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City of Alma
The City of Alma lies right in the heart of Lower Michigan. It is home to approximately 9,500 residents, making it the largest municipality in Gratiot County. Without a dedicated Community Center in Alma, the city’s parks system and public library often serve as the unofficial community center for public gatherings, meetings, and recreational activities in the county.
The City of Alma created a Parks and Recreation Committee in 2014 with the intention of promoting more usage of the parks system. Currently, the City of Alma has seven designated neighborhood parks and six designated city parks under the oversight of the city. Due to limited funding and personnel, the city has not been able to expand programming. The Community Center Grant provides the resources necessary to implement many ideas.
The flagship recreation program that the City of Alma plans to reintroduce to the community with this grant is the Summer Parks Program. The Summer Parks Program is a six-week long day camp that runs during the summer months when school is not in session to provide students K-6 in the area with a variety of recreational opportunities, including arts and crafts, organized sports, group games, swimming, and STEM-based educational programs. It also provides healthy snacks to students who may struggle with proper nutrition outside of the school year. The programs takes place in designated city parks throughout Alma. The Summer Parks Program is anticipated to serve upwards of 75 students each summer.
The City of Alma is also excited to introduce adult sports programming with the help of this grant. Currently, no municipality in Gratiot County has any regular adult sports programming, and it has been identified as a problem with recruiting and retaining professionals, particularly young professionals, to the area. The goal is to introduce Adult Softball Leagues, Adult Soccer Leagues, Adult Kickball Leagues, and Adult and Senior Disc Golf Leagues to Alma’s recreational programming, along with one-off events and tournaments for other sports.
The third component of the new recreational programming that will be offered by the City of Alma is recreational events that will take place in the parks. Weekly programming that is being considered includes activities such as yoga in the park, tai chi in the park, family game nights, continuation of the evenings in the park, senior nature hikes/walks, as well as others as ideas are submitted. There will also be one-off events such as Putt-Putt in the Park, Nerf Gun Battles, a Par-3 Golf Contest, Water Games, and many more.
The final component is to expand the recreational offerings at Alma Public Library. The Alma Public Library currently offers several programs, most targeted to younger children, including the Summer Reading Program, Lego Club, Chess Club, Movie Nights, Music and Movement, Storytime, Touch a Truck event, Birds of Prey event, and more. The goal is to continue to expand on these programs and add additional programs targeted towards Teens/Young Adults and Seniors. In 2023, the Alma Public Library had 69,298 visits in a calendar year, many of whom were attending either a program or using one of the meeting rooms for a community gathering event. With the addition of more programming and the continued use of the library as a community center for all of Gratiot County, it is believed that within the next three years the library will be approaching 100,000 visits annually.