| Rockford Register Star
The Rockford Park District does a great job serving kids. Especially at-risk kids.
It also promotes sports tourism in Rockford.
Is is less successful at serving active, competitive adults, sacrificing golf, tennis and softball to better serve its top priorities.
The Park District cares so much about at-risk kids it used a state grant to hire 100 at-risk people between the ages of 16 and 24 last summer. It also received money from the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority for violence-prevention programming. It is spending $683,000 to renovate Keye-Mallquist Park on 11th Street and has spent $272,000 on southwest-side Clarence Hicks Memorial Sports Park the last three years with more funds to come.
It also has spruced up several other parks. In 2015, Park Board leaders said they wanted to have a neighborhood park within a mile of every home. The emphasis on neighborhood parks grew even more after 2,900 respondents to a 2018 survey listed neighborhood parks and playgrounds as the Park District’s top priorities.
The Park District responded by closing Elliot Golf Course, turning Guilford Tennis Center over Rockford Public Schools, announcing it will close Sportscore One and all of its softball fields to save money.
However, it also will build an indoor riding arena at its equestrian stables at Lockwood Park, which currently loses almost $450,000 a year.
Related: Rockford Park District says it had to close a golf course. Why did it choose Elliot Golf Course?
It’s a great mission. But in order to do that, has the Park District forgotten about adults?
“Tennis has gotten almost no investment, and now they are closing Elliott Golf Course,” said Bruce Krandel, an avid golfer and tennis player who has exchanged lengthy emails with a number of RPD executives. “They believe their mission in life now is to generate more and more programs for at-risk kids, and they are cutting many of the adult activities to achieve that mission.”
Jay Sandine, the Park District’s executive director, says they haven’t forgotten about adults, but they can’t pay for everything. Golf has gone from a big moneymaker to an annual loser, despite drastic cuts in employees. Tennis never made money. Sportscore One has flooded 13 times in the last five years.
“Our point is supply and demand and having a well-balanced offering of services,” Sandine said. “We are at the point of closing swimming pools and cutting youth programs in neighborhood parks and cutting back other areas like that, and the golf community wants to keep all five golf courses, and they have three country clubs and three (Winnebago County) Forest Preserve courses and a dozen private courses. It doesn’t seem reasonable to me.”
Golfers do have other places to go. But tennis players don’t if Guilford High School’s nine courts are taken away. There are only six other courts in the entire city that are unlocked with a center net strap and no cracks. “We have 100 courts sprinkled all over the community, and we don’t have the funds to keep them at a high level,” Sandine said.
Part of the reason the Park District doesn’t have funds is it has invested heavily in the sports tourism business in recent years, building the UW Health Sports Factory downtown and Sportscore Two and the Indoor Sports Center on the far northeast side.
Those facilities fill hotels and restaurants and bring tax money into the city, but none of those tax dollars goes to the suddenly financially strapped Park District.
“We work jointly with the RCVB (Rockford Area Convention and Visitors Bureau) to market those facilities,” Sandine said, “but the reality is it does cost the Park District a lot of money. Those Rockford First facilities cost us about a half-million dollars a year in tax subsidy. They are tournament-quality facilities that have to be maintained at a high level.”
Rockford built those facilities to keep events that had begun to go away to other cities and other states. Then it happened last year anyway with Illinois’ COVID-19 restrictions.
“The biggest challenge we’re going to have is bringing back all the tournaments we lost,” Sandine said. “We lost over 50 events last year because of COVID. A lot of those went right across the border to Wisconsin and Indiana, which were less restrictive in their COVID protocols. Now we’re going to have to fight like heck to get those back to Rockford. That’s going to be a huge challenge, but we’re up for that.”
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Even if the Park District wins that fight, it won’t help Rockford tennis players, golfers and softball players. It might even hurt them. In the past, the more the Sports Factory has been booked, the more money it has lost. Hosting a national tournament makes money for hotels and restaurants but usually loses money for the host facility.
“That tournament business is so competitive the court rental and field rental has to be low and competitive, or all those tournaments that come in here and fill up the economy will go somewhere else and make money,” Sandine said. “It’s a money-making business for those tournament directors. That’s why there is that heavy subsidy.”
There is not heavy spending on adults, although Sandine says adults always have another place to play if one of their spots closes down. He said all the Sportscore One softball games will eventually be moved to Sportscore Two. Greg Schwanke, who will play at Sportscore One for the 16th season this summer, doesn’t want to move.
“When they first built Sportscore Two, they had us play a few games out there, and nobody liked it because of the Astroturf,” Schwanke said. “There were no true bounces. The ball skips. It rolls really fast. I have no idea where they are going to move all of these softball teams. Flooding to me wasn’t that big of an issue. We maybe had to cut the season shorter, but we still played.”
It’s a tough balancing act. The Park District tries to be all things to all people, serving the entire town. Right now, adults, who pay the $25 million in taxes the Park District receives every year, are on the short end of the teeter totter. Sandine says that’s where adults told them they want to be.
“When we go out and do our surveys and engage the community, we asked what should our target audience be,” Sandine said. “Youth was No. 1. Teens were the No. 2 priority. Programs and services for the family unit was No. 3. And we do offer some stuff for adults, too. Our trails systems and mountain biking and we’re adding more pickleball courts. Adults love that stuff.”
Matt Trowbridge: [email protected]; @matttrowbridge
