Dave Robinson, who also sits on the ad hoc civic center committee, pushed to refer the survey back to the committee because he did not recall seeing or working on a draft of the survey during their two spring meetings.
- A survey draft included in city documents for Monday’s city council meeting kept nearly all of the same questions from a 2019 survey, but it did exclude questions about Johnson County Library relocating the Corinth branch.
- That’s because there was overwhelming support for the relocation of that branch to the city’s civic center — not because the library relocation isn’t part of the conversation anymore.
Council input: On Monday, several councilmembers agreed with the need to again gauge where residents stands on a new civic center, since the last survey was taken in 2019.
- Citing the outpouring of resident opposition that has come following the recommendations of another of the city’s ad hoc committees, a special housing task force, Councilmember Inga Selders pushed for a joint work session between the council and the ad hoc civic center committee to ensure the city council remains in the loop on this issue.
- Councilmember Cole Robinson said he’s angered by the YMCA abandoning the Paul Henson location — and in turn, the community — and then asking for a partnership to save it.
- Robinson said a survey needs to happen so if a community center does come to fruition, then the current city council can point to something that showed the desire for it.
Key quote: “I’ll be very candid with you, Mark (Hulet, chief operating officer for YMCA), the amount of frustration I have as a lifelong resident of Prairie Village, to see what we’ve been missing out on having a Y in our community and we get to see what all the other Ys have been giving to their community,” Cole Robinson said. “But then also at the same time, we continue to hear about the role the Y is playing. I just find those two narratives, I just find it really disingenuous and frustrating.”
Prairie Village civic center: What’s next?
The city’s ad hoc civic center committee will meet to discuss the drafted survey, which City Administrator Wes Jordan told the council has been seen by the ad hoc civic center committee and unanimously recommended to the city council.
- After the committee revisits its discussion about the survey, there will be a joint city council and ad hoc civic center committee meeting to discuss the survey and the idea.
- Dates and times for these meetings are yet to be determined.
