Board of Directors Weigh In On Recent City Action

Below is a summary of the upcoming action and RSF's thoughts regarding these future actions:

The City has recommended three action items to the Council for adoption on Monday, February 3^rd. These requests are as follows:

Regional Sports and Recreation Complex - Project No. J2870 - Real Estate Acquisition

Authorizing finalization of negotiations with Seneca Foods Corporation to purchase the approximately 160 acres of property in the amount of $5,000,000 for the Rochester Sports and Recreation Complex, to be finalized by survey of the property.

RSF Board position: While our Board of Directors did vote unanimously to support the IBM Site as the preferred location – we were not shared all the information on exact site costs. Without that information we are unable to fully access the site qualifications. RSF will assume that the City has done its due diligence to support the selection of the Seneca site.

Directing the City and design team to continue the Phase One of the Rochester Sports and Recreation Complex design efforts, focusing on the outdoor-oriented program to meet the regional impact required by the Sales Tax Funding.

We question this step as the best way to deliver the promises to the community when asking for their vote in support. Many of those supporting the sales tax extension were told an indoor complex would be built to make more space available to the community. We would suggest pausing the outdoor-oriented programming in order to explore all other funding resources BEFORE making this decision. This will allow more time to get accurate bids, thus accurate costs, and to fully understand the funding gap and perhaps identify ways to close that gap.

Directing the City team to continue to explore future funding options and partnerships to implement the indoor-oriented features in a second phase of the project.

We totally agree with the third request but feel it should be explored before the construction decision. Again, get the plans completed, produce some renderings of this proposed facility and present the various partnership/naming rights to interested parties. Perhaps those dollars are out there, recognizing it may take a little time to identify them.

Board member Joe Powers states, “The Sports Foundation was an early vocal supporter of the regional sports project. Like everyone, we are evaluating this week’s announcement. It appears to be significantly different than what was proposed. We support the purchase of this property. We hope the City Council will pause and take the time to investigate programming and other funding options before committing to any development decisions."

Board member Carole Shulman added, “The Sports Foundation was the organization formed to identify new sport facilities and updates needed in Rochester.  Based on feedback from Rochester sport organizations, we spent over two years visiting upper Midwest sports facilities to determine the right fit for Rochester. The single outstanding feature was a year-round indoor structure which was approved by our community voters.”

We have one chance to do this right.  It is not a race. Let’s step back and evaluate all the facts before we decide. Hopefully we won’t have to let any future users down during this process. The mission of the Rochester Sports Foundation is to lead efforts in planning and developing future facilities for a better community.