PARK BOARD YIELDS TO STUDY ABOUT CHAMBER BUILDING LOCATION

A new multi-purpose recreation facility at the corner of Kingshighway and Mt. Auburn Road might include a facility for the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce.

The city's Parks and Recreation Advisory Board Monday approved a motion to study the feasibility of including a 10,000-square-foot chamber office with the 32,000-square-foot multi-purpose facility.

The city multi-purpose building will be built on a tract of new park land at the southeast corner of the intersection of Kingshighway and Mt. Auburn and Lexington Avenue on the city's northwest side.

Although park board Chairman Jim Grebing expressed reservations about the proposal, the board unanimously voted to consider the prospect as part of the architectural study for the activity center.

Larry Payne of the chamber of commerce board made the request at last week's city council meeting, and the council referred the matter to the park board.

"The chamber is looking for a new chamber office location," Payne said Monday. "We'd like to be one turn off the interstate, in a high-traffic, high-visibility area. The area that meets those requirements is at the intersection of Kingshighway, Mt. Auburn and Lexington."

The chamber offices now are situated on Kingshighway, between Broadway and Cape Rock Drive.

Payne said a new chamber facility would include a "visitor's center" and parking sufficient to handle buses and about 25 cars during business hours on weekdays.

He said the proposal could benefit the city as well as the chamber of commerce. He said there could be shared costs in its construction as well as shared use of "common areas," such as parking.

But Grebing said he wasn't convinced the proposal would benefit the city's parks. He questioned whether adding a chamber office would limit the potential for expanding the multi-purpose building in the future.

"We want to build a building that we can add on to in the future," Grebing said. "We don't know how much space we're going to have on that site."

But other board members said the chamber office seemed a good consideration for the new park site.

"Any time you build a building to expand, which is what we should be doing with this one, you normally build it to expand in one direction, so that's not a problem here," said board member Mike Kohlfeld. "Plus, it would give us a much more impressive complex.

"There are plenty of places the chamber could put this building. I see no negatives if the architects say it can work."

Kohlfeld said the city could defray some of the operating costs at the multi-purpose building by including the chamber office on the site.

"I think he's asking for us to look at it," said board member Jay Crosnoe. "I don't see a problem, but I definitely have a problem with saying, `Yeah, the chamber's going to be in there.'"

Payne said the chamber wouldn't immediately commit to placing its office on the site. "The cost may be prohibitive for the chamber to get into it," he said.

Payne said the facility could be added to and "condo-ed" with the multi-purpose building. He said the chamber would prefer to own its facility, but that if such an arrangement was impossible, "I think we would still be interested."

Dan Muser, director of the city's parks and recreation department, said he thought the chamber's request was reasonable.

The multi-purpose building and new park site are part of a recreation project approved last year by the city council.

The $4 million project, which is financed with excess tourism funds, also includes a soccer and softball complex in Shawnee Park. Construction will begin as soon as the architect's study is completed.