Big Lake rec center benefits from nearly $500,000 grant

BIG LAKE — Big Lake Lions Recreation and Community Center has scheduled an open house Saturday from 7 to 9 p.m. to mark the completion of a major upgrade completed this fall, and celebrate a sizable grant award that will finish the remainder of the building.

Bill Haller, Lions Club member and project manager, said the first floor of the new addition is open now, and a $495,000 grant awarded to the project recently by the Rasmuson Foundation will finish the second floor of that new addition.

“I had a very strong suspicion that the Rasmuson was going to fund us,” Haller said. “They are really impressed by the strong community support for this project.”

He said work will begin on that project in March and is expected to last about two weeks.

The goal is to complete the work in time for the venue’s big boat show planning in April, he said.

Haller said the center will see heavy use as host to a pair of hockey tournaments the next two weekends. That’s about 300 families each weekend that will buy food, gas and other essentials during their trip to Big Lake, he said.

“It gives people another reason to come to Big Lake in the winter,” Haller said. “Now we just need some hotels.”

He said once the center is complete in April 2014, it will have the capacity to host groups as large as 300 people in its large upstairs conference room.

Haller said the open house Saturday is a way to thank the community for its support and to invite the public in to skate for free, see the improvements made since a bare-bones version of the facility opened Nov. 19, 2010, off Lions Court along Big Lake Road.

Contact Heather A. Resz at 352-2268

or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.