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Renovating Your Sports Facility
240 Plays1 year ago
Welcome to the world of Parks and Rec! This week we sat down with staff from the award-winning Johnson Country Parks and Recreation Department to talk about one of their recently renovated indoor facility, Okun Fieldhouse. From storage challenges to flooring choices, this episode explores the nuances of planning and executing changes made to preserve and improve this community pillar. Discover the insights shared by the facility managers and gain a deeper understanding of the strategies employed to navigate the ever-changing world of community sports.
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Learn more about Okun Field House:
https://jcprd.com/Facilities/Facility/Details/Okun-Fieldhouse-68
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Transcript
Welcome to The Facility Playbook
00:00:05
Speaker
Do you own or manage a facility? Well, you are in the right place. Welcome to The Facility Playbook. I'm Luke Wade, founder and CEO of Facility Ally, and this podcast is about helping facility managers and owners learn from pioneers and veterans in the industry who have built and managed successful sports facilities, entertainment venues, and clubs.
Facility Management Challenges and Solutions
00:00:22
Speaker
Did you know that most of the facilities I just mentioned use between four and eight different softwares to manage their memberships, reservations, leagues, camps, clinics, and more?
00:00:30
Speaker
revolutionize your facility with Facility Allies all-in-one system. Learn more at facilityally.com.
Meet Shannon Sanye and Mark Grohl
00:00:36
Speaker
Speaking of pioneers and veterans of the industry, today we are at an amazing Johnson County Parks and Rec facility called Oak & Field House, today with Shannon Sanye, the Superintendent of Recreation, and Mark Grohl, Facility Manager at Oak & Field House. Thank you guys so much for having me out and joining you out here at this amazing facility. Thanks for having us. Before we get started, can you tell me a little bit about your background that led you to Johnson County Parks and Rec?
00:01:00
Speaker
Absolutely. So, I've actually been with Johnson County Parking Rec for the last 27 years, way back in the Stone Age whenever you had to answer a newspaper ad for a job. The job posting was working on the ball fields at Heritage Park, and it was $5 an hour, which was an improvement in pay from what I was receiving back then, minimum wage was $4.25.
00:01:23
Speaker
It was really something that I thought I would do for a period of time while I was going to school and that I would move on. My degree path was in marketing. I really wanted to get into sales and honestly wanted to make a lot of money. And so 18-year-old Shannon and 22-year-old Shannon had different versions of what they thought their life would look like. And so once I got done with college, I came back to my old job working on the fields to try and figure out what I wanted to do going forward.
00:01:49
Speaker
I quickly realized that parking recreation is sales, but it's all things you can feel good about selling. So from there, I was promoted to a full-time maintenance worker, and I did that for the next nine years until the creation of the New Century Field House. I was hired in 2010 as the first facility manager for New Century, and I did that through 2019, at which point I was promoted to the Assistant Superintendent of Recreation for our organization.
00:02:16
Speaker
I did that through September of 2022, where I was lucky enough to be selected as the superintendent of recreation. And so in that role, I oversee the recreation division for JSPRD, which is about half of the organization. So over 150 full-time staff members in a budget of about $23 million. So hands are really full, really busy, but it's really a fantastic place to be and fantastic work we do.
00:02:44
Speaker
Well, thanks for making time today to meet with us with your busy schedule and amazing story. I love it. I feel like it's an American dream, right? You start somewhere and most people don't stick with the same job for more than five years anymore. So I love hearing that and love that you were able to stick with Parks and Rec for so long. So that's awesome. Mark.
00:03:00
Speaker
Yeah, so I originally got my degree in sports management from KU. Didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do with that. I've officiated since I was officiated sports since I was about 16 years old.
00:03:16
Speaker
I got a job with the city of Olathe scheduling the sports officials there and with that came some programming opportunities so I programmed just some league play for the city of Olathe and worked there for eight years working my way through the organization to kind of oversee the sports operations and then shortly after that just started here with JCPRD
00:03:41
Speaker
this last July and now I oversee Sports and Facilities North so that includes Oak and Field House, Mid-America Sports Complex and Mid-America West Sports Complex. All the programming that comes with that and the facilities side of it, the maintenance side, and then dealing with internal and external stakeholders. That's awesome.
00:04:07
Speaker
Before we get started, because we're in Johnson County, we're in Kansas.
Exploring Johnson County Parks & Rec Overview
00:04:11
Speaker
We're in Kansas. We're just south of Kansas City. So before we get started talking about Oak and Field House, can you tell me a little bit about how Johnson County Parks and Rec District maybe works? How many facilities are underneath it? And then we can dive a little bit deeper into Oak and Field House.
00:04:21
Speaker
Absolutely, and so Johnson County Park and Recreation is the largest parking wreck in the state of Kansas. We are a nationally known parking recreation agency. We're the 2017 gold medal winner through NRPA, which is the National Recreation and Parks Association.
00:04:40
Speaker
We were a finalist in 2022 and we're putting together our nomination for this upcoming year, so knock on wood, that they were selected as finalists again. We've been around for about 70 years now.
00:04:56
Speaker
I believe. And we have over 10,000 acres throughout Johnson County. And those familiar with Johnson County understand that it's a pretty well developed area. And so it gets harder and harder to set aside those acreage to make sure that we have prairie restoration and all sorts of things like that. Shawnee Mission Park is one of our flagship parks. It is the most visited park in the state of Kansas.
00:05:22
Speaker
Our children's service department is the largest provider of before and after school care in the state. We serve over 3,000 kids every single day at 66 before and after school sites and that's just scratching the surface of a few things we do. You know it's about an 80 to 85 million dollar a year budget and we really do work that we think is
00:05:46
Speaker
as important as life safety type activities, because a lot of people come to us for those type of health and emotional wellbeing type activities. Through COVID, we really were valued. When people couldn't get together, they went outside and we provided those spaces and really it hasn't slowed down since and we've just kind of built upon it ever since.
00:06:12
Speaker
Yeah, you weren't joking about having your hands full. That's a lot. That's absolutely amazing. I don't think I knew that much about Johnson County Parks and Rec, so that's really cool. Thank you.
The Story of Oak & Field House
00:06:20
Speaker
So let's talk about Oak and Field House, which is where we're at today. Maybe just a quick story of what it was, what it is today, and maybe what programming you run here.
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, so I'll kind of hit on a little bit of history. So, as is the case for multiple facilities in our inventory, this was a distressed privately owned facility. We were approached, and I wasn't privy to these conversations when I was out chalking fields at Heritage Park when all this was going on, but I have heard stories, but we were approached about possibly taking ownership of the facility, buying it.
00:06:54
Speaker
We did a one year test pilot, if you will, where we ran it to try and see kind of how the revenues and expenses would run. A unique thing about the Recreation Division is we are enterprise funded. I like to say we have to sing for our supper. So a lot of agencies have heavy general fund subsidizing happening for these types of facilities. What we do for capital improvement type,
00:07:19
Speaker
projects. Each year we're expected to operate within the revenues that we bring in. We're trying to be good stewards of the taxpayer's dollar and so the people that are benefiting the most from the activities are participating in our leagues and tournaments. Those are the ones that are footing the bill and so it really seems to work well.
00:07:40
Speaker
Yeah, so just to expand on that part a little bit, basically all the money you make here goes back to what you do here as well. Well, it's expected to cover the expenses. So we start from there. Now, not every work group or not every activity is in a position to cover its expenses. So we try to make a little bit more to kind of cover anything that maybe there isn't as much revenue flowing through, but it is still important to the community.
00:08:03
Speaker
Okay, yeah, because I know I've met with other cities who a lot of times if this field, this league, the money they make here goes back to a general fund and doesn't get reallocated. So that's a little bit different here, though. Sure, sure. Yeah, and so the name of Oakton Field House was actually kind of born out of tragedy.
00:08:21
Speaker
There was a 13-year-old girl that played in the league that was housed here, I think it was before this facility opened, that died of a congenital heart defect. She was on a basketball team and her name was Bailey Ann Okun and so she died in 1997 and during that time they decided to, when they constructed this facility to commemorate her, they named the facility Okun Field House. When we acquired the facility we retained that name as well.
00:08:48
Speaker
That's awesome. So maybe talk a little bit about the programming that goes on here.
Sports Programs and Offerings
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah. So currently, like right now, for this winter, we'll have basketball leagues and volleyball leagues at play on weeknights. Then we'll also have youth basketball and volleyball on all the courts. And then so Monday through Thursday, basically, we do a lot of just internal league play and then also on Sunday evenings. But then Friday,
00:09:17
Speaker
I'm sorry, Friday night, we also have basketball league two, but then Saturday, most of the day through Sunday, we'll have foot salt leagues here as well, which that's actually an external group that runs that, but they'll use the facility. So we try and balance both internal programs and external groups that will use the facility to kind of maximize its potential. You know, during times where maybe we wouldn't have a program that would fit well here, we would
00:09:44
Speaker
try to seek, you know, a group to come in and use it during that time. So how do you balance that? How do you balance deciding like, well, we could maybe run our own tournament on a weekend over renting it to a footsall league, or how do you balance what you're, how much you're doing internally compared to what you're renting out?
00:09:59
Speaker
Again, I'm still new, so trying to figure all the elements of why we do certain things like that. But I think, again, it just goes back to maximizing the facility. So if we feel like we're providing a good service to the community by having leagues on these days and it's going well, then we'll continue to do those. But if there's days where the building may sit empty or times where it will sit empty, then we'll try and go external with those.
00:10:25
Speaker
Yeah, and just being a government entity, you know, I mean we're, we're, we like to be, you know, upfront and communicative, and we will always prioritize our own activities. Everything else being equal those are the ones that are going to are going to serve.
00:10:40
Speaker
the public best in our eyes but we also want to be here to provide those opportunities for third parties that want to have events and stuff so if there's any kind of adjustment to the schedule like in the future like if say we want to take a night back or go a few more hours in our typically
00:10:55
Speaker
what we do is give our renter long lead time you know kind of heads up because we want to be good partners too you know we want to make sure that they have time to find other facilities or if they want to talk through it and those kind of things but those conversations are always taking place we're always trying to look and see how we can maximize the utilization for the participants.
00:11:13
Speaker
That's great. So to specify Oak & Field House has exactly what? How many courts? What are the opportunities essentially that you're able to offer here? Or what are the assets you have available? Yeah, so four full-length basketball or futsal courts. And then we'll also have goals that come down so you can do volleyball on, let's see, eight total, right? So eight
00:11:35
Speaker
8 basketball if you want younger kids we can do basketball on those smaller courts eight of them and then we also have volleyball you can do on all eight. So eight full-size basketball and four full-size basketball so that would be like anybody above third grade we normally play on a full-size. So four full-size basketball which can turn into eight full-size volleyball.
00:11:58
Speaker
Yes. All right. Yeah. And then you can run eight side court, you know, a little kind of half court, but they're full for little guys and gals, you know, for that up to third grade ages that Mark's talking about. And so the goals all come down to eight feet. And then we can also have supplementary goals. We can attach to them to bring them down even further. So if you have the really the tiny tot type activities, the herd ball, we like to call it.
00:12:23
Speaker
So then outside of the courts you guys have locker rooms like kind of tell me I know you have offices What else is here at Oaken? Yes, we have a multi-purpose room that could seat probably 30 to
00:12:35
Speaker
40 people and we do we actually host some elect polling it's a polling center for election local elections so we do have that we do just random things like that throughout the year but we also have concessions here that operates whenever we have games or events on the weekends and then we do have an office area upstairs where we have six people office out of this building
00:12:59
Speaker
Yeah, I might also. We have a pretty nice sized patio area. So during some events when it's really busy, you know, you're kind of looking for a little space that's not quite so loud or you just want to get outside and get some fresh air. So there is some covered area outside our facility that people utilize quite a bit. That's great. So what are some of the challenges you face maybe running day to day in this facility that others should be weary of if they're building their own facility or are getting into the facility space?
Operational Challenges and Revenue Streams
00:13:26
Speaker
I think one thing here that stands out is we wish we'd have more storage so I think the more storage you can have at a facility like this especially if you're doing multiple different offerings the better it just sets you up for success and you know to be more organized in that way would be the biggest thing I think that we need currently but you know there's
00:13:48
Speaker
There's still some infrastructure things here that could be updated that we're looking at, like the goal, you know, just always kind of staying ahead of the curve when it comes to the infrastructure itself, like lowering the goals, the tools that we have to do that. You know, are they automated? Are they on the wall? Are they hand or are they manual? Lower them, just all those kind of things. Just always trying to look at those. But I don't know if you have any other. Yeah.
00:14:13
Speaker
I think storage is a big one you know especially if you you know you strive to keep your your walls and stuff clean and not have things just kind of on the peripheral of the gym have appropriate areas and kind of planning for all the various equipment so
00:14:29
Speaker
When you're having basketball and you have all those little supplementary goals, they have to go somewhere. When you have volleyball, you have eight sets of standards and stands and poles that need to go somewhere. When you have futsal, you have
00:14:45
Speaker
futsal goals that they all need to live somewhere. And so if you have an appropriate place to get those off the floor, it just keeps the facility looking cleaner. And so unfortunately, when it comes to storage, when it comes to construction, that's usually one of the first things that gets cut because it's not revenue generating. It's not seen by the public, but
00:15:03
Speaker
As a facility person, that's something I would personally fight for if possible. Now whether actually win or not, that's a different story. Bottom line is bottom line. But yeah, it's important. So how do you manage it now without the adequate storage? You know, I think Mark and Mark's staff really just do the best they can to keep things orderly. And we do have a small
00:15:25
Speaker
I'm gonna call it a closet cause it's really, you know, it's, it's really not too spacious. Um, so we get things off the floor where we can, but otherwise we just have to kind of stack neatly and you know, and so little brother, little sister ends up playing with it or, you know, getting into it. So, but there's really no other alternative. Sure.
00:15:44
Speaker
Yeah, our staff during events and games and stuff does a good job going around and making sure that none of that stuff is being played with or climbed on and things like that. So that's just something that you continually have to do and manage. Sure. Yeah, that's good to note. I know it's always funny because when you're looking at drawings or planning something out, you're like, oh, do they really need this much storage? And it's typically like, no, of course not. Right. And then you do. It's definitely something to consider.
00:16:08
Speaker
Where do you say most of your revenue comes from? I know you said you have internal events, you rent externally, maybe a comparative to that. And then also like, is it basketball, volleyball, youth? I mean, where does most of your revenue come from at Oaken?
00:16:22
Speaker
It's really heavily program-centric. Nokon's been so established in the community now for a couple of decades that it's really served this area when it comes to youth volleyball and basketball to a large degree. So that's going to be the bulk of our revenue. It's going to end up being
00:16:40
Speaker
Easily over a half million dollars a year in revenue Tournaments and rentals and those kind of things those are you know space available is when that happens and and you know, that's you know, that's Probably the next one, you know in line and then our concession stand so we run all of our concessions in-house and so I looked at some numbers before this this discussion and and we're tracking way ahead of last year and
00:17:09
Speaker
when it comes to our food and beverage. So last year we had issues like many in the community did, having enough staff and being able to serve the public to the degree we wanted to. So right now, actually through October, we've made 40 more grand than we have all of last year. And this is kind of entering our really busy season when it comes to indoor facilities. So we expect it to be somewhere probably in the neighborhood of 180 to $200,000 for the full year of concessions when it's all said and done.
00:17:38
Speaker
That's great. What would you attribute the biggest reason for that increase? I know you said staff. Is it staff just having the ability to sell and having the ability to be available and sell that? It's a large part of it, for sure. You know, we weren't immune to the inflation effects that's affecting everyone in the community.
00:17:57
Speaker
So we really did have to take a look at our pricing structure and make sure that we were making a decent margin while also offering fair prices. We're not trying to offer stadium prices for things. So consistent service and just kind of really looking at our cost of goods, I would say is the two biggest inputs into that.
00:18:20
Speaker
So have you always had food and beverage here or was that a part of a revamp or redesign in the past? So we've always done our own food and beverage here but this is one facility of nine that we offer concessions throughout parking recreation district and so we have
00:18:39
Speaker
kind of unique to our organization we have four full-time concession staff members and all said and done it'll be about a 1.2 to 1.3 million dollar in 2023 operation but it creates some challenges right so you have homecoming all of a sudden there's a lot of our our staff can't work you know
00:19:01
Speaker
you have graduation. And those usually end up being big weekends for activities, not so much indoors, but a lot of our big outdoor tournaments, which is honestly, that's where the bulk of our concession revenue comes in. So you're constantly kind of shifting chess pieces around to make sure that there's adequate coverage everywhere. But sometimes you have tremendous need and sometimes you can get by with a few folks. So our staff does a great job of managing all those various aspects.
00:19:28
Speaker
So you made the point of a lot of the outside tournaments is what drive most the food and beverage. So to your weekly leagues, are you guys still open with concessions? Can people still buy there and maybe that's when you're scaled down? Yeah, we still offer concessions for league play, but I think just due to the nature of tournament play, you're there for multiple hours on end. Most of the time I think we'd find that we make more revenue on concessions for weekend tournament events, but we do still provide it for league play too.
00:19:53
Speaker
That makes a lot of sense. People here longer, they're getting hungrier rather than being here for maybe an hour or two and they can just go home and eat before. Yeah, typically you're coming from farther away. Maybe you're on the other side of the metro to come play or maybe you're traveling from way out of town and you're staying in a hotel and you're not really familiar with the area. So with the majority of your programming in-house being the biggest revenue driver, it sounds obviously you have a full-time staff for food and beverage. How do you manage your leagues, tournaments, your officials? Is that all managed in-house?
00:20:22
Speaker
So for the officials, whenever we hold an event here with the third party, that will provide the officials for those events. But any league play that we have, we do provide our own officials and we have an officials coordinator for that who works here and they provide officials all throughout the county for any sporting events that we have.
00:20:42
Speaker
And then for your internal programming, they're providing all that as well? Yeah, that's what, yeah. For the internal programs, we'll always provide officials for them, but externally we would not. Okay. Well, I think another cool aspect of that is, is, you know, we have all sorts of levels of ability and leagues and stuff. And officiating, it's a tough business at times, but it's vital to our business. And so some of the Pee Wee or Biddy Ball type activities, that could be a first step.
00:21:10
Speaker
for a young person to officiate. And we're hoping that they like it and they make some good money and they want to continue to develop. And if they get to the point where they're working all tournaments because they've developed so much and they can make good money doing that, and that's outside of what we offer, then that's great. And then we've performed another service to the community. We're kind of feeding into that pipeline.
00:21:31
Speaker
So I know we were talking a little bit
In-house Training and Scheduling Benefits
00:21:33
Speaker
offline. You know, at Casey Crue, I mentioned that we went from contracting officials to bringing them in house and training them. And obviously, it was a lot more work to recruit them, train them, staff them up. But the long term is a big payoff. And you guys do that internally as well. So maybe talk a little bit about what you've seen, you know, what are the benefits of making sure you handle your own officials in house.
00:21:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think because I've been an official for a long time myself and I've seen both sides of it. But I think the best, the biggest part that benefits us to have everything in house would be exactly what you said. We're the ones that's providing these officials the training. We're the ones that are kind of responsible for their success or their ability to officiate. So we have a lot more say in what they do when they show up to work.
00:22:17
Speaker
so we can develop relationships with them by scheduling them consistently also. And I've found that if sometimes when you're contracting out officials, you're not always that person's priority for the day. So with us, our programs are our priorities. We're gonna send the best officials we have to whenever they're available. But if you were to rely on a third party, potentially they may have six or seven other
00:22:44
Speaker
you know, places that they're scheduling officials for. So they're just, for lack of a better term, sometimes they're just looking for bodies. Well, we try to avoid that here to provide quality officials and training and continually monitor them and ensure that they're growing and staying engaged. Has it always been in-house or was that a transition at one point?
00:23:03
Speaker
You know, it did transition at one point. And I think part of it was just kind of a, you know, just trying to get consistent, you know, and just, you know, kind of biting the bullet. There's various pros and cons when it comes to internal, external, whether it's insurance, whether it's, you know, availability, all those sort of things. And so it at least has been all internal for the last decade plus.
00:23:29
Speaker
Sure. You know, it sounds like you're very similar to me where you said you're always looking to improve, make things better. And that's just one one step in the right direction. So I love hearing that. So as far as improvements go, I know that this place has had some pretty awesome
Cultural Initiatives - Mural Project
00:23:41
Speaker
improvements. So tell me a little bit about the mural project. That was a pretty big deal.
00:23:45
Speaker
That is, so back in 2000, yes, summer 2002, we had a mural completed on the south side of Oak and Field House and the murals named Rebirth and it was done by a local artistic group called Itra Icons and it was a really cool competitive process that I was lucky enough to take part in. So we are lucky enough at JSPRD to have our own culture division.
00:24:11
Speaker
that does public art projects throughout the county. It's really neat. And it's a fairly new division. It's less than five years old at this point. But they led that process. And so there was a call for artists. And really the qualification is you had to be within a 500 mile radius of the facility. We want someone that's local
00:24:33
Speaker
local-ish to complete the project. Now, we didn't expect necessarily that they'd be Casey Metro base, but that's just kind of how it worked out. You know, so we shortlisted. There was probably 60 submissions. We shortlisted, I want to say about five candidates, and they were given
00:24:51
Speaker
a small stipend to kind of further develop their thoughts and to submit something for our consideration. And so we went through that process and I draw icons ended up being the successful submittal. And so it was really cool because the project is kind of challenging. So you have a metal side of the building that's corrugated, you know, heavy sun exposure, you know, and then they're painting this in the middle of the summer.
00:25:18
Speaker
Well, Oak & Field House is directly adjacent to Mid-America West Sports Complex, and anyone that knows Agelheim Infields knows that it gets dusty in the summer. So those poor guys are on ladders and lifts and everything else, dealing with the dust and painting and everything, and the heat. And so great care was taken to make sure that the mural was
00:25:39
Speaker
protectively coated so that the colors would last and such and it really kind of ties in various aspects. This location is unique because not only are we right next to Mid-America West Sports Complex, but we're directly adjacent to the Gary L. Howler Streamway Trail. So you jump on the trail outside of Oak and then you'll go all the way to Nelson Island on the Kansas River. Oh wow. Yeah, so it has different elements like that that's all tied together. So
00:26:06
Speaker
I encourage everyone to come out and check it out. Yeah, that's really, really cool. Definitely do that.
Facility Upgrades and Renovations
00:26:10
Speaker
And all other improvements also include you guys got some really cool new floors. Can we talk a little bit about what, you know, the floors and kind of what went into planning and deciding to get new floors? Yeah. And that's a, that's a controversial topic, right? It can be there. There's some, there's some hardwood purists, which, which I hear you guys. It's like the turf people, right? Grass or turf, hardwood or, yeah.
00:26:31
Speaker
So you didn't go hardwood? We didn't go hardwood and we did have hardwood before we had the Teraflex. We did have experience with Teraflex from New Century Field House whenever it was constructed and opened in 2011 and we've had nothing but success with it.
00:26:49
Speaker
The hardwood here was tired and beat up. It had issues. Hardwood's great. It has that kind of that shoe squeak that we all kind of grew up with and thinks really cool with basketball. But for me, TeraFlex is very flexible. It's a tough material. I've only seen a couple of punctures at New Century in over a decade of usage. If something gets on it, it's not gonna buckle the floor.
00:27:17
Speaker
You have those kind of issues. It doesn't require sanding and refinishing over time. It's not maintenance free, but it is very durable material. And it really plays well. Some of the officials that I've talked to that have refs say, you know, four back-to-back games, it's really hard on your body. Well, the cushioned surface kind of eases the pain and joints and everything whenever you're running up and down the court over and over again.
00:27:43
Speaker
I don't know that there's anything additional that I would say about it besides, we've had great success with it, but we also understand that some folks just prefer hardwood. Sure. Was there a breaking point that you had to replace? It was like, oh, it's either time to put new hardwood in, or what was kind of the breaking point of like, hey, we need to go this way or this way? What led you to that?
00:28:05
Speaker
It was just in poor condition. It had undulations. You know, it didn't play well in certain areas. And it just it was getting pretty pretty beat up. I mean, it was the original flooring for the facility. So we did have to make some decisions. And honestly, Teraflex is significantly cheaper. Not that that was the only only driving force, but it does provide some consistency across our like type facilities between New Century and Oaken. Sure.
00:28:32
Speaker
Were there any challenges that came up after you made the decision to go with Teraflex that you weren't aware of? You know, kind of the big thing, and this was for New Century and for Oakon, is you never really know what that subfloor looks like. You never really know how actual flat it is or what you're gonna have to deal with.
00:28:50
Speaker
So there was some joints and some kind of space in between concrete that needed grinding down and flattening as part of that process, but we did have enough contingency funds set aside for that, kind of anticipating that there were going to be some of those type issues.
00:29:08
Speaker
kind of just more logistical challenges when it comes to anything like this is kind of your layout. So, you know, we have lines for full court basketball, we have lines for sideways basketball, we have lines for volleyball, and we have markings for futsal, you know, and so to the untrained eye or coming out for the first time, it's a lot.
00:29:29
Speaker
But folks seem to and participants seem to kind of be able to pick that out pretty quickly and kind of understand what lines are what. And this was also something that I kind of, you know, through my experience at New Century, we had a two-inch perimeter line for the basketball court. I'm like, you know, we really need something fatter here to make it stand out. And so that was something that we were able to kind of glean from our New Century process that we were able to apply here.
00:29:54
Speaker
That's great. Yeah, I know where I'm down at Ivy Arena and they got lines upon lines upon lines and they can get super confusing That's interesting the so the fatter line just on the outside to kind of show the basketball Yeah Yeah just to kind of create some some I guess some spacing and just some you know You can kind of reference the basketball line in relation to everything else and and actually interestingly enough the full
00:30:17
Speaker
I call it the parquet area, even though it's really not parquet floor, the Teraflex kind of looks like it, but that's the full Futsal court. So Futsal really, typically they're restrained to just a basketball court size, but they love having places that have larger areas to play Futsal. And this was designed with Futsal in mind as well. So I think they would tell you that this is one of their favorite places to play.
00:30:42
Speaker
Was it because you already had the client that did Futsal that you thought about that? Yeah, we have a longstanding relationship with Heartland Futsal. They've been playing at our facilities for a decade plus. So, you know, we brought in those folks to kind of give their feedback. They're definitely industry leaders in that sport. So we want to make sure that it was designed with Futsal in mind as well as volleyball and basketball. Sure. So knowing this facility has been around for over 20 years, are there other renovations or other things that you're thinking about improving that are coming down the line of getting that time?
00:31:14
Speaker
Well I mean some things we didn't talk about so we did redo the restrooms also here which were in really rough shape. We also just recently repainted halfway up the gym wall so you can see it's gray. The gray area was just repainted and I believe
00:31:30
Speaker
the lobby area had some renovations too. Yeah, that was part of the restroom project kind of creating, there were some ADA issues. And so we were able to redo the lobby, add additional capacity in the restrooms, modernize them. They were really not in great shape. Like even on their best day, they were barely, barely, barely adequate. And I'm probably being generous. But that was a huge improvement and something we did, I guess just this past year as we added the curtains.
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah, and that's kind of provided some ability to keep sports separate, keep whistles localized onto the courts that they're being blown. You know, when you have large facilities with lots of whistles going, you see kids just stop in the middle of play because they think it's their court and it's... Yeah, you said playing the whistle, which whistle, yeah.
00:32:15
Speaker
But, you know, as far as I think things coming up, you know, I don't know that there's anything too significant coming up. We are in the midst of a really large renovation for some of our outdoor sports facilities. And so that's really taking priority now. So Mid-America Sports Complex just finished up a three year renovation and it's fully complete. So now we're moving to right next door here to master planning for Mid-America West. Okay.
00:32:43
Speaker
So nothing really on the upcoming horizon for Oaken since it's already had quite a bit of work done. When was the floors redone? That was, I'm gonna say that was, it's either two or three years ago. I mean it's been fairly recent. Okay, yeah they look amazing.
00:32:59
Speaker
So, as far as parking goes, obviously I know you're right next to a big, you know, another facility. So, do you ever run into issues with parking in both facilities or do you feel like your parking is adequate? Yeah, I mean, to say there's no issues would be not accurate. But, no, there is adequate parking here. I think whenever I see people that maybe park where they shouldn't, it's just because they don't want to park.
00:33:22
Speaker
where there are open spots in the back or they don't want to look for them, whatever. But I would say the parking here is adequate. Is it always right by the door when we're doing both facilities at the same time? No, but there's always been parking available for people, but that'll always be, I'm sure. Yep, here in the Midwest, we don't like to walk very far, that's for sure.
00:33:43
Speaker
I think yeah and I think to Mark's point where we typically have ran into issues is kind of coming out of indoor season you know if we have some kind of big Heart of America volleyball tournaments at the same time we have a large fast pitch tournament at Mid-America West both of those bring lots of family to those events and so you know it's kind of a shared parking lot so if one event is huge another one isn't huge it's usually not a problem but if you have two huge events then
00:34:12
Speaker
you know, this gigantic lot can be pretty, pretty full. Sure. And so do you, being an indoor facility, obviously huge demands in the winter here in Kansas, it gets really cold. Nobody wants to be outside. So how do you supplement, you know, summer demand when demand's so high in the winter, obviously, how do you drive more people in the summer or do you feel like your demand's pretty, pretty much the same all year long? So we're pretty, for internal programs, we'll run, I would say year round. I mean, there's intermittent breaks, but the coordinators here have done a great job of
00:34:40
Speaker
year-round we have things going on in Oaken. I would say probably the slowest month for for weekend activity would probably be August to September maybe even a little bit into a new October but for the most part other than that it's we're busy every day of the week. That's great. Year-round yeah.
00:35:01
Speaker
Yeah, I know other facilities that are mostly indoor that definitely struggle in the summer and don't have the demand. Do you guys have programming during the day? I feel like a lot of these other facilities are that nobody really has anything during the day, but they're packed at night after four o'clock. So do you have much programming during the day, during the week? And is there anything special or tips you would give anybody who's looking to do that?
00:35:21
Speaker
We have some camps that are intermittent throughout the year, sports camps, but daytime programming is actually something that we're talking about heavily right now with some of the coordinators. Maybe not in the immediate term, but over time that's something that we're definitely wanting to bring to all three potentially of our facilities here. Any creative ideas that you're excited about?
00:35:43
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, just related to camps, whether it be half-day camps or full-day camps, weeks at a time. I mean, there's still too much in the brainstorming phase to really say, but I think there is an opportunity for us to provide athletic camps here during the summer months when kids are out of school. So that's kind of spring winter breaks. Yeah, and then days out of school. It's really kid driven.
00:36:08
Speaker
Yeah, the younger ages, nothing but the older kids. Once you figure out how to drive the adults in during the day, let us know, because everybody's looking for that. Absolutely. Well, and we do offer indoor walking, you know, drop-in, you know, just as a public service, you know, that we're here, and there's no charge for that. Oh, that's cool. So folks can come in and walk during a set a couple hours in the morning. That's great.
00:36:31
Speaker
What's one of the solutions you've implemented that maybe you're
Task Management Innovations
00:36:35
Speaker
most proud of? Well, one of the things that was a challenge for us was just kind of keeping tabs on all the various tasks, not only here, but Mid-America and Mid-America West Sports Complex. And so how to make sure that nothing's falling through the cracks. And so through some creative kind of spreadsheet usage, we've been able to kind of get that all in one place instead of kind of going out to different areas and grabbing that information.
00:37:01
Speaker
this team here has multiple facilities that they're working on, you know, so you always have to kind of juggle all the various things going on. Some things have heavier seasons than others, but it's a lot and it's a busy place and, you know, it operates, you know, it's open up to 100 hours a week depending upon the season. So, you know, that's always a
00:37:26
Speaker
continued focus as communication and making sure that you're staying on top of everything. Other than storage, what's one thing you think you'd do differently if you started all over today at Oaken? Make it so that the volleyball nets could come down from the ceiling. Automatically. Instead of doing them by hand. That's pretty cool.
00:37:49
Speaker
Yeah and you know a place that's as busy as this there's a lot of up and down you know which requires staffing and and usually there's you know end of the night's one thing you know when you're turning the facility around for the next morning but but you know even you know each day during the week in the winter time you know there's there's a lot of different activities so we try to schedule in a manner where there's less changeover
00:38:11
Speaker
you know, as possible, whether it's from futsal to basketball, basketball to volleyball, or any kind of combination in between, but sometimes it's unavoidable. You know, and sometimes you have 15 minutes to turn around four courts, you know, and so it takes a little bit of grace by those participating and a couple of folks just really hoofing it to get it done.
00:38:33
Speaker
Well, thanks so much for coming out today and providing your insight. I really, really appreciate it. If you're in South Kansas City and Johnson County, make sure you come over and check out Oak and Field House as well as all the other amazing things in Johnson County Parks and Rec. If you're looking to automate your facility, check out facilityallie.com. We'll see you next time on the Facility Playbook.