But instead of looking at all the problems, Pirie knew there was hope for the aging gym which once served the students at the Moorland school, which was torn down many years ago.

“I came to that wedding two years ago — a bunch of us did — and I saw a building with great bones, with broken windows, no air conditioning,” Pirie said. “And why couldn’t it be used?”

A group of women on the Moorland Park Board agreed with Pirie, and for the past two years have been putting in the considerable effort needed to make the building shine.

“We just started out writing grants,” Pirie said.

-Messenger photo by Joe Sutter Bev Pederson looks over the remodeled kitchen at the Moorland Community Center. Pederson put all new paint on the cabinets and walls. The kitchen area was originally the stage when the building was still used as a gym.

It took “lots of sweat equity,” said Delia Hoffman.

“Especially when everybody told us it was impossible,” Pirie said. “So we came up with a motto.”

The park board shirts now read: “Don’t underestimate the power of a park board woman.” Though they may be retired now that Dean Pringle has joined in.

“I came into this later,” Pringle said. “I used to be on the park board for years. I got out, and then I got back in.”

“He knows how to run a chainsaw, and the rest of us like our fingers,” Pirie said.

-Messenger photo by Joe Sutter Braelynn Hoffman, 4, and her mom Megan Hoffman gather at one end of the remodeled Moorland Community Center. Braelynn helped however she could as her mom, grandma and other volunteers with the Park Board remodeled the building over the past two years. This bar was originally from the Moorland Tap.

One of the first things to do was to get the windows high up along the south wall of the gym replaced.

“The windows were broke, so there was no sense replacing the furnace,” Pirie said.

The furnace came later, after the group got spray foam insulation all across the vast wooden ceiling.

“Then we borrowed the scissor lift, and we painted the ceiling,” Pirie said. “We had to strip the floors from the overspray.”

As they cleaned up the cobwebs, the women also came across bats. And squirrels.

-Messenger photo by Joe Sutter Jody Pirie talks about the large chandelier the park board installed in the Moorland Community Center. The building has been renovated, with new windows and insulation, and is ready to be rented for weddings and other events.

“We had three squirrels living in that blower up there. This was the first day we came down to work, and it was me and you and Megan,” Pirie said to Hoffman, also naming Hoffman’s daughter, Megan Hoffman. “And it was a fiasco to chase them from one end to the other, three times.

“Now Princess was here” — that would be Delia Hoffman’s granddaughter, Braelynn, age 4, daughter of Megan — “because Delia was holding her, and as the squirrel ran toward here we said, ‘chase it back toward the door,’ and she was running the other direction.”

They found another furry friend when they were trying to hoist the chandelier into place with the new pulley.

“Some of the lights had broken from the fall. So we’re over there configuring it, trying to get everything in place,” Pirie said. “I thought there was a rose petal hanging on there. I went to grab it — it’s really soft, like a moist one? It was a frickin’ bat.”

“There were three of us … I wasn’t going to touch it. It was alive. We all screamed. We got the garbage can out of the bathroom.

“If we had video from all this stuff, we wouldn’t need grants. YouTube — we’dve made millions.”

But they did need grants. NEW Co-op supported their efforts with $5,000, Pirie said.

“Mike Pearson is the one who lent us the scissor lift whenever we need it,” she said. “We have street dances, we had different fundraisers, we raffled off a hog … We had favors, a lot of favors. And pleading, and bargaining.”

They also had an energy audit done on the building, before they started replacing windows and insulating. That way, they got rebates back for doing the work, Pirie said.

Wasted energy was one of the biggest problems with the building.

“There used to be a Moorland school that was torn down, but they kept the gym, for Moorland people to use,” Pirie said. “They had exercise classes and stuff in here, but we couldn’t afford to heat it in the winter without insulation.”

The gym was converted to a community center years ago. The kitchen on one end is what used to be a stage for the school choir to perform.

The city is supporting the park board’s work, Pirie said, paying for half the furnace and air conditioning.

The biggest thing left to do now is epoxy the floor, Pirie said.

“That’s our last big thing to do,” she said. “That’s 18 grand, so we have another street dance lined up for this year, and we’re hoping for another hog donation. We’re hoping by the end of fall, between the wedding reception money and — I applied for a couple more grants, but we haven’t heard back yet.”

Funding from weddings and other events will hopefully help the park board clean up the parks in Moorland as well.

The building hosted six or seven events last year, and Delia Hoffman said they’re hoping for more this year. One wedding was already set to go this week.

It’s available for rental now. Anyone can contact Pirie at the Headquarters salon at 515-549-3578, or Hoffman at 515-549-3463 for more information. The Moorland Park Board also has a Facebook page.

None of this would have been possible without the volunteers coming together to better their community. And one reason they did it is to help bring people together.

“You don’t know how many get-togethers have been down here,” said Hoffman.

“Get them out to meet people, because it keeps changing. I don’t know half my neighbors,” Pringle said. “It’s like I live two blocks away from you, but you’re gone all the time.”

“Everybody is two blocks away from you,” Pirie said.

They do it “because it’s our community,” Hoffman said. “You have to give back. It’s our way to give back.”