As Summit County gets closer to the end of the year, Silverthorne Town Council members look to larger projects that could happen in 2023, including improvements to locker rooms at town’s recreation center.

Steve Herrman, manager of the center, said the last cosmetic updates for the locker rooms happened about 15 years ago and mainly consisted of tile and countertop updates, but no major mechanical upgrades have taken place excluding emergencies.

“We’re at the point where we need to update those finishes again,” Herrman said. “… The tile was starting to crack and fail and we need to go replace it. If you look at that, you’re going end up spending close to $500,000 to $750,000, probably even more in today’s market. … This is one of our last areas that we need to drastically improve. Let’s use that money. Let’s make an impact.”

Specifically, this project would focus on improvements to the larger family-style locker rooms. To do this, Herrman said that it would use the square footage where the stairs are. After the project, the stairs would be moved to be against the gymnasium. Herrman said this would open up about 400 square feet of space. After completion, the area goes from two full-service cabanas to four. The project has an eight-month construction timeline and will likely be finished in two phases. 

“What’s great about this as well is that our gymnasium programming has always been kind of far away from the bathroom,” he added. “This is bringing the bathroom so much closer to those participants that are in the gymnasium as well.”

For this update on the locker rooms, the price is close to $5 million. In the future, Town Council members are expected to look into a much larger renovation or expansion of the recreation center.

“Although they would be two separate projects, when you’re thinking about setting the facility up for the coming decades and what needs to be done, I would think of this in the magnitude of maybe part one of that expansion,” Town Manager Ryan Hyland said.  

Council member Mike Spry expressed that he agrees that there is a need for the updates, but he does think that the larger expansion should include the updates to create one large project instead of two. 

“I think that I would much rather see an entire expansion plan put together that would accommodate this — that it’s all built together in one bid with one piece of work,” he said. “Then you can legitimately say ‘Yes, this is Phase 1 and Phase 2,’ but to be able to build something out with this with this schematic, and then say ‘Well, we have this expansion coming up knowing that we’re going to have to undo something.’ That just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”

Mayor Ann-Marie Sandquist said that the council has not looked closely at the expansion of the recreation center because a final funding source has not been identified. She said that beginning the locker room updates would provide a needed service to community members sooner rather than waiting until a final expansion plan is finished. 

“​​I don’t want to wait another two or three years before we start anything,” she said.