The building most people in Shenandoah still call the New Armory now has an official name: the Richard N. Hunt Activity Center
The City Council approved the designation unanimously Tuesday night after a unanimous recommendation from the Park Board. The city took over the former Iowa National Guard armory at 601 W. Ferguson Ave. after the Guard closed the post and consolidated Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry, at a new facility in West Des Moines. Parks and Recreation is slated to make the building its home. For now, while plaster work is underway at the Clarinda Avenue City Hall, it is also serving as temporary city offices.
Hunt’s public résumé is unusually long even by small-town standards: Shenandoah police officer and later chief of police, Page County sheriff, Fremont County magistrate, and mayor of Shenandoah from 2005 through 2021 — 16 years, the longest mayoral tenure in city history. Through much of that time he also umpired baseball across southwest Iowa. Lyman called him “a paragon of this community” with “60-plus years of public service.”
Mayor Roger McQueen and Police Chief Josh Gray met with Hunt last week to pitch the naming. Hunt, characteristically, tried to decline. He said a lot of other people had done as much or more for Shenandoah. Gray challenged him to name one. Hunt couldn’t. The next day he called back and said he would be honored to accept.
A sign unveiling and ribbon-cutting are expected later. The city is working with Hunt’s grandson’s wife on a new logo for the building. Lyman said more details will follow.
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