As Hannah Community Center Turns 100, East Lansing Eyes Third-Floor Expansion
As the Hannah Community Center marks 100 years since its original construction, it remains a hub of activity for East Lansing residents of all ages.
On a June day, the city’s Planning Commission meets on the first floor and a room on the second floor is being decorated for a retiree luncheon. A summer drama camp is rehearsing Wicked in the auditorium and Prime Time Seniors is hosting an event for caregivers of people with dementia.
All this takes place while residents come and go throughout the day, using the gym, pool and classroom spaces.
There is momentum towards renovating the third floor of the building, which is mostly used for storage now, to expand space for programming, Parks, Recreation and Arts Department Director Justin Drwencke told East Lansing Info. The consideration was prompted by a report the city commissioned from a consultant to study the building’s space utilization.
“Based on some of the recommendations in that report,” Drwencke said, “there are some possible uses for the third floor, including potentially moving the ceramic studio and some art studio space [there].”
Drwencke said there is room for only so many pottery wheels in the current second-floor space, limiting participation.
“Those classes have waitlists for every session,” he said. “We know that there’s a level of demand in the community that exceeds our current capacity to serve.”
He said the third-floor layout is based on classrooms used when the building served as a high school and middle school for East Lansing Public Schools. Those rooms could be renovated to expand the amount of space for programming.
When the building was initially converted from a school to a community center more than 20 years ago, Drwencke said building and fire codes at the time would have required the construction of an exterior emergency fire escape accessible from the third floor.
Earlier this year, East Lansing’s fire marshal and code officials reviewed the space and determined that existing pathways are sufficient to allow occupancy on the third floor. That determination significantly cut projected costs associated with the renovation and heightened the possibility of a project, Drwencke said.
Funding is still the major obstacle to the third floor being renovated.
Drwencke estimates the renovations would cost approximately $3.8 million and would include updating HVAC equipment, electrical infrastructure, lighting and upgrading plumbing and renovating restrooms to ensure compliance with the American with Disabilities Act.
The city has pursued grants to pay for third floor renovations but has not been chosen for funding yet, Drwencke said.
“If it’s not something that we can achieve grant funding for,” he said, “if we do some bond financing and pay the cost of that over 20 years, that could be absorbed through some of our program fees and operating revenues.”
This is part of a larger conversation, he said, about East Lansing’s budget and financial picture.
While the City Council seemed reluctant about including renovations to the third floor of the community center in a bond when the topic was broached in March, East Lansing surprisingly wrapped up its fiscal year with a surplus and the budget for the current fiscal year is nearly balanced, painting a far sunnier outlook of city finances than projections from earlier this year.
Drwencke said the Hannah Community Center is a staple of the community and deserves to continue serving as “the heart of East Lansing’s civic engagement and recreation activities.”
“When we’re talking about close to a half-million visits a year,” he said, “from not only East Lansing, but really the region, and when we look at some of our third-party reservations, really across the state, the Hannah Community Center is not just the heart of life here in East Lansing, but it is really a destination for all of Michigan.”