Alcoa’s Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center to expand

One of Alcoa’s most popular community spaces could nearly double in size by 2026.

The number of visitors to the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center on East Franklin has increased substantially over the years. City officials say that it’s time the center did some growing to match.

Alcoa’s plans include building a 3,500 square-foot addition, new classroom and meeting spaces and exterior restrooms. The new space will be used to relieve some pressure on the current building as the center’s summer, senior and after-school programming become more popular.

Though growth is a major part of the plan for the center, city staff are also interested in preserving the existing facility, with changes to the lighting, siding and restrooms.

Programming

The programming provided at the community center has become a draw for Alcoa residents.

Located in the Hall neighborhood, the center — which offers summer and after-school programs for children, as well as daytime programs for seniors — is attracting residents from throughout the city, Alcoa Mayor Tanya Martin noted. In a Friday city manager’s briefing, she said that dozens of children are part of the center’s after-school programming, and many are poised to join the center’s summer program.

The center is serving an important function for area parents, specifically, Martin said. For them, she said, ”(The center) has been an absolute, wonderful godsend.”

And the programming, she commented, “serves the community, but the best part: Not only does it serve the Hall community; it concerns the main community.”

Now, she said, is the time to focus some attention on the center.

The plans aren’t expected to disrupt the center’s day-to-day operations. Alcoa’s city manager Bruce Applegate said Friday that once the renovations get underway, it might be possible to shift programming over to the center’s new addition.

Cost estimates and a firm completion date for the upgrades have not yet been finalized, but Applegate said Friday that the city is eyeing a timeline for the project between 16 and 20 months.

Design

A dedicated playroom, courtyards, multi-use classrooms and expanded storage are among the plans for the project. The update would also come with two, climate-controlled exterior restrooms near the center’s basketball courts and the greenway trail.

Improvements to the existing building could include renovations to the ceiling, changes to the lighting system and upgrades to the bathrooms. Such improvements would leave the center “in good shape for several years,” Applegate said.

In a Friday phone interview, Maryville-Alcoa-Blount County Executive Director Joe Huff said that there are several goals project planners hope to achieve. One is putting groups gathered at the center together by age.

“We have a wide range of young people we can’t separate,” he said. Being able to put like ages together, he said, will help the center’s staff provide children with a stronger experience.

The exterior restrooms, he said, would likewise serve a specific purpose, providing people walking the greenway with a usable restroom separate from the building.

Need

Conversation about the center has picked up recently, and city staff named the upgrades a priority in budget documents for the upcoming fiscal year.

Expanding the center is a long-standing goal. Huff said that plans to revamp the community center started at least a decade ago. Those plans have morphed over the years — at one point, a new gym was part of the conversation — but the need to renovate and expand has stayed consistent, he said. The new plans, he noted, would produce a MLK center nearly twice the size of the current facilty.

“The Martin Luther King Jr. Center has been at the top of our priorities as Parks and Recreation, and we’re very appreciative of the city and the work it’s done the past couple of years,” to get the project off the ground, Huff told The Daily Times.

His comments echoed Martin’s. Near the end of Friday’s meeting, she said, “I’m so grateful that we’re going to look at the problems that have been there for so long.”

The building project will take place in the bounds of the Hall community — a historically Black neighborhood, though its demographics are in flux — but, she said, “It’s just for the city of Alcoa, period. And that’s the thing that I want us to always think about. I don’t care what color you are; I don’t care where you live.”

“You are a citizen of Alcoa. You pay taxes. You are entitled that we as a city look at your needs, and that we meet those needs as best we can,” she said.

Next steps for the project include approvals from the city’s planning commission and a bid process.