 Avondale Multipurpose Center
to Have Strong Recreation Focus
Excerpted from azcentral.com an Article from
"The Arizona Republic" by David Madrid - Jan. 15, 2009
The City Council on Monday paved the way for the multipurpose community center, scheduled to open in November 2010. The city will build the facility, which will be nearly 3 1/2 times the size of the Southwest Regional YMCA in Goodyear. American Sports Centers, based in Mission Viejo, Calif., will design and run the Avondale center.
City Manager Charlie McClendon billed the project as a catalyst for development around the City Center area. "We see this as a marriage between our need for a community center that we couldn't afford to operate because of the budget, and their desire to get into the Phoenix market," he said, referring to American Sports Center. "This will be their first facility in the metro Phoenix area. It's the first of its kind in the Valley.
"Instead of a 20,000-square-foot facility in a stand-alone community center, we get an 83,000-square-foot facility here. Instead of one basketball court at Encanto, we get six, and eight (courts) for volleyball." There will also be an indoor soccer area, multipurpose rooms, flexprogram space, offices and meeting rooms, and concession and retail components.
The city had planned to build a cafŽfocused community center near Avondale and Encanto boulevards for $7 million raised via bonds. It would have cost the city about $750,000 a year to run that center. McClendon said the proposed Encanto center was put on hold because the city can't afford the operating costs.
Drawing People, Dollars
Under the new action plan, Avondale will:
- Annex 15 county-island acres and buy 4.25 acres for $1.64 million, with an option to purchase an adjacent 7 acres for $2.38 million. Those 7 acres can be used for temporary parking in the meantime.
- Pay $437,000 in consulting. The infrastructure will cost $6.6 million. The construction of the facility will cost $11.7 million.
In return, the city will:
- Avoid paying $750,000 of annual operating costs.
- Receive an annual average income of $310,000.
The agreement is for 20 years with two five-year options after that.
McClendon said that based on market research by American Sports Centers, Avondale can expect 150,000 people a year coming to that facility, nearly onethird of them from other cities. The facility, which will be built near two Hilton hotels, may also generate 5,000 hotel nights per year and is expected to have a $6.4 million annual economic benefit.
Not Just for Sports
Despite the sports focus, the project also will function as a community center. "We will still do everything that we would do at a community center," McClendon said. "Our senior citizens programming, our recreation classes, those kinds of things and a lot more."
The Avondale Senior Center would not be affected by the new facility. Don
Webber, Vice President of Development for American Sports Centers, said the facility will have multiple revenue streams that would not be available with the original Encanto community center plan. The revenue streams will come from user fees, tournament fees, concessions, group and corporate events, retail and sales of sponsorships and advertising, Webber said.
And what about the recession?
"If we were opening today, we would have a little more trepidation, as opposed to opening in November 2010," Webber said. "Our culture and our country, historically, continue to recreate."
Experience Touted
American Sports Centers have a similar complex in Anaheim. "We went to Anaheim last spring and visited their facility there . . . (This business model) is where the local municipality builds the facility . . . and then American Sports Centers operates it," McClendon said. "What that does is allow us not only to avoid the $750,000 a year in operating costs, but actually they pay us rental fees to use the facility.Ó Mayor Marie Lopez Rogers said the sports community center wouldÉ be an anchor for the City Center and lead to endless possibilities. "When you talk about all of the families that would be coming to it, the activity that would be surrounding it, and we have a very young community that has a lot of families looking for recreational activities, it could be a great anchor for that area," she said.
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