Left, the new proposed plans for the school district’s Life Skills Center.

City-Times Staff

The Stevens Point Plan Commission Monday will decide the merits of widening Maria Drive, a possible relocation of the Boys and Girls Club as well as a request from the city’s school district to construct the embattled Life Skill Center.

School district leaders are working with Stevens Point-based Point of Beginning for the LSC, which has previously been shot down by city leaders. Plans for the Life Skills Center have evolved to now include a 3,030 square foot building- down from the once- proposed 4,500 square feet- and will cost the district about half a million dollars. Most of that cost is expected to be reimbursed with state Medicaid dollars.

The building will perform double duty as an independent living skills education facility for learning disabled students as well as a community center, including a Blue Light Café where students will prepare meals for select community members, and Threads of Kindness which is designed to offer clothing to students in need.

The plan first came before the commissioners in spring of 2013 and was slated for a location on Second St. North, but school district leaders were unprepared to answer concerns about the building’s distance from existing nearby taverns which some worried was a violation of state law. Construction is now slated for a piece of land much closer to the SPASH building along Northpoint Drive.