Harris County Precinct 3 expects a new 21,000-square-foot community center near the Yaupon Ranch subdivision to be complete in one year. The facility, which will be the sixth community center in Precinct 3, is located off Greenhouse Road north of Longenbaugh.

"It will be nice to have a community center that overlooks a detention basin with a large body of water and thousands of trees," Precinct 3 Commissioner Steve Radack said. "It will be a beautiful setting and a well-designed facility, and I think the public will use it."

The building will be open to all community members and will feature a library, warming kitchen, multipurpose rooms, lounges, storage rooms and offices. Activities offered at each community center in the county vary by location, but could range from yoga to card games or dominos to oil painting or language classes. The location will also be used as an early voting location for county residents in the future.

The community center sits on 13 acres of a 190-acre site owned by the county, the remainder of which will be utilized for future park land and flood control retention along Langham Creek, which borders the property.

"It will create tie-ins to other parks in the area and allow people to travel on foot or bike from the neighborhood areas into the park development," said Mike McMahan, Precinct 3 special activities coordinator for the parks department.

The park project is expected to take three to five years to complete as surrounding development continues.

"We expect at the beginning of 2014 we'll be ready to develop some portions of the park on the west side of Langham Creek and have that first phase of the park completed by summer 2015," McMahan said.