By Jennifer Edwards
The Cincinnati Enquirer

WEST CHESTER TWP. - Community leaders plan to trek to St. Louis. next month to learn more about how to build and operate a community recreation center.

Township Trustees Catherine Stoker and Dave Tacosik and a few township staff members will attend an Aug. 3-6 seminar at the Recreation Facility Design School.

"We don't want to make stupid, expensive mistakes," Stoker said. "If we can learn by other people's experiences, we can come out with something that will meet our needs here."

The total cost is expected to be about $5,000, township officials say.

Tacosik said he initiated the trip, calling it the perfect opportunity to see how other community centers operate.

"I certainly would be happy to donate my time to lay brick and dig ditches to get this thing done," he said.

West Chester's planned community center ranges in potential costs from $20 million to $30 million. Officials plan to pay for it by using tax revenues from businesses along and near Union Centre Drive and Ohio 747.

The township expects to hire a construction and project manager for the community center soon and then will select an architect.

Plans call for the center to be about 110,000 square feet and hold indoor and outdoor jogging tracks and swimming pools. There also would be meeting rooms, fitness equipment and perhaps a performing arts stage.

The center could break ground as soon as this year. The likely site is near Lakota West High School on West Chester Road at Union Centre Boulevard.

Operators of a fitness club chain and others, however, are backing a petition drive to force the project onto the fall ballot.

The petition drive seeks to prevent the township from acquiring or constructing the center unless voters approve the site, cost, financing and proposed uses.

Fitworks Sports & Therapy officials maintain that West Chester shouldn't be competing against private businesses. They want more information about the center made public. Fitworks helped to halt a community recreation center last year in Forest Park.

More than half the necessary 1,600 signatures needed to place the measure on the ballot have been gathered, said Duane Hunt, a Fitworks special projects coordinator.

He expects the rest to be gathered by month's end.

West Chester voters this fall already will vote on a proposed 1.95-mill park levy to generate money for park and recreation improvements.

E-mail jedwards@enquirer.com