This old community center in Macon is on its way back — with a swimming pool

If all goes as planned, work could get started this year on bringing back the long vacant Booker T. Washington Community Center.

The building is in sad shape now, as Macon-Bibb commissioners saw Tuesday, but they have agreed to buy the property and spend $1.1 million to renovate it, including the swimming pool in the back. The closing of the sale is in progress.

The commissioners visited the building at 401 Monroe Street as part of a county-wide tour of ongoing and proposed projects. Ceiling tiles were falling in and water dripped down to the floor.

Cass Hatcher, the city’s blight czar, said if the sale goes through as planned the project will be put out for bids from construction companies in September. The funding, which comes from special purpose local option sales tax dollars, would also pay for streetscape of blighted areas around the property and to tear down abandoned homes.

The center was a gathering place in the community for many years. Hatcher said the plan is to return it to its purpose as a community center. He said it has been vacant for about five years.

“It would bring some life back to this neighborhood,” he said.

Hatcher told the commissioners that the renovation requires completely gutting the building.

“Booker T. Washington will rise again,” Mayor Robert Reichert exclaimed as the commissioners got on the bus for their next stop.

Hatcher said if the project stays on schedule, he hopes construction will start in December and it will take about seven months to complete.

The center is in Commissioner Virgil Watkins’ district.

“For the past few years those kids have been without a resource place for after-school activities and socializing,” he said. “I know the community has been inquiring about it and is excited about the future of that building.”

The county is buying the building from the non-profit foundation that formerly operated it for $131,000.

The tour offered the commissioners a chance to view many of the projects for which they have approved funding, or are considering, as well as some industrial projects and other areas of interest.

On most of tour they got updates as the bus drove by the locations, but they also got out to see the new Gilead-Bloomfield recreation complex as well as the closed Sandy Beach Water Park.

Reichert said afterward the county could end up operating the water park next year because the owner is in default on the lease agreement with the county. Since the park is on county property, Reichert said the county wouldn’t have to buy it if it remains in default.

He said it’s still possible it could be sold to another private operator, but he said the county could operate it if there isn’t a buyer.

“I think it would be very feasible for us to hire a management company to operate the park and share some of the proceeds,” he said. “It’s too big of an asset to let it just sit.”

Clear water still flows in the lazy river at the park and the wave pool remains filled. The park has an around-the-clock caretaker, who lives in an RV out front, hired by the court-appointed receiver that holds it.

The tour included a wide variety of projects, including road work, recreation and more, but Reichert said they all have a common thread.

“All of this feeds in to the master plan of making Macon-Bibb the hub city of the Middle Georgia region,” he said. “It’s all part of a complex puzzle coming together.”