A crowd of community members gathered at the William J. Griggs Recreation Center with local officials on Thursday to discuss the future of recreation at the facility. 

The meeting was the first of several that the county plans to host to seek input on community recreation amenities. 

“I think it is very positive that people actually have enough concern to come out and speak their comments,” said Lance Dennis, the director of Troup County Parks and Recreation. “That is a huge step in the process, just getting people’s thoughts and ideas and creativity, [to hear] what it means to people and try to get more people in here to participate.”

While there was some variation in what community members identified as positives and negatives of the center during Thursday’s meeting, some concerns were reiterated throughout the meeting, including needs for repairs at the Griggs Center pool, repairs to the center’s roof and a need for programing that attracts a wide variety of age groups. County Manager Eric Mosley said that he wanted citizens to feel like they could reach out to the county about concerns at Troup County Parks and Recreation facilities, including the Griggs Center.

“We want to have open dialogue with the community,” Mosley said. “We want you to ask us and be able to hold us accountable to you.”

While some suggestions offered at the meeting will require careful planning and consideration, Dennis said that residents may see some of the ideas implemented in the near future.

“I think there are definitely a lot of ideas in here that will be implementable in the short-term,” Dennis said. “We have money in the budget for stuff that we want to do. The grand scale of some of the ideas may not be conceivable in the near future, but there are some things that are definitely going to have to be done. We know that we have issues with that pool and the leak in the pool, and there are going to have to be upgrades and improvements to that. There are lots of small things as far as the building goes that we can get going as quickly as possible as well.”

Multiple meeting attendees also talked about the need for more community involvement in the center where they grew up.

“I worked here for 25 years, and I’ve been away from here for 28 years, so that is how long it’s been here,” Troup County Commissioner Richard English said. 

“It has been a great asset to the community. What we need to do as a community is work together, keep it going, put it back together and go back to what we were.”

Troup County also plans to host meetings in other parts of the community to solicit additional input on Troup County Parks and Recreation amenities.

“This is the first of many meetings that we want to have — not just at the Griggs Center, but meetings at Grey Hill, meetings up in Hogansville and West Point and get out and really see the community as a whole,” Mosley said. “Over the course of the next few months and years, we hope to be able to continue to see progress.”

The William J. Griggs Recreation Center is located at 716 Glenn Robertson Drive in LaGrange.