CITY'S NEW OSAGE CENTRE DEDICATED

City officials cut the ribbon and officially opened the $2.5 million Osage Community Centre Tuesday afternoon. After a few speeches and rounds of applause, the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce hosted the facility's first event -- the Chamber of Commerce's Business After Hours.

While the building itself is finished, the weights aren't in the weight room, the basketball goals and volleyball nets aren't there, some kitchen equipment isn't there and the tables and chairs used for Business After Hours had to be borrowed from the A.C. Brase Arena Building.

Penny Blandford, the recreation supervisor in charge of the Osage Centre, said she and two other Parks and Recreation employees plan to move in next week, but she doesn't expect the center to be operating until after the first part of May.

Everything has been ordered and a few things are in. "Everybody says ~~`two weeks' when we place the orders," but it has been more than two weeks, she said.

The next event planned for the Osage Centre is a lock-in party after Cape Girardeau Central High School's graduation in May, Blandford said.

At Tuesday's reception, the newly-tiled floor lined with the markings of a basketball court gleamed in the main area as hundreds of people sat around tables with white tablecloths to hear Mayor Al Spradling III say from a raised dais, "Look at this beautiful building and think about all the things we've had to do to make this building."

He urged everyone there and everyone in Cape Girardeau to use it.

"Please use it often," he said. "We have recreational sports, aerobics, gymnastics, meeting rooms. Don't be bashful: It is built for you."

Jay Knudtson, chairman of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and president of the Parks Foundation, said the center was the culmination of five years of cooperation between the Parks and Recreation Department and the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

He said the center wasn't built just for its uses as a meeting place and recreational center for Cape Girardeau residents, but to attract tourism.

Shirley Talley, vice chairwoman of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the Osage Community Centre will be a marketing tool for tourism and will host events too large for the Arena and too small for the Show Me Center.

The main area is large enough to accommodate two full-sized basketball courts and can seat up to 1,800 people. The city plans to rent the main floor for events like conventions, craft shows or auto shows.

The facility includes two smaller meeting rooms on one side with a fitness room and a classroom on the other. The rooms have movable partitions. Blandford said she is particularly proud of the partitions, which are soundproof enough that music from one side won't leak into the room on the other.

Groups can rent the hall for private events or for public meetings.