A new adult recreation center could be coming to Roswell, and residents made their preference known for its location.
Most attendees at an Oct. 15 public meeting held at the Roswell Public Library said they preferred the Cielo Grande Recreation Area over the Spring River Zoo grounds as the site for a new adult recreation center.
When Ward 3 City Councilor Kurt Gass asked the gathered audience how many wanted the center at Cielo Grande, most of the roughly 60 people raised their hands. Very few hands went up when Gass asked who wanted the center on the zoo grounds.
Councilors took no action at the meeting on a final location for the center.
The new building would replace the old adult center at 807 N. Missouri Ave., which closed after the Oct. 19, 2024, flood caused extensive damage. That day, 5.78 inches of rain fell within a few hours, a record for single-day rainfall in the Roswell area, according to the National Weather Service in Albuquerque.
The flash flooding caused about $220 million in damage to city buildings, Roswell Mayor Timothy Jennings said. That included the Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell Convention Center and Roswell police station.
The zoo also sustained heavy damage during the flood but was reopened weeks after the incident. City officials recently proposed closing the zoo due to ongoing struggles to repair it and find an alternative use for the property.
Some of the 22 people who offered public comment at the meeting said Cielo Grande is a good location for the center because many of the activities hosted at the old adult center before it closed have since moved to the Roswell Recreation and Aquatic Center, which is also at Cielo Grande.
“So you’ve already trained us where to go,” said Larry McCreary, vice president of the Roswell Adult Center Foundation. He added that possible additional space in the aquatic center for offices and existing utility infrastructure would also benefit a center at Cielo Grande.
Sara Hall of Roswell, former manager of the adult center, emphasized the ample parking at Cielo Grande.
“We need the parking, and if you program it correctly, you can use both the aquatic center and the adult center together to improve the city,” Hall said.
Other attendees who commented said traveling to Cielo Grande is easier for residents than traveling to the zoo.
“I feel like the zoo’s pretty far for a lot of folks, kind of at the edge of town,” said Chad Silver of Roswell.
Darla Massey of Roswell said she wanted the new center at the old adult center’s site on South Missouri Avenue.
Chris Cortez, chair of the city’s Flood Recovery Task Force, said a new center could not be built at the Missouri Avenue location. The property is in a flood-prone area, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency would not reimburse the city for the cost of a replacement there, Cortez said.
FEMA approved a $6.6 million reimbursement for a new center at a site yet to be determined, according to an April 23 news release from the agency.
An online, nonscientific survey on flood rebuilding priorities conducted by the city before the Oct. 15 meeting showed Cielo Grande as the choice of a plurality of the 173 respondents. Of the respondents, 48.0% wanted the center at Cielo Grande and 13.9% wanted it on the zoo grounds. Another 17.3% said they needed more information, 11.6% had no preference and 9.2% said the new center should be somewhere other than Cielo Grande or the zoo.
Councilors called the meeting after Ward 2 Councilor Riley Armstrong made a motion at the council’s Sept. 10 meeting to postpone a vote on a resolution to close the zoo and consider building a $17.5 million multigenerational complex on the zoo grounds. The motion, which passed 8-2, delayed a vote on the resolution until after a public hearing. Ward 1 Councilor Cristina Arnold and Ward 2 Councilor Julianna Halvorson voted against it.
City officials saw the complex as a way to merge several flood recovery projects into one, according to an Oct. 13 post on the city’s Facebook page. Other projects would likely have included a scout clubhouse, a tennis pro shop at Cahoon Park and a Department of Parks and Recreation storage facility damaged by the flooding. A pond and bridge on a part of the zoo property battered by the flood would also be fixed.
In August, the council released a map of what the proposed complex could include. The map showed soccer fields, a dog park, community gardens and classrooms for activities but no adult center.
Halvorson said at the Oct.15 meeting that the map was not a final plan but was meant to start a conversation in the community about post-flood reconstruction.
“So our goal was just to start moving on repairs. That’s why we started it. We need to start fixing things because the money is starting to come in,” she said.
That money includes no-interest state loans and revenue generated from a three-eighths of 1% Municipal Flood Recovery Gross Receipts Tax on most business transactions within the city. Under New Mexico law, money from the tax must go toward paying off flood recovery bonds and repairing public infrastructure damaged in the flood.
Halvorson said she hopes the city can hold a separate public meeting for each project to gather public input before work begins.
