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Porterdale gym closer to a new roof
Original gym burned in '05
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The city of Porterdale is one step closer to seeing the restoration of the town's historic gym, which burnt in 2005.

At a work session Thursday night, Tanya Richard of Richard Wittshiebe and Hand presented a preliminary drawing and space analysis for the gym/community center.
The drawings show a floor plan, but those plans will likely not be completed for some time as the priority project is to replace the roof. The floor plans, however, needed to be completed because builders would need to know where to place support columns and beams.

"The front of the building will look exactly like what it looked like before because that's what we heard in our planning meetings," Richard said.

The inside of the gym will boast a basketball court with bleachers, weight room, locker room, space for administrative offices, space for the Porterdale Woman's Club, a computer room/library, four community meeting/classroom spaces, a game room, an arts and crafts room, an elevated walking track, restrooms, an elevator and plenty of storage.

Richard estimated the cost of the renovation to be between $110 to $120 a square foot. With the total square footage of the building approximately 24,000 square feet, the total cost would come in somewhere around $1.5 million. She said a building her company designed with similar square footage was just completed for around that cost.

"That was a new building though," Richard said. "Because this isn't a new building, it's hard to compare them directly."