Time for study

By Published by The Editorial Board

Published: July 10, 2008

Pittsylvania County Youth Sports will have the Blairs Community Center building for at least one more year while the county comes up with a long-term plan.

“It’s something we can work with,” said Steve Stone, president of Pittsylvania County Youth Sports. The same thing could be said by the 5,000 young people who play soccer, football, basketball and softball at the former Blairs Middle School.

The Board of Supervisors had considered replacing the building’s roof, tearing it down or even using the Internet to find someone willing to salvage-scrap the old building.

In one of the more interesting proposals, Callands-Gretna Supervisor Fred Ingram said the Blairs Community Center building should be replaced with a multi-million dollar sports complex — plus a smaller one in Gretna. That would certainly give some geographic balance to the youth sports offerings in the county, but it’s not clear how such a project would be paid for, or more importantly, how it would fit the county’s needs.

Ultimately, supervisors decided to cut the $30,000 they had been spending on building maintenance but extend the lease until next June.

For now, the Board of Supervisors is working on the $70 million high school renovation project while struggling to find a way to replace or even expand the county’s overcrowded jail. Those are the top building projects facing Pittsylvania County.

But the Board of Supervisors has convened a Recreation Advisory Board to study some of the questions tangled up with the future of the Blairs Community Center. So while the lease extension through June 2009 seems like passing the buck and cutting out building maintenance seems like a shortsighted decision, the county has in place a group that is studying all of the recreation issues, facilities and funding sources.

Pittsylvania County’s Recreation Advisory Board is the best place to study the Blairs Community Center’s future. In the short run, the Blairs Community Center has been spared but not saved. But we don’t live in the short run, and the county isn’t planning for it. That’s good news.