This Wichita neighborhood is slated to get a $10M community center. Here are details

A southeast Wichita neighborhood will see construction of a $10 million community center intended to help meet the needs of residents and city departments trying to help them.

Construction of the Planeview Park Community Center is expected to begin in 2025 after the Wichita City Council voted 6-1 on Tuesday to approve funding and construction. The center will be built on land adjacent to Colvin Elementary School at 2820 S. Roosevelt St.

The single-story 18,500-square-foot facility will house a gymnasium, computer labs, fitness facilities, classrooms and offices, according to a council agenda report.

It will replace the Colvin Neighborhood Resource Center, which was built in the 1970s and is attached to Colvin Elementary School. The 3,000-square-foot facility houses the Wichita City Council District 3 offices and the Office of Community Services, Wichita Director of Parks and Recreation Troy Houtman said.

That facility is “functionally challenged and not adequate for programming needs” of the community or city, Park and Recreation staff said.

The lack of physical space has caused the Office of Community Services to turn down community partner organizations wanting to host large-scale programming, events and classes, Houtman said.

These classes offer opportunities or knowledge about education, health, wellness and entertainment for the Planeview community of about 4,000 residents. The facility also hosts before- and after-school programs and summer activity camps.

“Providing learning and recreational opportunities will increase the quality of life in the neighborhood,” city staff said in an agenda report.

The Planeview neighborhood was built in 1942, “primarily in the form of temporary housing to support the increase in aviation industry workers brought on by World War II,” according to a description in the council agenda. “Today Planeview is regarded as a low-income, low-resourced neighborhood.”

The center’s $10 million price tag is broken down into $610,000 for architecture/engineering, $750,000 for contingency, $1.5 million for site development and over $7 million for construction.

City funds of over $1.6 million were allotted for Planeview Park in 2027 and 2028. Those funds, along with several other District 3 and Park and Recreation projects for 2024-2033 of about $8.3 million, will be redirected to the Planeview Community Center.

Wichita Vice Mayor and District 3 council member Mike Hoheisel praised his colleagues and city staff for making the project happen in his district.

“My heart’s always been in Planeview and if you go down there and sit, you’ll come across plenty of kids and plenty of families that need help,” Hoheisel said. “This will give us the ability to help them even more.”

Council member Bryan Frye, who represents northwest Wichita, questioned the repeated action of moving funds from one project to another and how deferring those projects could affect the entire park maintenance system.

“[I’m] kind of concerned that we’re just kind of cherry picking projects and reallocating CIP dollars that have a greater impact than just the district,” Frye said.

Capital improvement program funds are used by the city’s Park and Recreation Department to maintain park infrastructure, renovations and for new construction projects.

“I’m worried about the precedent this is setting and going forward about how we structure CIP dollars and benefit the entire community, rather than just one individual district,” Frye added.

Private donations will be accepted in order to pay for additions to the center in the form of two 2,800-square-foot rooms and a second gym. The goal is to raise $3.5 million in donations, Hoheisel said in an email.

Hoheisel said one room in the center would be named after CJ Lofton, a 17-year-old Wichita teen who was fatally restrained in 2021 by Sedgwick County corrections officers.

“I do think that we are going to have one room here named for CJ Lofton,” Hoheisel said. “It will be a place where kids can go, especially teenagers, who if they are going through some things in their life, that they do have resources available to help them through the issues that they are facing.”