LEBANON — City community members voiced support last week for plans to build a new community center capable of housing events, leagues and the Lebanon Recreation and Parks Department.

Of the more than 70 people who took part in a virtual forum Thursday, most said the city needs more room to run recreation programs. A new community center, they said, also could house much-needed meeting space and bring neighbors closer together.

However, those who took part also worried about the cost of such a building and its impact on taxes.

“Where is the funding going to come from?” Lebanon resident Darla Bruno asked during the hour-long event. “Lebanon’s property taxes are already a killer and we can’t just go there again. We have to find some other way to fund this.”

An online survey conducted in August reported similar sentiment. Of the 1,655 respondents, 63% said they “fully support” investing in the development of a community center.

Another 31% said the idea has merit while 6% said they have “significant reservations,” according to results unveiled Thursday night.

Meanwhile, 94% of the respondents said they’d like to see the project funded through grants, 89% suggested contacted soliciting private foundations for money and 35% said help should be sought from city coffers. People were allowed to select more than one preference to the funding question.

Paul Coats, director of Lebanon Recreation and Parks, said he expects grants and donations would pay for most of the community center.

For instance, the Mascoma River Greenway, a four-mile trail along the old Boston & Maine railway, was built with the help of a roughly $2.3 million capital campaign, with taxpayers kicking in about $330,000.

Attendees also worried whether a community center would compete with the Carter Community Building Association, a nonprofit formed in 1919 with a mission of “furnishing the young people of Lebanon a healthful and uplifting club life.”

The CCBA, a downtown institution, runs a health club, preschool, summer camps and youth programs at the Carter Community Building that’s benefited generations of Lebanon children.

Coats said the city and CCBA “have always collaborated” and that would continue if Lebanon were to build its own community center.

“Even though we’re separate organizations with very similar missions, we do not offer the same programs,” he said. “We try not to compete by offering the same type of thing and making people choose which way they want to go.”

The only exception to that rule, Coats said, is that each runs a summer camp because demand outpaces what either organization can accommodate on its own.

“The only way we plan on moving forward with this project after we evaluate all this public input is only if our services complement what already exists,” Coats said during the forum. “We expect whatever we build to complement what exists in the Upper Valley.”

The idea of forming a city-run community center dates back almost a decade, starting with 2013 talks that kicked off shortly after Lebanon shuttered the former Sacred Heart, School Street and Seminary Hill schools.

That year, Coats advocated for turning the Seminary Hill School’s second floor, which includes a gymnasium, into a community center. He formed a nonprofit called “Friends of Recreation” to help to raise funds for the transition and a group of city leaders soon sat down for negotiations with the school district.

At the time, SAU 88 planned only to occupy the former school’s third floor and hoped to build an expansion onto the Hanover Street School that could house additional operations. That addition never happened, and the school district now uses most of the building for offices.

Negotiations on the move lasted for about a year, Coats said last year but ended without a deal after it became clear that Recreation and Parks wouldn’t be able to use the entire second-floor space.

He said on Thursday that the Seminary Hill School might not have provided enough space for their vision, even if talks were successful.

A proposal born in 2018 to move the Recreation and Parks office into an 1830s Greek Revival home in West Lebanon also proved unsuccessful after officials found structural problems with the building and tore it down.

City Manager Shaun Mulholland revived the discussion about a community center an 11-member Community Center Leadership Team in May.

The group is charged with gauging interest in a community center, determining costs and seeking out partners. It is expected to issue a report by Nov. 20.

Jared Rhoads, a member of that team and co-founder of Upper Valley Floor Hockey, said officials will take the survey results and continue exploring the next steps.

“We’re trying to do things like figure out what kinds of programs might be run out of this and what functions this community center might serve,” he said. “There are a lot of questions that we need to think about and explore.”

Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.