Can the Lake Carmel Community Center Be Revived?

The Lake Carmel Community Center, located at 10 Huguenot Road. Photo by Holly Crocco.

By Holly Crocco

The Town of Kent is going to have to spend money before it decides if it wants to spend more money to either demolish, renovate, or rebuild the Lake Carmel Community Center, located at 10 Huguenot Road.

Discussion on the matter has occurred over a number of years, and continued during the April 21 Kent Town Board meeting.

The center first started to fall into disrepair back in 2018 after a tornado swept through the area, downing trees and causing structural damage and flooding. The building reportedly contains black mold from flood damage, asbestos, poor wiring, and other dangers.

In early 2023, the board approved spending up to $7,000 on an asbestos inspection as a first step toward deciding whether to rehabilitate the building or tear it down.

“The first thing we need to discuss as a town board is how we’re going to get to the next step, which is a vote amongst the Lake Carmel property owners on the options that we’ve been talking about and put on the table,” said Councilman Christopher Ruthven at last week’s meeting.

The board solicited an engineer to generate quotes regarding how much it will cost simply to go out for bid for the different option – not including any work.

“This was my hesitation – I knew it was going to cost a lot of money to get each one of those options done, and it’s a lot of money we don’t have to get to that point,” said Ruthven. “It’s a long process to get to that point, to do that instead of just taking their industry-standard estimates that they’ve given us and using those to try to get a vote.”

Engineers estimate it would cost $40,000 to put together a bid package to demolish the building and seed the lawn, $165,000 to develop a bid package to rehabilitate the existing building, and $127,500 to put together a bid package to demolish the old building and construct a new one.

“That’s just paying the engineer to get the bid, to advertise it to put out,” said Ruthven. “That’s them working though the entire process through the end and coming back and saying, ‘This is the best bang for your buck.’”

Pat Ravert, former chairperson of the Lake Carmel Park District, asked why much of asbestos can’t simply be encapsulated instead of abated.

“We cannot go back to a non-standard right now for a municipal building,” said Ruthven. “We’re not grandfathered into anything. We know there’s a problem, we’ve admitted the problem, we’ve had people work on it. And once we do that, what you’re talking about does not bring that up to standard… We are at a step where we have come this far, we have to bring it up to code.”

Ravert also expressed concerns that the new vision for the center doesn’t take into consideration all the ways the building has been used in the past.

“I don’t think the new residents in town understand the types of events that went on at the community center, because it’s been closed for so long,” she said. This includes children’s parties, penny socials, game nights, craft fairs, tag sales, New Year’s Eve parties and snowflake dances, as well as monthly senior meet-ups.

“We haven’t made any decision – we’re going to let the residents do that,” said Ruthven. “Our question tonight is: how do we get to the vote? How do we get that out?”

Resident Kathy Doherty suggested the town send out a survey to get taxpayers’ opinions, to see what – if anything – they want to pay for.

“The Lake Carmel Park District has so many more people that have signed up for their beach tags and stuff like that, so there’s a bigger list than there ever has been,” she said.

Doherty also brought up the idea of utilizing space at the former firehouse, which is currently being rented out by Arts on the Lake.

AotL President Bob Bradley said the center would be more than willing to work with the town and the park district.

“We have never been in competition with the community center,” he said. “Lately we have taken on being a community center. We have given birth to different groups that are part of the community.”

This includes a writers group, photography group, Zumba and Pilates. In addition, various organizations are renting out space to host events, such as the local Democratic and Republican parties. A chorus meets there monthly and even hosts singing lessons at the space.

“Our problem with using Arts on the Lake (as a community center) is the fact of our time – we just don’t have time,” said Bradley, who noted that it is labor-intensive to take down tables and chairs after one group is done using the space, then set up for the next. “We are certainly just a tenant and we understand totally that the building belongs to the Town of Kent.”

Still, he said the organization would like to be part of any conversation surrounding the building’s use.

Walt Recher said the community center is an asset he’d hate to see knocked down, noting, “A community center is really part of the backbone of what a community offers, and particularly in a small town like this.”

One of those uses could be a senior center. According to Nina Veale, president of Kent Senior Citizens, there are 190 members who are active in the group.

However, that number likely cannot be accommodated at the community center even if it is rebuilt, due to septic concerns.

“The best thing we can do at this point is come to a decision as to which direction we’re going, and then go into the budget process for 2027 and allocate money for it,” concluded Ruthven. “The truth of the matter is, we don’t have the money. We don’t have the money to get through stage one. We can probably go out and put the survey out, but how do we pay for anything past that?”

Discussion on the matter is expected to continue at the May 5 Kent Town Board meeting.