CORPUS CHRISTI, Tx — During commissioner's court on Tuesday, precinct leaders and the County Judge discussed what they'll be doing with the Hilltop Community Center.
The center was previously built in the 1940s as a 6-wing Tuberculosis hospital and is currently in need of renovations.
The current outline of the project would renovate two of the wings plus add two new parts to it for a total of $9.4 million of 23,000 square feet.
Precinct 1 Robert Hernandez, who wants to keep the original buildings, said that he wants all of the facilities to be renovated.
"We want to fix it," Hernandez said. "Hilltop is an old building. It was built in 1941 or 47, and nobody has ever done anything to it or much of anything. A little bit of bandage here and there, but not as much as I want to put into it."
While all of them would like to see improvements to Hilltop very soon, other precinct leaders believe that they should go about this in a different way.
"That makes no sense to me," Precinct 4 Commissioner Brent Chesney said regarding the current designs. "If you have $9 million, we're not talking about thousands; you want to be able to renovate and touch the entire building to make an impact. Maybe, we knock it down and build a brand new one. You don't have as many square feet out there, but you could still build 20,000 square feet of new space, which is plenty of space."
During the meeting, members of the community and the board expressed their opinions on what should be done with the center with mixed emotions.
As for the item on the agenda, nothing was decided today as they voted 3-2 to table the discussion for now.
Hilltop Community Center will be discussed again in May.
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