MILTON — The sale of the Navarre Community Center has been approved.
County commissioners on Thursday unanimously accepted the Navarre Area Board of Realtors’ offer to purchase the building for $215,000.
“This $215,000, we’ll escrow that and put it towards the development of a (new) Navarre Community Center,” County Administrator Hunter Walker said.
Commissioners voted in April to declare the community center surplus and put it up for sale. NABOR, which has rented the building in recent years, submitted the only bid.
The Navarre Community Center, located at 1917 Navarre School Road, was built in 1987. It features office space and a large meeting room, but has limited parking.
Walker said the county attorney will meet with NABOR soon to close the sale, and officials will start to look for a new community center in Navarre.
“This will be a little different than any we’ve done so far,” Walker said. “Each of our other community centers (in Chumuckla, Pace, Bagdad and one under construction at Tiger Point) are built on property that we already had. We have not had to go out and purchase a separate piece of property.
Walker said the county does not have land set aside for a new community center, and its property near the county softball and soccer fields are either completely developed or too far out of the way.
A 4,000- to 5,000-square-foot community center is estimated to cost about $900,000, Walker said. The center at Tiger Point has a price tag of more than $1 million because it was designed to be larger than the other community centers to provide more meeting space and have audio-visual and Internet streaming equipment.
Commissioner Jim Melvin has discussed scheduling a town hall meeting to get residents’ thoughts on how best to proceed with building or buying and converting an existing building into a new community center.
NABOR has stated it will keep the original center’s meeting space available to the public for rent until a new center is open.
Contact Daily News Business Editor Dusty Ricketts at 850-315-4448 or dricketts@nwfdailynews.com. Follow him on Twitter @DustyRnwfdn.
