By Glenn Harbison, glenn@thenewsobserver.com
Ocoee – Philip Earhart introduced ideas for the Ocoee Whitewater Center by saying, “This is not a final design, this is not a final plan.”
Earhart, district ranger for the Ocoee/Hiwassee Ranger District, brought the plan along with a U.S. Forest Service team to the Copper Basin Community Center
on March 18 to give East Polk County and other region residents an opportunity to see the ideas. He told of how more than 7,000 responses had “framed a Christmas list” of what everyone would like to see at a re-imagined Ocoee Whitewater Center.
From that list, Studio Outside looked at the site to determine what it could support. Earhart said that vision looked at working year-round with the water so the re-imagination would be “true to the river itself.”
Jessee English, recreation program manager and forest landscape architect, said
the Forest Service hopes to have some sort of “master plan” by the end of the calendar year. That plan will include covered event space, one of the top desires expressed from stakeholder feedback.
However, there is “not enough room to do all the things we want to do in one building,” English said.
For instance, one planning map shows a visitor center with a meeting room, gift shop, covered porch, restrooms and storage areas. The center is at the left hand bend in the river.
Upstream, near the site of the original Ocoee Whitewater Center is an upper pavilion with restrooms and changing rooms. A little way downstream from the visitor center, and on the other side of the river, is a middle pavilion with an outside classroom. There is also a lower pavilion, plus plans for developing the river below the lower bridge.
The Olympic course will remain the same, although it could be restored to what is was during the 1996 Olympics. Earhart said a middle access point to the site is being debated.
Following the introduction, attendees at the meeting were encouraged to view the maps depicting plans for the area and, using Post-it notes, write down ideas and thoughts for those plans.