More than a year and three months has passed since construction commenced on the Whaleyville Recreation Center, but residents of Whaleyville still are anticipating their first look at the inside of the long-awaited project.

The city initially hoped to be done by the fall of 2014. But a ribbon-cutting scheduled for last month was postponed until Jan. 23. Delays have included the death of a subcontractor that was set to do the site work.

“Site work is the big holdup,” said Buildings and Capital Programs Director Gerry Jones. The subcontractor’s death came just as the site work was set to get started, he said.

“Weather hasn’t helped, either,” Jones said. Both the death and weather are what have “pushed the date back to what it is now,” he said.

The contractor has renegotiated with another subcontractor for the site work.

Another delay happened shortly after construction started in 2013, when the construction crew discovered that the entire roof decking needed to be replaced. They had only anticipated replacing a few spots here and there.

Set to take over the old Robertson Elementary School, the community center will include exercise equipment, a full-size gymnasium and a computer lab.

The Obici Healthcare Foundation contributed $250,000 to the project to fully fund the purchase of the exercise equipment.

The last day of school at Robertson was in 2011, when it and Mount Zion Elementary School were closed because of budget cuts. The School Board transferred the empty building to the city later that year.

A time for the ribbon-cutting on Jan. 23 has not yet been announced.