Huntsville is pressing ahead with plans to transform the current Grissom High School campus into a multi-purpose community center.

At its meeting Thursday night, the City Council hired 4Site Inc. to come up with several different concepts for redeveloping the Bailey Cove Road property. Cost of the contract: $29,940.

The current Grissom High will be vacated in the fall of 2017, when a new $60 million replacement high school is scheduled to open west of Memorial Parkway.

But it probably won't stay empty for long.

Dennis Madsen, the city's director of long-range planning, said a new south Huntsville branch library is almost a certainty for the redeveloped Grissom campus. Youth sports leagues are likely to take over the existing gym, baseball and softball fields. And Madsen envisions the auditorium hosting plays, concerts and other large community gatherings.

Here's how the city's contract with 4Site describes the future of the Grissom site: "A multi-use, multi-tenant town center that will provide a variety of amenities to the residents of Huntsville, as well as creating a signature location within South Huntsville that will help spur economic investment and redevelopment."

Put more simply: "It could almost be a new downtown for that part of town," Madsen said Thursday.

The Huntsville Police Department's South Precinct, currently in a rented storefront on Bailey Cove Road directly across from Grissom High, is another potential tenant.

The project description in the 4Site contract says the city will approach Calhoun Community College and/or J.F. Drake State Technical College about holding classes at the future community center. Madsen said those conversations have yet to take place.

If there are no takers from Grissom's classroom space, he said, the windowless, 1960s learning pods could be torn down.

"The theater makes sense to save, plus the indoor recreation and the (athletic) fields behind the school," said Madsen. "But some of the pods are really difficult to re-use other than for classes."

If parts of the current Grissom campus are demolished, Madsen said the city should consider creating a large public green or quad for picnics, food festivals and other outdoor fun. City planners are already studying ways to improve pedestrian access to the property from surrounding neighborhoods, he said.

"I think it's a great concept, and one that will really strengthen the community," Jennie Robinson, south Huntsville's City Council member, said Thursday night.