For at least nine years, the Brown County Parks and Recreation Department has wanted a multi-use building at Deer Run Park.

As the department has been updating its five-year plan, the need for such a building continues to be identified, Director Mark Shields told the Brown County Council.

“I’ve been told it was a goal of the department long before I came along,” Shields said.

Parks and rec was one of three boards to report to the council on Nov. 19 about their year, their goals and their needs.

Parks and rec has used gymnasiums in Brown County schools for youth and adult basketball programs. But with the schools now doing after-school programs until 6 p.m., it limits their practice time, he said. They have to be out by 7 p.m.

“We used to be able to have 3:30 p.m. to 7 or 8 p.m. at each one of the elementary schools for our basketball practices, but now, since the implementation of the youth after-school programs, we’re down to one hour per day per school. That’s really kind of affected what we can and can’t do,” Shields said.

“At times, we even try to double up some of the teams in one gym for one hour. When you have about 20 preschool-aged kids running around together, it’s pretty difficult to accomplish much of anything.”

Shields said 130 children are enrolled in the parks and rec preschool through fourth-grade basketball program. Typically, games will draw 200 to 300 people, he said.

In addition, a travel soccer league, made up of players from the parks and rec fall league, is going to Bloomington to play during the winter season.

If it had a multi-purpose facility, Shields said parks and rec would be able to expand program offerings. “We’re limited just based on lack of a facility to do so,” he said.

“If we could actually look at having an area with just a gymnasium, something small that would be kind of bare-boned, we could look at doing fencing, indoor soccer, we could provide practice times for baseball and softball, a variety of other senior (citizen) programming we’re lacking in through just lack of time we have available at Sycamore Valley (county-owned senior center).”

If it had a building, Shields said parks and rec might even be able to collaborate with the school district to offer supervised after-school programming for students in seventh grade and up, which is a need. “We kind of see this if you walk the Salt Creek Trail after school. There needs to be some other more useful activities after school for kids that are seventh (grade) and up. I think that’s just one age group that kind of slipped through the cracks,” he said.

The Brown County Parks and Recreation Board agreed for a skate park to be built at Deer Run Park with funds raised by the group Kids on Wheels. Shields said they are finalizing a location for that skate park in their five-year plan in potential relationship to a multi-purpose facility.

“With the building, it would definitely take us to year-round,” he said.

“Even a skate park will not be helpful with single digits outside.”

Shields said he had been talking with the leaders of the Head Start preschool program in Brown County and that they are looking to find another space. “Ideally, it would be nice if we could figure out a way to incorporate their program into our building, which they would essentially be helping to offset maintenance and utility costs,” he said.

He said Head Start is paying around $1,000 in rent now, plus utilities. “One of the things that appealed to them is to have a site that could have a playground and far away removed from any kind of major intersection or street. We have the grounds, playground facilities, so that’s something that is kind of clicking in my head,” Shields said.

BETA (Brown County Enrichment for Teens Association) also is looking for some additional space, Shields said. “If we had one or two other agencies that’s helping to pay $1,000 a month, that would be potentially $24,000 annually we could have to offset utilities and maintenance costs,” Shields said.

Shields has had some initial conversations about how much it would cost to put up a building. One estimator told him to budget for $40 to $50 a square foot for a 10,000-square-foot facility, which would be around $500,000.

But Shields said he also spoke with Brown County Highway Superintendent Mike Magner about the new truck barn the highway department recently built using highway staff to save on costs. For the barn shell and a stone base, it cost about $160,000, which would be about $14.25 per square foot, Shields said.

“I think if we play our cards right, I think we could figure out something somewhere close to that figure,” he said.

He did not have figures on how much it would cost to finish the inside of the facility.

Over the summer, parks and rec hosted six large softball tournaments at Deer Run Park, and each brought in 1,000 to 3,000 people and $1,000 to $2,000 in revenue after expenses were paid. The department is in process of finalizing a contract with tournament organizers to host 10 more tournaments next year from May to October, Shields said.

“We’re helping to boost the economic growth of the county and the town because … some of these tournaments, they last all weekend. I know people get tired of hot dogs and potato chips, so they’re going into town to get something else to eat,” he said.

The department also has a fund where program fees, concession revenue and proceeds from its annual 5K fundraiser are held. Shields estimated the revenue in that fund ranges between $30,000 and $50,000 per year. Right now, most of it is spent each year on sports supplies and maintenance, he said.

Council President Keith Baker said he would get together with Shields in the next few weeks to talk about this subject and see what grants could be available through the state.

This is not the first time that building a county-owned multipurpose recreational facility has been discussed publicly in the past decade or so.

In 2012, the county looked into turning the vacant For Bare Feet sock factory in Helmsburg into a sports complex when the building was county-owned. But estimates to retrofit the former factory into volleyball and basketball courts were deemed too high with not enough return to cover the cost of the investment, and the building was eventually sold to The Beamery.

Constructing a new sports building at Deer Run also was in the county and town’s Stellar Communities proposal in 2014. The cost estimate at that time was $1.7 million. Brown County-Nashville did not win a Stellar designation, which could have given it access to grants for several projects, and the sports center idea went dormant again.