Riverside hits milestones in ‘Wellness Center’ planning

RIVERSIDE — With a rough building layout, tentative cost estimates and new architectural renderings, the city of Riverside appears closer than ever to moving forward with a long-discussed wellness center on the north side of town.

Riverside City Administrator Cole Smith said the progress came a few months after forming a committee to discuss the project, and sets the stage for a public information campaign and conceivable ground-breaking date by late summer of 2026.

“We’re at a point now where we are really ready to start kicking off our information campaign and fundraising,” Smith said. “This is probably going to be the biggest city-managed project in the history of Riverside.”

The project’s been on and off municipal agendas listed as a “community center” since at least 2019, according to reporting in Kalona-based newspaper, The News. Prior to that, it was mentioned in city council candidate debates as far back as 2011, according to Washington Evening Journal archives, a decade before a new set of candidates in 2021 called it a top priority in interviews with the Southeast Iowa Union following the release of a contractor’s concept art for the building.

Despite numerous discussions spanning over a decade, the project has repeatedly failed to materialize.

Smith said the proposal has recently been relegated to less visible behind-the-scenes talks, and attributed some of its recent lag to hesitation about the massive price tag: now estimated around $9 million before accounting for equipment. He also noted that the center’s concept phase has outlasted a city administrator, a clerk, and several council members, all of whom had a hand on the ball at some point or another.

“A project of this size and complexity is something new to me, it’s new to the council members … there’s quite a bit of complexity involved in that,” he said. “I think it’s also fair to say … any time you have elected officials, or transitions in who your staff members are, (that) can definitely have an impact on the consistent progress of a project of this size.”

  Buy Photo

Smith expects the city will pay for the center with a mix of donations, a potential grant from the Washington County Riverboat Foundation, and likely a general obligation bond which could see a spot on local ballots as early as this November, seeking tax dollars to pay for the work.

The administrator said officials had few details on a specific timeline beyond November. The lack of an extended schedule is intentional.

“We’re trying not to get too bogged down establishing deadlines or dates for those further down-the-road milestones,” he said. “I think that may have been a problem in the past, we’ve gotten a little too far ahead of ourselves, not actually focusing on what we need to do right now to move the project ahead and progress. So we’re trying not to set unrealistic expectations.”

The latest tentative designs discussed in a city council work session May 12 offer some insight into the proposed wellness center.

At about 30,000 square feet, plans for the project include a trio of basketball courts, a community room and concessions stand and locker rooms. On an upper level, renderings provided to the city depict an elevated walking track, a “fitness studio” and a weightlifting area. It would be build on Galileo Drive, near the elementary school.

While plenty of unanswered questions remain — like how to staff the facility, whether it’ll pass a bond vote, how, specifically the city will finance its construction — Smith said officials were hesitant about sending any new waves of surveys to community members.

“This is a project that’s been kind of exhausted for the community, for lack of a better word, there’s been a fatigue around it,” he said. “There has been a lot of talk on this project for a lot of years, but not a lot of demonstrable progress. I think we’re at a point now where we can say, ‘Hey, we took the feedback that we were given, have put this facility together, is this something you’d be willing to support.”

Anticipation about the building runs high, not just because it’s been in the works for so long.

Smith said the city expected the center to draw people to town, with positive implications for economic development as well as local access to popular amenities.

“Although we are a community of just over a thousand, small towns are worthy of having nice things, things that are going to meet the needs of a community,” he said. “It’s a nice facility, and we want to build it in a manner that is going to serve the community for the foreseeable future.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com