Long-term value to our communities.

The project is designed to enhance quality of life, expand access to recreation, and strengthen Rochester's position as a regional destination for sports and events, which we all know a lot of those more travel events happen on the weekend when we have more capacity within our existing six thousand hotel rooms.

By attracting tournaments, training programs, and other events, the complex will bring new visitors to the city, support local business, and create a positive ripple effect across the local economy.

This is the economic development aspect that delivers both community and financial returns.

So Ben Bolt will be focusing on how we've operated many of our facilities over time to get some clarity on how those operating partnerships work and how this recommended partnership would be different.

And indoor, but always talked about the need to phase.

So just wanted to acknowledge that and then point out the other thing that came up earlier in the year is the operating pro forma for indoor tournament level facility, would have still required about 500,000 to a million dollars a year of operating subsidy.

Not that not would likely have come from a property tax levy, which does not mean that's off the table for the future.

We are continuing to move forward, assuming that there would be a phase two, and that is how the design is created is to be able to be supportive of a phase two that would benefit from the site development of phase one.

So with that, I would turn it over to Ben Volt, and he is gonna kick this off by talking about how the park system has operated with many partners for the different sports facilities we have today.

Thank you, Administrator Zelms, Council President, Council members, Mayor.

Um thanks for having me today.

I thought I would start with a little background on how the existing uh parks and rec facilities work and how the programming is offered in a wide variety of ways.

Maybe I don't have it turned on.

There we go.

All right.

So yeah, a few bullets here just to highlight uh so a lot of the programming especially across the park system is provided through uh partnerships, and these are all public programs, whether it be T-ball, um, youth soccer, participating in uh active sports, uh swimming, all of those types of things.

Uh, the vast majority of them are offered through partnerships.

Uh, oftentimes the partners will bring in uh financial investment to help with the facility, and and I'll share a couple examples of that.

There's pictures of those on the screen right now, whether it be the baseball fields that Rochester Youth Baseball helped to fundraise for the lights and infrastructure that's out there, and again, those programs run from as early as just getting into the sport with T ball all the way up through your four 13, 14-year-old travel baseballs all offered by Rochester Youth Baseball, and that's just one sport example.

Um, in with that uh financial infrastructure that they're able to kind of upgrade the facilities that we have within our system, that often comes with uh them having primary time usage at those facilities.

Again, these are all public programs so that anybody in the community can participate, sign up for or try out for a team there, and then we as parks and rec also coordinate the schedules there.

So that partner will get us their schedules, we'll get that all filled in.

Um, and then as other requests come in, we'll we'll do our best to accommodate those.

I will say oftentimes that that partner that we're working with, you know.

Again, I'll use the example of baseball.

If we have an opportunity to run a tournament or run a different type of event at that facility with the relationships that we've built from our department to these partners, we are able to reach out to them and see if they can alter their schedule for a given period of time in order to accommodate other requests that come in.

And they do have some flexibility to do that, but also needing to kind of keep on track for their participants in their events or their games and practices and things.

So again, it really comes down to the relationship of being able to develop that and have that be part of how we put all that schedule together.

Um yeah, so another example there on the screen would be Rochester Youth Football.

They participate at fields out there and did fundraising for the scoreboards and other amenities at the football fields.

Uh, we have so both, and then there's a third component at those two complexes, for example, is that they're part of the state property that is where RCTC is also located.

So we have an agreement in place at that facility where RCTC has provided the land.

We're able to provide that programming to our community.

A couple other examples here, and the first two would be on a couple of our indoor facilities, one being the National Volleyball Center.

So there's some key partners there with it being built on school grounds up at Century High School.

So the school has access to that facility during the course of the school day when they're in session, and then it's utilized for Rochester Youth Volleyball Association, again, offering things from their TOTTS volleyball program, just those getting into the sport as well as those who would play at a local level or be on a travel team.

Both boys and girls play for Rochester Youth Volleyball.

And then we as Parks and Rec also run the adult volleyball leagues during the week.

And then we have open volleyball times and some tournaments on the weekend, being a facility that's very busy with a wide variety of volleyball and a little bit of basketball on the side, even though our facility manager isn't quite as wild about the basketball.

She's certainly a volleyball person, but you know, then this time of year during the summers, we're hosting things like FCA camp happens there for a week, Mega Kids Sports Camp happens there for a week, so other ways that we can utilize that facility and create more opportunities for the community to come in and use the great facility that we have up there.

The center picture there is of the pool at the recreation center.

So several partners have all come together at the recreation center.

From an operator programmer perspective, 125 Live offers uh a wide variety of adult and senior programming.

Um there's some shared time that's all kind of set up by the agreement there for uh their membership to be able to utilize the pool, and then in addition to that, we have um the Rochester Swim Club that utilizes the pool.

They have uh swim team, they swim lessons, the biggest provider of swim lessons in Rochester, and then they also help us host meets that where we can have some regional impact by bringing swimmers to Rochester to participate in swim meets.

Um so that's on the kind of the wet water side of that facility.

On the other part of the facility is um ice rinks, and we have some great partnerships there as well.

Um, Rochester Figure Skating Club, Rochester Youth Hockey, the Grizzlies uh junior hockey team have all been part of updates we've been able to do to that side of the facility.

Uh we're just on the finishing phases right now of redoing the north rink, um, which will be great for these organizations like figure skating and youth hockey, but it's also the rink that we utilize for all of our open skate that happens throughout the year where community members can come in and and open skate for uh you know for a small um fee to be able to come in and utilize that, and that's a very popular activity that happens, especially through the winter months, and being able to put the packaging together to finance that project was really made possible by all the partners that we had and that we still have and are able to help us do that.

Um the things I would highlight.

Uh Rochester Youth Hockey also hosts free learn to skate and learn hockey days that they have.

So, again, a lot of these partners that we have are finding ways trying to create opportunities for community members to come in and learn a new sport, try a new sport, and um you know, then if it's something that that individual really enjoys can progress through the phases there, but um really trying to offer that programming from the kind of very beginning, getting into it all the way through more advanced levels.

Um, the third example on the screen there is the um outdoor tennis center at Cutski Park, and um that we were able to just renovate many of the courts there in the last um five to six years, and that was done in great part to uh Tim Bouderak and the others from the tennis community who helped to do that fundraising.

Um the tennis center being one where um we have opportunity for there's youth uh lessons that happen all through the day or all through the the daytime, especially during the summers.

There's a lot of young people out there uh participating in that.

Um the reason I put this example up here was uh similar to I think what we're considering for the pickleball courts at the new sports complex.

This one would be uh community members have the ability to have a seasonal membership, they can come and utilize the courts.

They can also, there's a day pass available there, so anybody could come in and play for a day and participate in tennis as well as sign up for the more structured uh programming and lessons and other things that we're able to offer at the outdoor tennis center.

So maybe I'll just pause there, just kind of with the existing uh facilities and partnerships that we have right now and see if there's any questions on that topic.