CAIRO — Town officials are moving forward with a plan to convert a former martial arts teaching facility into the town’s new community center.
The town purchased the former Dojo Martial Arts and Fitness Academy on Route 32 in November with plans to renovate the space and turn it into a senior center. The back of the building would also be used to house the town’s ambulance service.
During the town board’s Feb. 7 meeting, the board unanimously passed a pair of resolutions to hire the Barton & Loguidice engineering consulting firm in Albany to apply for grants for the senior center project and to prepare a site plan for the project.
The board authorized $5,500 to the firm for grant writing, $4,600 for interior layout design, $1,200 for asbestos abatement and $1,900 for lab analysis.
“We need to knock down some walls, redo the electric and put in a kitchen,” Town Supervisor Jason Watts said of the project. “It would be a community center where they could do Meals on Wheels and the seniors can come in and we’ll put a TV up and have some games there that they can do. We’ve talked about putting some gardens outside for people to work with.”
Watts said he wanted to employ the town’s building and grounds crew to eventually work on renovating the site on rainy days when they can’t work outdoors.
“The county said they would give us a dumpster,” he said. “So I’m going to try to do it with whatever money we’ve got and hopefully moving forward Barton & Loguidice can get us a grant. If they could get us a grant, they said it could be over $1 million. That would put us right where we need to be to start really moving forward. A kitchen is going to be $70,000 to $80,000. Just by ourselves, we might be able to afford to do the community part with the help of the county. The ambulance part might have to wait, because we definitely don’t have the money for that. But we do have to do something.”
Councilman Tim Powers does not have a timeline for when the community center could be completed.
“We really don’t. It depends on how fast the grant money comes in and how fast we can get the ball rolling on it,” he said. “We’re at the very beginning. We haven’t done anything beyond purchasing the building at this point.”
During Monday’s meeting, a public hearing was set for the board’s meeting on March 7 for a local law that would establish alternate side parking on Main Street in the town.
With cars currently parked on both sides of Main Street, Watts said it was difficult for the town’s snowplows to clear the main thoroughfare.
“It’s very hard for the plow trucks today to come down and swing one way then the other and to miss all of the cars,” he said. “It’s a nightmare. You can never get it clean. It never looks good. There’s always a clump of snow somewhere.”
The town is tasked with cleaning the sidewalks on the county-owned road.
Watts said the parking issue has been brewing since he first joined the town board four years ago.
“I’m putting forth a public hearing to make it an actual law,” he said after Monday’s meeting. “We’re going to try to mirror Catskill’s law. So if anybody moves from Catskill to Cairo they’ll already know the routine. It has to get easier for the businesses with more people coming into the county.”