Only the beginning

• Choice Wellness groundbreaking

An instrumental group in making the development of Choice Wellness Center possible participate in the groundbreaking ceremony for the new fitness facility. Actual excavation efforts are anticipated to begin in a few weeks and be completed by December.

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A ceremonial scoop of soil hadn’t even been moved yet — much less a real excavation — when speculation started about what else might develop around the Choice Wellness Center on the south end of Grand Forks.

Speaking at this afternoon’s groundbreaking ceremony for the Park District’s new fitness center, the executive director of the Community Foundation of Grand Forks, East Grand Forks and Region asked the crowd to imagine the neighbor possibilities, citing a new library, a hockey rink, a new senior center and a sports bubble as options for the 40-acre site between 40th and 47th avenues.

The foundation’s Kristi Mishler was looking beyond the Choice Wellness Center’s opening, which is still at least 20 months away. It was an appropriate setting for long-range speculation because the people who were behind the $23 million facility were thinking big and far ahead, 12 years as it turned out.

Much credit was being thrown around today, shown by 45 sets of shovels and hard hats for the ceremonial soil-turning.

“So many different times over the last 12 years, the right person turned up at the right time,” said John Staley, the Park District director who was the driving force from the beginning.

The Park District set out to find a replacement for the aging Center Court Fitness without using tax dollars. They did it by getting $2.75 million from Choice Financial for the center’s naming rights, $6.5 million from Altru for the naming rights for the 40-acre complex and to put a sports medicine clinic on the grounds, millions more in pledges from other donors large-and-small, the 40 acres donated by Crary Real Estate and from rental agreements with Altru and the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center, which will do obesity research at the center.

Gerald Combs, head of the Nutrition Lab, talked about the multiple purposes of the facility.

“I see this center as a laboratory,” he said. “Others will see it as a place to work out, others as a place to play, others as a place to learn, others as a place to socialize.

“All of us will be right.”

The center was touted by speakers more for its benefits in fighting diabetes, hypertension and obesity than for developing flat bellies.

“Medicine does not work by just seeing sick people,” said Dr. Casey Ryan, Altru president.

Real — not pretend — dirt excavation for sewer and water lines will begin within the next few weeks and is expected to be completed in December. The final design should be ready in February, followed by construction bids.

Work will start as soon as frost is out in the spring, with an expected opening in mid-summer 2012.

Reach Bakken at (701) 780-1125; (800) 477-6572, ext. 125; or send e-mail to rbakken@gfherald.com.

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