Sunday, December 28, 2008
Editorial: Is Christiansburg in over its head?
The aquatics center has no public business plan and a sweetheart deal for Tech.
From the RoundTable blog
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It might be just as well that construction of an aquatics center in Christiansburg is running behind schedule. The town can use the extra time to figure out what it's going to do with the new pools.
The town broke ground without first doing the sort of planning normally associated with a $14.5 million project. Officials had not developed a business plan nor arranged all of the financing.
Pool backers, among them Town Manager Lance Terpenny, sold the aquatics center in part as economic development. It includes a competition pool and diving platform suitable for hosting big swim meets -- think the ACC or state high school championships. Those events would bring visitors who would pack local hotels and eateries.
It sounds great, but events do not just materialize. They take a lot of work. Pool managers must write budgets, create marketing strategies, allocate resources and figure out how much to charge.
In other words, the aquatics center needs a business plan, and it still does not have one. Officials say they might be ready to release one in time for the spring opening. For now, not even town council members know how the pool will be managed, whether it will require subsidies or how much citizens might be charged to use the pools.
The town council should have answered all of those questions before it committed to spending so much money. That's not to say it needed to lock everything in place -- business plans should be flexible -- but it recklessly pressed ahead without performing due diligence.
Meanwhile, some of the financing still remains in limbo. Since early in the process, Virginia Tech was supposed to partner with the town. The university would help pay for the center, and in return, its swimming and diving teams would have a place to train and compete.
The town and Tech finally unveiled the draft contract this month. It's almost as if Tech knew it had the town over a barrel, what with a partially built aquatics center and not enough money to pay for it.
The university will chip in $5 million over 20 years, and for 25 years, it will have a lock on premium hours at the pool.
Residents who want to swim laps before or after work had better hope the swim teams do not choose to use all of the pool-time promised them. If the town signs this contract, Tech would be entitled to five or six days per week between 5 and 10 a.m. and between 2 and 7 p.m. It would also get 10 weekends per year for meets.
Once you take Sundays out of the equation -- the town's recreation center isn't open Sunday mornings, and there is no reason to think the pool would be different -- that means Tech could block off 10 hours every other day of the week.
Whatever hours remain in the middle of the workday and late in the evening would be available to the public and other swim teams such as Christiansburg and Blacksburg high schools.
Town Manager Terpenny said it would not be like that. Tech would only have guaranteed access to the competitive pool and diving well. The family and recreation pools would remain open to the public during training and some meets. Even in the competition pool, Tech would probably not use all of the lanes. In addition, it would train for only 2 to 212 hours.
If all of that is true, it belongs in the contract. Taxpayers are paying for two-thirds of this project and deserve stronger guarantees than just promises from a town manager who himself was once a member of the Tech swim team.
The town council still has time to show some leadership and exercise oversight of the aquatics center. If it does not, it might find itself paying for an expensive facility Christiansburg citizens barely get to use.
