NATCHEZ &045; All last week, the city’s recreation director attended a school on the design and management of recreation facilities.

And Ralph Tedder said Monday he came back from the Colorado conference with a better idea of the cost and logistics of building and operating a health and wellness center would be.

He and 90 other delegates toured 13 city recreation and fitness centers around Colorado. The centers cost $7 million to $28 million to build and $1 million to $3 million a year to operate. It also took at least three years to plan and build the centers before they opened.

The city is now courting the U.S. Department of Agriculture for grant funds &045; hopefully, with no match &045; to fund a $12 million to $14 million health and wellness center in Natchez.

Tedder said what he hoping to accomplish by attending the school was to research the building and operation of a center &uot;as much as I could on the front end Š to cut some off the planning time.&uot;

As it now stands, the project description the city has prepared for the USDA includes many of the same amenities the Colorado centers offer, including:

4Outdoor girls’ and adults’ softball complexes and a soccer complex.

4Two tennis courts.

4Racquetball courts.

4Two full-court gyms.

4One large gymnastics center.

4An indoor eight-lane lap pools.

4Cardio, fitness, weight, aerobics, karate arts and crafts, child care and catering kitchen and multipurpose and aerobics rooms.

4A connecting deep area for a diving well swing rope and drop slides.

4An adjacent outdoor seasonal leisure pool water park with slides, vortex lazy rivers, sprays, swing ropes and diving wells.

4An indoor track.

4Dance studios.

4Climbing walls.

However, Tedder said the hearings would be held before plans were finalized to get a better idea of the amenities the public would like to see in their center.