As debate continues about the need for a planned taxpayer-funded fitness center in east Springfield, it appears more people are taking advantage of existing fitness services available.
Membership numbers have grown at four of the five largest area fitness centers between 2008 and 2011, according to Springfield Business Journal research.
The Ozarks Regional YMCA, the largest local center with 27,262 members, up from 25,000 in 2008, has made public its opposition to the Parks Department’s planned Dan Kinney Family Center at 2701 S. Blackman Road. Ozark Fitness Center, the second-largest on SBJ’s fitness centers list published May 9, has seen its memberships increase 17 percent during that span to 12,892 this year.
St. John’s Fitness Center-Walnut Lawn is the exception, having dipped by 1,350 members since 2008.
Officials at both of the area’s top centers are upset about the threat of a government operator taking a larger piece of the fitness pie.
Dan Martin, president of the for-profit Ozark Fitness Center, said he believed the Dan Kinney Family Center was unnecessary and a misuse of public funds.
“It would be different if this market wasn’t being served already. I feel like this market is being served quite well by the existing commercial facilities and the existing nonprofit facilities,” Martin said. “For the government to use taxpayer money to add another facility is, I think, a big waste.”
Martin is used to battling nonprofit competitors. In terms of members, Ozark Fitness Center is just ahead of CoxHealth Meyer Center and its 9,320 members and the Park Board’s Chesterfield Family Center and its 8,858 current members. Cox center memberships grew nearly 10 percent between 2008 and 2011, while Chesterfield is up 32 percent, according to SBJ data.
“It’s a big issue in the industry nationwide,” Martin said. “Some of the less well-managed facilities – it’s a death for them. Luckily, we’ve been in business a long time, and we feel we have a pretty good operational model, so we are able to compete. But it is pretty unfair.”
Public questions
Interest was piqued in the common service areas of the tax-funded fitness centers after YMCA officials went public with criticisms over the Parks’ decision to move forward with plans on the $7 million Dan Kinney Family Center. Construction of the center, which was made possible by revenue bonds approved by the Greene County Commission on March 31, is expected to commence in July.
After YMCA officials vocalized their opposition to plans for the tax-funded east-side center earlier this month, public officials were sent scrambling to react to concerns about the need for construction, slated to begin in July.
Four business days after a Sunshine request was made to the Springfield city clerk’s office for detailed membership data for Park Board’s Chesterfield and Doling family centers, a city official said it would take two more days and $66 to answer the query due to the staff time involved.
On May 19, Parks Director Jodie Adams said because of a similar request made by Councilwoman Cindy Rushefsky, SBJ would not be charged for the cost of retrieving the membership footprint data for each center. Still, she said it would not be available until March 20, six business days after SBJ’s original request.
“We’re very busy all the time,” Adams said, adding that she fielded 10 interview requests the previous week and had two employees out sick.
Anita Cotter, assistant city clerk, said on May 18 it would take one Chesterfield employee one hour and a Doling employee another hour to retrieve the membership data. SBJ’s request also did specify that if service-area data was available in another format, such as a percentage of members living within a certain distance of either center, that it be included as well.
Cotter said by phone her absence from the clerk’s office, along with the volume of similar requests, had contributed to the delayed response.
Flexing muscle
The Park Board met on May 13 and issued a press release that responded to criticisms made by YMCA officials of the Kinney Center plans. In it, the Park Board said “citizens strongly advocated” for a facility east of U.S. Highway 65 and cited a 29 percent growth in population for areas east of Highway 65 and south of Interstate 44 in Greene County from U.S. Census Bureau data between 2000 and 2010. In addition, it cited a 2009–10 national study that found the Park Board is “far below” the average for countywide systems in the total number of developed and undeveloped acres in the park system per 1,000 residents.
A request made to Parks Information Director Bob Nelson on May 18 for the name of the study and the related numbers referred to in the release was forwarded to the city clerk’s office to be added to the previous Sunshine request.
The Parks’ response, which is posted in its entirety at
sbj.net, also said the Park Board planned to include YMCA officials in its discussions of plans for future projects.
Brad Toft, CEO of the Ozarks’ Regional YMCA, said he was unimpressed by the release and had not yet heard from Parks officials regarding any plans for future projects.
“They did not answer for me the question of voter approval for that facility. They did not answer the question in terms of need,” Toft said, adding that neither the demographic information nor the benchmark study were specifically tied to the service footprint of that facility. “Good comparisons. Good information. But it’s just general in nature.”
At issue were 2006 talks in which Toft said Parks officials planned to seek funds for the construction of a third public family center in Springfield through the 2011 sales tax initiative. Acquisition and infrastructure related to “Family Center East” on Blackman Road in the amount of $1 million was listed among projects to be funded by 2006 sales tax revenues. Parks Director Jodie Adams said the Parks’ department has been transparent with the public about the need for a third center, and said revenue bonds for the center’s construction are among funding tools at its disposal.
“We’ve been asked for years to have services past (Highway) 65 because we actually service all the way to Rogersville. We’re in charge of all the unincorporated areas of the county,” Adams said, adding that the Kinney Center would serve more citizens than centers in bedroom communities such as Ozark, Nixa and Republic.[[In-content Ad]]
