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By NOAH WORTHAM | Staff Writer

ALABASTER – The city of Alabaster revealed its plans for an Alabaster Civic Complex that includes a library, gymnasiums, recreation center, water features and more.

During a virtual town hall on Nov. 6, Alabaster Mayor Scott Brakefield sat down with other representatives of the city to inform residents on new amenities and improvements coming to the city.

During the town hall, Brakefield and City Administrator Brian Binzer revealed a set of renderings to the public of the city’s design for an Alabaster Civic Complex.

The complex is planned to be situated off of Thompson Road where the Alabaster City Schools Central Office is currently located. Once the new ACS Central Office is constructed near Thompson High School, the city of Alabaster will demolish the previous location and begin work on the new civic complex.

The complex will feature multiple long-awaited amenities including a new library, recreation center, multiple gymnasiums, water features and a commercial area.

The new library will feature an outdoor area on the side for residents to relax and read at and a new commercial area will be located to the side of the library.

“We’re going to have a commercial area of about 4 acres that we’re going to sell off,” Binzer said. “We’re going to do something unique to this property that is going to tie in with the library next door (with) coffee shops or different types of restaurants. We hope to have a pizza place or something along those lines. Real exciting stuff that will play really well with our recreation center and library.”

The complex will also feature nearly 7,000 square feet of meeting space in between the recreation center and library that will be used for hosting events in the city. The area also features the ability to be partitioned off into three smaller meeting spaces.

The city is currently working with a contractor for designing water features to be located behind the recreation center.

“We’re looking at water features, whether they are pools or those kinds of things that will really add value to our rec center,” Binzer said. “We toured several different rec centers across the state and in Georgia and some other spaces and we found some of the most successful rec centers had some type of aquatic feature.”

According to Brakefield, the project is currently working with a four-to-five-year window for the project’s timeline.

“We are very respectful of Alabaster City Schools, they have a timeline they want to meet (with the central office),” Brakefield said. “We fully understand what goes on in the marketplace right now when you try to build a building so what that might look like is in 2025, spring (or) summertime you’ll start seeing demolition happen on this campus when all the buildings come down. Construction (will) start shortly after.”