FAIRMONT– On Monday the Fairmont Area Community Center Foundation (FACC) announced that it will discontinue efforts to build a YMCA-operated community center in Fairmont. While the project had been in pursuit for more than a decade, the group said that project delays and escalating costs have made the project unaffordable.

Back in 2016, 63 percent of voters in Fairmont supported a local option sales tax of one-half of one percent for 25 years or until $15 million in revenues have been generated for the purpose of funding recreational amenities, trails and/or a Fairmont Community Center.

Since the sales tax went into effect in 2017, about $7.5 million has been collected.

In 2019, the Fairmont City Council approved of a YMCA-operated community center at a cost of nearly $20 million and at that time the council committed $14 million of the sales tax funds with the caveat that the community center group (Foundation) would need to raise $6 million in private donations, as well as get an agreement in place with the YMCA, which was entered into in the spring of 2022.

While a group of people have been diligently working on bringing a community center to the Fairmont area for more than a decade, the Foundation was born in 2021 when the Krahmer family, Rosen family and Mayo Clinic Health System pledged $4.5 million to the project.

Since then, other individuals and organizations have pledged various amounts of money to the project. To date over $8 million had been raised in donations and pledges.

John Kasper, a member of the Foundation, spoke to what will happen to the money that has already been raised.

“The vast majority that was going to the project was in the form of pledges. The money wasn’t actually given to us,” Kasper explained. “There was some money given by donors and as it stipulated on the donation form, we’ll take that money and donate it to another non-profit.”

He reiterated that the vast majority was given in the form of a pledge, including $500,000 from Bank Midwest, $300,000 from Bryan and Mary Beth Sweet, $100,000 from both Hugoson Pork and Profinium Financial and a whole lot of other pledges coming in at more than $1,000 from individuals, families or businesses.

Despite ongoing fundraising efforts, the project had seen countless changes over the years, including some changes with contractors, changes to design plans due to rising costs and changes within the city, which the FACC cited in a press release, saying there has been “dysfunction and inconsistency with city leadership.”

The press release also mentioned a “frivolous litigation brought against the city,” which referred to a lawsuit brought forth by the group Fairmont Taxpayers Coalition for Government Transparency, which was dismissed in the spring of 2024.

Nonetheless, the impacts of the lawsuit and from the recent government shutdown had stalled decisions on a federal funding source.

Kasper said that the FACC had been doing its best to make the project go.

“We had been looking at options since early this year to find alternative ways to make it happen, knowing that the costs were continuing to escalate. We were looking at how to find different money through grants, different places where to put the building and looking for major donors to help come in and do it and for different reasons it never came to fruition,” Kasper said.

He added that that’s why the group had been quiet over most of the last year because it was working behind the scenes, exploring different ways to make the project happen.

“This fall we came to the realization that we weren’t going to be able to cover the funding to make it happen and we made the hard decision to not pursue construction,” Kasper said.

Most recently, the project was set to cost about $30 million and would have included an aquatics area, multi-purpose gym, recreational space and programming for youth, families and seniors.

Hayley Luther was a long-time volunteer with the project who also worked on marketing for it, designing both the logo and the website. She said she wasn’t completely surprised to learn that the project came to an end, but that that didn’t make the reality hurt any less.

“When the drawings came out in 2024, my son was super excited. He saw the picture of the pool. We got to the point where it looked like a reality, like you could see it, and then finances just got too much and delays made it worse,” Luther said.

Despite putting many hours of volunteer time into the project, Luther said she doesn’t regret being involved at all.

“You’ve got to try to make your community better. I wish more people would see that. We’re not trying to steal tax money. We’ve seen what other towns have done, where we’ve come from and our own backgrounds, and we want that to happen for Fairmont,” Luther said.

As for the possibility of picking the project up again, Kasper said that a YMCA-operated community center as the city has asked for the FACC to pursue, cannot be afforded.

“With that in mind, it unfortunately can’t go any further and we can’t pursue it any further,” he said.

However, Kasper said that it’s in the city’s court to decide what to do with the sales tax money now. He encouraged citizens to stay engaged and to provide input on how they would like the sales tax money to be used moving forward.

Toward the end of the Fairmont City Council meeting on Monday, Interim City Administrator Jeff O’Neill acknowledged the press release that FACC had sent out.

“I know that this is fresh news but obviously in the near future we’re going to need to have some sort of organizational meeting of some kind to see where we go with the local option sales tax dollars and all of the people who worked so hard on this and pivot in a way that’s positive for the community. That will require significant community engagement to start moving in a different direction,” O’Neill said.

He encouraged the council to start thinking about how they want to move forward and said staff will likely come up with a starting point of ideas.

Council Member Randy Lubenow said that he’s disappointed, but that he hopes to use the sales tax money to give the citizens some amenities.

Lubenow had been actively involved in the project from the start, going door to door to talk to community members about it.

“Everything that was said about the sales tax money, it was all started by people that wanted a community center and a hockey center. There wasn’t all these other groups… I’m disappointed that the city council at that time changed the wording. The ballot question, I think that led to a lot of problems,” Lubenow said.

He said it wasn’t until six or seven years later that it was mentioned that the ballot question was confusing.

“People are always worried about about their property taxes, but if we don’t grow Fairmont, it’s going to be less and less people paying for the upkeep of Fairmont,” Lubenow said.

He has a few ideas of what he would like to see the sales tax money used on, but agreed with O’Neill that some community engagement sessions will need to be had in the near future.

*Editor’s Note: This article has been added to from an earlier version that was published online on Monday, Nov. 10