Prairie Village city officials are considering once again surveying residents to see if there is still support for the idea of a new community center.
Driving the news: The city’s ad hoc civic center committee earlier this week agreed to send an updated draft of a community center survey to the city council, which could approve it to then be sent out to residents.
The upshot: The survey intends to gauge whether the public still supports building a new community center where the Paul Henson YMCA currently sits on 79th Street near Harmon Park.
- In 2019, a similar survey found broad resident support for the community center idea but forward momentum on the project was scuttled by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Another thing: A memorandum of understanding with the YMCA will also go before the city council.
- That draft MOU calls for a nearly $30,000 market sustainability study to again review the feasibility of a new community center.
Zooming out: Conversations about a new community center have been tied into a broader discussion about a remade civic center campus at Harmon Park that would feature a relocated Corinth branch of Johnson County Library.
- The new draft survey does not include a question about a library branch at the civic campus.
- That’s because the library has its own funding source and the city would not have to pay for a new branch.
- The previous community center survey found overwhelming resident support for the idea of relocating the Corinth branch to be co-located with a new community center.
- The preamble to the draft survey will explain that there will be no questions about the library but that a relocated branch is still part of the overall idea, city staff confirmed.
Going Deeper: Prairie Village is restarting its civic center conversation — A timeline of how it got here
The library details
What’s next for Prairie Village community center idea?
Both the draft community survey and MOU with the Y are set to come before the city council at its Dec. 19 meeting.
- If approved, a new resident survey on the proposed community center idea could be conducted at some point early next year.
- Deputy City Administrator Nickie Lee told the Post via email there is no plan at this time to hold a joint city council and ad hoc civic center committee work session ahead of Dec. 19.
