The Haines Borough’s decision to hold off on tearing down the gym and east wing of the old elementary school amounts to one year of time for the Well and Fit Community Council to make progress toward funding, group president Marnie Hartman said this week.

In a letter to the assembly last week, Hartman said the group has been researching other potential structures for use as a center since the assembly turned down its request to use the primary school. “The options are scarce,” she wrote.

In the letter, Hartman proposed collaborating with other community organizations to secure funding for elementary gym renovation either through the Alaska Legislature or through a bond Haines voters would decide in next year’s municipal election.

“If both efforts fail, then complete the demolition of the elementary school in the fall of 2011,” she wrote.

A coalition of groups working together would have increased clout and more avenues for different pots of funding, Hartman said this week. “It would behoove us to have a lot of organizations working together because of the amount of money it’s going to take,” she said.

Acquisition of the building also might help, she said. “There’s a lot of money available when you show you have a strong foundation and lots of support. If the borough gives us the building, we’d have the credibility to qualify for some of those grants.”

Strong community backing, increased public interest in health and fitness, and a record of other Alaska towns transforming old school gyms into recreation centers bolster the case for the center, Hartman said.

Ideally, a recreation center would be under the oversight of a borough parks and recreation department, Hartman said.

Borough efforts at recreation currently are limited to the Community Youth Development Program, a youth-centered program funded at $29,000 this year.

Borough assemblyman Daymond Hoffman said as long as there was support for a recreation center in the community, tearing down the gym was “getting ahead of ourselves. There’s interest in town for a rec center. I think it’s an important thing.”