Sports Pavilion Lawrence, 100 Rock Chalk Lane

Revenues figures for Sports Pavilion Lawrence are somewhat murky, but Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department officials say they think a new method of number crunching will show that the facility is living up to expectations.

“I really don’t think SPL has a revenue deficiency,” said Mark Hecker, assistant director of the Parks and Recreation Department. “I think it’s just hard to find that number because we don’t account that way.”

The pavilion opened in fall 2014, and the only publicly available revenue figures indicate that the pavilion made about $400,000 in 2015. That’s about $250,000 less than the amount touted by former City Manager David Corliss during the contentious approval process for the $25 million facility.

But Hecker said he thinks a more detailed accounting method will show a brighter picture. The 2015 revenue was listed in the department’s master plan, and Hecker said that it doesn’t tell the full story.

Specifically, Hecker said the $400,000 only includes proceeds from the facility’s tournament and concessions revenue, and excludes money the pavilion makes in program fees. The recreation department has about a dozen facilities, including the Prairie Park Nature Center, four recreation centers, four swimming facilities and two historic buildings. All revenues from those facilities — such as youth sports, adult sports, aquatics, building rentals — generated about $2.3 million in 2015, according to the master plan.

Currently, Hecker said that the pavilion’s specific claim to fee revenue isn’t known because the Parks and Recreation Department does not separate out all cost and revenue numbers among its various recreation centers.

“We have the numbers, it’s just a matter of pulling all those that belong to SPL in SPL,” Hecker said.

The city’s finance director, Bryan Kidney, said that they are working on producing location-based reports, which were specifically requested from the commission during their review (and ultimate approval) of the recreation department’s new court-use policy for the pavilion. The new rules walked back a policy that stated one of the pavilion’s courts would always be open to the community for free play. Commissioner Stuart Boley, a retired auditor, said at the time that the lack of complete financial information for the pavilion was “really frustrating.”

Benefits to the pavilion’s revenue was one of the reasons parks and recreation officials requested some limitations be placed on free play at the pavilion’s courts. The proposal said that being able to use all the pavilion’s courts would aid the ability to “secure and retain large tournaments/events.”

Hecker, though, said that he thinks a new accounting method for cost recovery proposed as part of the master plan would show the pavilion is doing well. He noted that numbers currently available for this year show the facility is on track to top the $400,000 recorded for 2015. He said that revenues for tournaments and concessions — again, not including revenues from program fees — were already at $390,000 for the first 10 months of this year.

“In general, I don’t feel like the revenue at SPL is falling under estimates,” Hecker said. “I think it’s doing fine. The indicator on that is the total recreation budget is doing great.”

Tim Laurent, recreation operations manager, agreed with Hecker’s assessment. Another number to go off is the number of tournaments held at the pavilion. As part of his estimates, Corliss said that the pavilion would have to host 32 tournaments in order to hit the $650,000 projection. Laurent said that in 2015, the pavilion hosted 31 tournaments and has already hosted 31 tournaments so far in 2016.

“But you have to look at all the programs that are being held at that facility to get the full picture of the revenue being produced,” Laurent said.

As part of the court policy proposal, Laurent told the commission that tournaments only add a nominal expense for the pavilion — the cost of having one additional staff person — because tournaments bring their own referees and other organizers.

The operation cost of the pavilion was about $900,000 for 2015, according to the master plan. The approximately $500,000 difference between the pavilion’s costs and revenues (excluding program fees) is funded through the city’s sales tax fund. Operations costs don’t include the debt payments for the facility, which are about $34.7 million total and will be paid off over the next 20 years, according to a debt service schedule provided by Kidney.

Kidney said the plan is that the location-based reporting for the recreation department will be available in time for the 2018 budget process, which begins in the spring.