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Monday, May 12, 2008  |
South Lincoln Event Center
History:
The Event Center Committee was formed over 18 months ago as community planning meetings were held to identify what were the most pertinent goals that the communities wanted to accomplish that would spur economic development. The Event Center Committee is made up of representative from municipalities of south Lincoln County as well as business, industry, and unions. Drawing from the previous studies accomplished by the City and the community assessment performed by the Wyoming Rural Development Council, the construction of an event center topped the list of identified projects.
Several locations were looked at for the development of the facility. The major determining factors in locating the facility included providing the 172 parking spaces for the designed facility, a desire not to consume the limited commercial land that we have in the town with a public facility, and the desire expressed by the community not to demolish any more of the structures in the downtown area. After considering many of the sites around the community the most economically feasible location identified was the T-ball field due to its flat terrain, excellent access to highway and adjacency to the Kemmerer Golf Course.
Preliminary work on the event center commenced during the summer of 2004 with a draft design being created by HHY Associates of Salt Lake City. This design includes a 17,000 sq ft multi-use room that will seat 450 people for dining and 600 people for a performance event. The multi-use room is dividable into 4 separate conference rooms with each having state of the art communications and audio visual equipment for training, conferencing and trade show activities. The facility will also include a caterer's kitchen, bathroom facilities and outdoor patio for variety of uses.
The estimated cost of the facility is 4.2 million dollars with the potential that it could go higher with typical inflation and the escalating cost of materials. The City of Kemmerer has committed one million dollars to the project that will be used as matching funds to apply for grants from the state. The committee has requested a 2 million dollar commitment from the county with the option to seek additional funding through them if other sources fail to produce the need monies.
Currently the Committee is setting up meeting times with the various industries in the area to request financial support from them and to solidify the needs previously identified for the event center.
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