Upper Arlington’s new Community Center will be a 150,000 square foot facility spanning five floors plus a large mezzanine. The facility will include the following:
- Entry/lobby, indoor pool, multi-purpose event/party space, locker rooms
- Fitness/exercise spaces
- 3 gymnasiums (1 multi-purpose)
- Senior lounge
- Child watch
- E-sports room
- Walking/running track
- Program classrooms
- Multi-purpose room/ meeting space / outdoor deck
- Outdoor multi-purpose terrace
The building also includes approximately 40,000 square feet of leasable office space. The City is currently negotiating with the OSU Wexner Medical Center to lease the space in the building, adding additional services and amenities for the community.
After voters approved the Community Center project in May 2021, the City engaged a team to design (led by MSA Sport), construct (a partnership between Elford and Continental Building Systems) and manage (with Pizzuti Solutions acting as the City’s owner’s representative) the project. Early design work included extensive community engagement, revisiting the original feasibility study, and efforts to take the project from a program concept to a complete building design. Initially, the size of the building increased as more space was added for common areas, mechanical equipment, expansion of the fitness floor and storage.
However, dramatic changes in the construction market nationally and in central Ohio led to significant cost increases that exceeded the City’s financial capacity. The City worked with the design and construction teams to engage in a value engineering process that removed some lower-value spaces. The most important result of this value engineering process was that the team was able to remove one floor from the building and bring the facility below the threshold for high-rise construction standards. Additionally, the team worked to minimize the need for underground spaces, sought more efficient options for mechanical systems, and closely evaluated finish options in the building.
The result is a Community Center that is more efficient, concentrates on those uses that are most important to UA residents and is groundbreaking in its ability to provide a comprehensive set of indoor services without reducing a community’s greenspace.
