For one minute, Austin residents throughout the city and in schools were doing jumping jacks on Wednesday.

The public’s goal was to raise about $5 million for the overall $35 million community 105,000 square-foot recreation center, which is in the midst of preparations to build on the former municipal power plant site. All throughout the city, residents were challenging themselves with performing jumping jacks for a minute.

Kick-off started in the YMCA of Austin’s gymnasium, where local government officials, business leaders and some members of the public, where “powering healthy living” fundraising took place. Throughout the day, those who did jumping jacks also photographed or created video of themselves doing jumping jacks to support community fundraising efforts.

Austin City Councilman Steve King was elated to see the community “stepping up” in helping raise the necessary dollars for the community recreation center project.

“It’s quite an honor,” King said. “There is not a more benevolent community than Austin. To see people stepping up and to respond in such a way, really thank you all for collecting (and fundraising) to help this project move forward.”

It was revealed that the public had raised a little over $6.2 million, with several notable contributions to this overall goal, which included $1.5 million fundraised by Hormel Foods employees, which was matched by the company leadership by a little over $1.5 million and also $125,000 McDonnell Family Trust.

Another donation of $300,000 was given by the Otto Bremer Trust.

This meant that Austin had raised their portion of the entire project, even surpassing the expected total amount.

During this revelation, Hormel Foods CEO Jim Snee also shared his sentiments that the company believes in promoting healthy lifestyles for their employees, which prompted them to fundraise as well as see leaders match that dollar amount for the fundraising campaign.

“This is a citywide endeavor,” Snee said. “This is absolutely a huge undertaking on a historic scale (for Austin). Hormel Foods looks to inspire people (and food) by being the absolute best you can be at home and work by attracting and retaining talent here for the future.”

Vision 2020 Community Recreation Center co-chairs, Tanya Medgaarden and Matt Cano, expressed that although the fundraising amount was met, donations were still being made to help with additional upgrades to the recreation center project.

“It’s been a lot of hard work and really seeing (the rec center) come through. ….it’s been amazing,” Cano added.