Cookeville Leisure Services To Begin Transition From City Hall To Old Police HQ

Cookeville’s Leisure Services Department will move forward with the transition from the basement of City Hall to the old Police Headquarters.

City Manager James Mills said that the city has budgeted money to make the transition for the offices. He said currently, they’re working on a new layout for the building.

“When the police department was opened, there was no connection to the upstairs or there was and it was removed for security purposes,” Mills said. “So one of the first things we’ll need to do is to connect Leisure Services to CPAC through a stairwell, an interior stairwell.”

Mills said that stairwell will allow access from CPAC down to the lower level to the dressing rooms. He said that expanded dressing rooms and access to dressing rooms are one of the biggest needs they hope to address in long-term plans.

Mills said that they also have additional work they hope to complete in their long-range plans, which he estimates at about two to four years.

“We’re working on the plans for how to renovate but we’re going to go ahead and get a small portion of the old police department for the offices of Leisure Services,” Mills said. “We have in our long-range plans to do major renovations not only to the lower area but to all of CPAC. It’s been needing some TLC for quite a few years, including expansions of bathrooms and so forth.”

Mills said that the initial projects would be minor and completed in-house.