Escambia County Employees Team up to Revamp Historic Davisville Community Center

The Davisville Community Center has been well-loved over the years, with a long, rich history in the north end of Escambia County – once used as a school, and now as a community gathering place.

As with any 100-year-old building, the Davisville Community Center has started to show its age, with peeling paint, dry rot, and a severely weathered sign welcoming visitors to the building.

The Escambia County Facilities Management Department started making a plan to repair the community center, originally requesting a quote from an outside contractor to do the job. But when Maintenance Technician Samantha Mitchell caught wind of the project, she asked her supervisor if she could take the lead on the project and complete the work in-house instead. He agreed, and Mitchell quickly got to work, assembling a team of county staff and coordinating what needed to be done to give the community center a much-needed facelift.

After several months of work, the Facilities Management team completed numerous improvements at Davisville, including repainting the building’s entire exterior, rebuilding four front gates, painting and repairing fencing, completely rebuilding the wheelchair ramp, replacing dry rotted siding, and installing new metal skirting to cover the building’s crawl space. They also completed some landscaping improvements, replaced potentially hazardous deck nails with screws, and replaced the community center’s front sign, among other interior and exterior upgrades.

For Mitchell, who has only worked at the county for just over a year, it was rewarding to see her first big project come to fruition. Mitchell said it was a team effort that involved multiple county staff members, but she and her coworker Jack Taylor took the lead on the project.

“We’re very project oriented, so having a big project like this versus having something that takes a couple hours is exciting to us,” Mitchell said. “It’s an accomplishment, because you can see a difference from where you started. The building has a lot of history, and it’s really cool because most of the stuff there is original, so you get to see the history.”

The project began in May 2023 and wrapped up by the end of July 2023, at a total cost of approximately $5,000 for materials and in-house labor. The same work would have cost more than $30,000 for a contractor to complete, meaning Mitchell’s initiative saved Escambia County approximately $25,000.

“It’s amazing to see the positive transformation of this historic and beloved building in the Davisville community, and even better knowing that the work was completed in-house by county staff at a cost savings to Escambia County and our citizens,” District 5 Commissioner and Chairman Steven Barry said. “The Davisville Community Center has long been a popular gathering place for the north end of the county, and I’m excited that we were able to make it an even better facility for the community to continue to enjoy for many years to come.”

Facilities Management Deputy Director Robby Freeman, one of Mitchell’s supervisors, said she has hit the ground running since she started working for the county, always taking initiative and looking for new projects to tackle.

“She pulled a team together, they went up there, and they saved the county about $25,000 doing that project in-house,” Freeman said. “I’ve never had anybody step up that much to do that, and she’s continued to do that since she’s been here – wanting to take on pretty much anything and everything.”

In addition to Samantha Mitchell and Jack Taylor, other Escambia County staff members who worked on the Davisville Community Center improvements include Bill Barrett, Steve Dillard, Harold Hodges, and Glenn Kelly.

Mitchell said she’s already received positive feedback from residents and visitors who frequent the community center, which is used for everything from gymnastics and yoga classes to family gatherings and birthday parties.

“They were really excited that it went from looking kind of dingy and not very appealing to bright and shiny,” Mitchell said. “It’s a building that’s used quite often and rented out to the public, and it was cool to do something that the community is going to use, and something they can be proud of.”

Freeman echoed the public’s positive feedback about the project, also praising Mitchell’s drive to take the initiative and work with her team to get it completed.

“It went above and beyond what I expected,” Freeman said. “Just the whole aesthetics, and the whole entire project, came together I think even better than she thought it would. And it made a world of difference up in Davisville. She made a big showing up there, and the people up there absolutely love it. It looks like a brand-new place.”

For information about Davisville Community Center rentals, please contact Escambia County Parks and Recreation at 850-475-5220. To learn more about the Escambia County Facilities Management Department, visit the county website.

Before and after photos of renovations at the Davisville Community Center recently completed by Escambia County Facilities Management.