O’Fallon hires third consultant for its parks

After the O’Fallon City Council approved hiring its third consultant for the parks, Ward 4 Alderman Herb Roach was perplexed.

“In the end, all of the money spent might be worth it,” he said.

On March 7, the city council agreed to hire Development Strategies, of St. Louis, to do an economic impact study on how much local sports teams and traveling sports teams generate for the local economy. The latest study will cost the city up to $8,000 to complete.

This is the latest consultant O’Fallon has hired to look at its park system. Since September, the city has agreed to spend up to $48,000 for three consultants who will look at the city’s park system.

Mary Jeanne Hutchinson, director of Parks and Recreation, said the latest study should help to validate the findings from the parks’ two other ongoing consultant projects.

For the past year, the local park’s department has collected data on every baseball and soccer tournament held at a city park.

Hutchinson said the city conservatively saw a $2 to $5 million impact on the local economy from those 25-plus tournaments.

Roach did not call the latest study a waste of taxpayers’ money, but he believes the city should have considered doing this study first, before it agreed to do the other two studies.

“As it stands now, it just looks like someone is trying to justify a project,” he said.

Roach said the two previous studies approved by the city council could also have a significant impact on the park department’s economics.

“We have yet to see the results of either of these studies or take any action on them,” he said. “I would like to see the results and if we are going to move forward before we try to do a justification of current or future funding.”

Earlier studies

Last May, Roach and four other aldermen voted against hiring Ballard*King & Associates, which is in the process of completing a feasibility study that will look at the viability of building a recreation center in O’Fallon.

Roach, along with Ward 2 Alderman Robert Kueker, Ward 3 Alderman Kevin Hagarty, Ward 4 Alderman Matthew Smallheer and Ward 6 Alderman Ned Drolet, voted against hiring the consulting firm from Highlands Ranch, Colo. saying the time was not right in lieu of the state’s ongoing budget crisis.

On Monday, Roach said he opposed hiring Ballard*King, because the city could lose between $1 and 1.4 million in state funding.

“This (study) was not an essential need,” Roach said. “I asked if (the study) could be delayed until we knew if we were going to lose funds are not.”

Hutchinson said Ballard*King’s study, should be completed within the next couple of weeks.

If the city builds a recreation center, she said the city hopes it would be able to pay for itself and make money.

O’Fallon has been looking at building a recreation center for over 15 years, Mayor Gary Graham said.

“It’s something that we will need to build in the future,” he said.

Build it and they will come?

In the meantime, O’Fallon officials are working with Game On Sports for a third study.

In January, the city council unanimously approved entering into a $17,500 consulting agreement with Kansas City-based Game On Sports, a sports development company. Game On Sports and its strategic partners are interested in developing a tournament destination village at the Family Sports Park.

Among other improvements, Game On Sports is hoping to find a partner or partners to install AstroTurf and lights on at least 10 of the Family Sports Park soccer fields.

The Family Sports Park currently has 12 soccer fields, with only one of those being an AstroTurf field. Only the AstroTurf field is lit.

Hutchinson believes if the city wants to lure the bigger soccer tournaments, all of the soccer fields must have AstroTurf and lights.

“AstroTurf fields are the standard now,” she said.

Game On Sports is looking to build 20 to 30 soccer fields in the area, including 11 soccer fields off Illinois 15 near the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows. The complex there has an estimated value of more than $10 million.

Unlike the fields being built at the Shrine, the city has no plans of selling the soccer fields at Family Sports Park, Hutchison said.

This story was originally published March 18, 2016 at 3:00 AM with the headline "O’Fallon hires third consultant for its parks."