By EMILY SPARACINO / Staff Writer

CHELSEA – Finishing touches on the new Chelsea Community Center off Shelby County 47 are all that stand between it and a grand opening.

Chelsea Mayor Earl Niven gave the City Council an update on the project at a Sept. 1 meeting and led several council members and residents on a brief tour of the 30,000-square-foot center after the meeting.

Niven said “very few things” are left to finish at the center, including telephone line installation; furniture and equipment installation; and cleaning, waxing and buffing the floors.

“It’s going to come together, but it will take a little while,” Niven said.

Initially, the center was scheduled to open this summer, but construction delays have moved the opening date to the fall.

“The biggest thing is the telephone,” Niven said during a pre-council meeting at 5:30 p.m. “Charter will run the (telephone) lines on Sept. 25.”

Niven said tables and chairs will arrive at the end of this week or early next week.

Furniture will include three 6-foot tables, two 8-foot tables, four 6-foot tables, two credenzas, a hutch, three desks, a legal-size fireproof file cabinet and other file cabinets.

The dining, group activity and exercise rooms will be outfitted with televisions, and speakers will line the gymnasium.

The gym will seat as many as 300 people, and an overhead walking track wraps around the upper portion of the walls.

Niven said the city is placing an order for exercise equipment to complement the Curves equipment given to the center. The order calls for three treadmills, three bicycles and three elliptical machines.

“That, I think, is going to get us started,” Niven said. “We’re not looking at having weights.”

Room partitions will be installed on Sept. 10 or 11.

Other facets of the center are a reception area and director’s office, a children’s nursery and an outdoor patio and recreation area.

Niven said he would like to have a mural depicting scenes in Chelsea painted on the front wall of the center’s foyer.

“I think that is going to be a building that is really going to be enjoyed,” Niven said. “We have a lot to be proud of.”