Fighting for fitness: how park and recreation departments are battling with private fitness facilities for the right to offer workout rooms in their recreation centers.

Building a new recreation center in Hampden Township in Pennsylvania, seemed like a good idea and one supported by the community. The township's park and recreation department caters to more than 24,000 residents and somehow manages to be successful despite not having a dedicated facility. It relies mainly on the local school district to provide space in order to run its programs. Plus anywhere else it can find room, such as the back of the township hall that is used as a multi-purpose room, the fire hall and a church.

A feasibility study and a business plan were proposed to support the project. Hampden Township Recreation Director Sarah Clugston felt a proposed $11 million recreation center was going to be a "slam dunk." The full-fledged community center included gymnasiums, a fitness area, an indoor track and a swimming pool. Everything was on track until a local private fitness center owner challenged the project, citing the taxpayer-funded facility would be an unfair competitor to his business.

"My argument to the health club owners was, Your members are going to stay at your health club. They're not going to come to my community center that's going to have hundreds of screaming kids running around.'

We answer to a totally different clientele. We do things like Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, flea markets and concerts ... things that health clubs don't do," says Clugston.

Poor timing did not help things either. It was budget time and a civic election was around the corner as the recreation department pitched its plan to the township's board of commissioners. Clugston claimed the local health club owner enlisted help from the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association (IHRSA), a trade association serving the health and fitness club industry, to launch a "negative campaign" against the proposed recreation center.

"The group of people who were backed by IHRSA was putting out negative publicity, saying that governments that run recreation and parks facilities and competed with the private sector, shouldn't be allowed because we have an unfair advantage," she says. "They basically went out right before our local election and they muddied the waters."

She also added that opponents of the project targeted the elderly in their publicity campaign, charging the recreation center was not financially feasible, township property taxes would be increased to fired it, and that the facility did not have much support from the public.

In the end, the township's newly elected board of commissioners last year voted 4-1 against the project. Clugston says the recreation center likely would have been approved if a candidate supported by the facility's opponents did not get elected. She credits the new commissioner with swinging the vote the other way and stopping the project. Although Clugston remains unhappy with how things turned out, she says it's the townships residents who may suffer. "It was a real low blow to the people who live in our township who are looking to sign up their children for every single thing they can get them signed up for," she says. Helen Durkin, IHRSA's public policy director, says her organization's role is to "provide the other part of the story that has a tendency to get left out." She claims that project costs are often not fully revealed and potential revenues are inflated in order to make the proposal sound better. Durkin stresses that IHRSA is against unnecessary competition and duplication of services from local departments. She says the ideal situation is for park and recreation departments to develop partnerships with private health clubs to extend their reach. "Why do they need to build that $15-million facility? Is there a way to offer programming that takes advantage f existing health clubs in town?" she says.

So it's back to the school gyms and church halls to help try and accommodate as many people as possible because Hampden Township Recreation Department can't provide more programs, due to a lack of facility space. "We run our summer camp out of a school building and our summer camp has a huge waiting list. We could easily expand that program if we had a facility available to us, and it's the same for our middle-school program," says Clugston. "We basically beg, borrow and steal from the school district for whatever we can get. If we can't get a facility, we can't do a program."

Working Out Legalities

Law Review columnist James C. Kozlowski (a consulting attorney to NRPA's Public Policy division) reported last year in Parks & Recreation's August issue two companion bills that were introduced in the General Assembly of Pennsylvania--House Bill 298 (HB 298) and Senate Bill 321 (SB 321). They sought to prohibit "government competition with private enterprise" in an effort "to enhance the efficient provision of goods and services to the public." The declared policy of HB 298/SB 321 is to "protect economic opportunities for private enterprise against unfair competition by government agencies." The House bill was the subject of a committee hearing but there are no immediate plans to move the legislation forward.

According to the president and CEO of a commercial racquet and fitness club who helped draft this proposed legislation, "It is terribly unfair for local and state government to use taxpayer money to create enterprises that compete with small businesses ... including local governments building and selling memberships to golf courses, swimming pools and fitness centers." Existing government competition with private enterprise is permitted to continue under the bills, but "may not exceed the scope of the competition" that would exist on the effective date, should the bills become law.

Under the proposed legislation, individuals who allege "a government agency is participating in commercial activity resulting in competition with private enterprise" could petition a state court to issue an injunction.

Even without legislation in place, private fitness club operators have already taken matters into their own hands in an attempt to level what they perceive to be an uneven playing field.

A lawsuit was filed in 1987 by the Yorktowne Tennis Club against York Township in Pennsylvania after the township bought a tennis and fitness facility that offered the same services --e.g. indoor and outdoor tennis, aerobics, dance classes, tennis lessons, etc. --as the plaintiff. The owner of the Yorktowne Tennis Club charged it was unfair for taxpayers' dollars to be used to compete against a "private business."

But the state court sided with the township, which has been running the facility ever since, though it is trying to sell it now, some 17 years later, because its board of commissioners wants to privatize it.

"The court ruling confirmed that there's nothing in Pennsylvania state law preventing (tile township at the time) from doing that, so they continued to operate it," says Dean Krout, chairperson of the York Township Recreation Commission. "My interpretation is that Pennsylvania state law gives townships the right to operate a recreation department and it's pretty loose at that point as to what that entails. There's nothing that's ruled out as far as the recreation department is concerned. If we want to own a golf course, we probably could because the law doesn't say we can't."

Since then, the now-named York Township Community Center has evolved over the years into a well-rounded recreation center, and is the recreation commission's only indoor facility. Three tennis courts were removed and replaced with space for basketball or volleyball. The center also has batting cages and offers fitness classes among other activities. "In our perspective, the place really didn't compete with the Yorktowne Tennis Club," Krout says. "Over the years, it competed less with what Yorktowne was doing. If anything, it competed more with a YMCA."

Krout says he understands why those who operate private fitness centers feel their businesses are being threatened, but he believes the public and private sectors can co-exist. In addition to the Yorktowne Tennis Club, fitness franchises like Curves and Gold's Gym also have locations in York Township, which has a population of approximately 24,000. Krout says the industry has to understand that municipal park and recreation departments attract a different audience to their fitness centers.

"We cater to different demographics, so I don't really consider them competition at all," he says. "It's no more competition than the drink cooler in our lobby selling the same drinks that a local farm store does. Technically, we may sell the same programs but it's not going to the same people. You won't run into too many seniors at Gold's Gym." He added the township intentionally widened the types of programs the recreation center offers so that it didn't compete with private health clubs in the area.

Offer Them Something Different

The Mechanicsburg (Penn.) Recreation Department serves a population of about 30,000 people, and realizes it can't compete with private clubs.

Like neighboring Hampden Township, Mechanicsburg relies on facility space through its local school district, which also has authority over parks and leisure programs. This means trying to run programs without a dedicated facility. School activities come first and then the recreation department gets whatever is left over for space availability. For instance, it's difficult to get gymnasium time until the evening. Recreation department administrators understand their livelihood is found in designing programs for children and seniors, two areas that private fitness centers normally don't target.

"We don't even compete with them," says Tonya Brown, Mechanicsburg's recreation department director. "We're trying to target families in our school district. The private [facilities] are more geared towards fitness and recreation, people who want to work out every day, people in their 20s and 30s."

Although Mechanicsburg has a YMCA branch, Curves, a women-only fitness center, and a Gold's Gym about 25 minutes away, Brown says everyone plays fairly. She knows her small department can't go toe-to-toe with something like a Gold's Gym and offer similar weight-training facilities, but on the flip side, Mechanicsburg can counter with basketball, volleyball, soccer and other similar activities.

In Irvine, Calif., the city's park and recreation department takes a proactive approach and develops partnerships whenever possible. "If they have nicer facilities, we won't even compete with them," says Alana Kaleikini, the department's supervisor. In fact, those in the private sector are welcome to advertise in the department's leisure guide. "We look to complement instead of to compete," Kaleikini said.

This sharing of the pie apparently hasn't hurt Irvine, which generates more than $1 million in revenue from summer registrations, totaling almost 12,000 registrations.

Mechanicsburg Recreation Director Brown says, "We provide a service for the betterment of the community." She added the private health club industry needs to understand that park and recreation departments do more than offer Pilates and aerobics classes.

"Swim programs, summer camps, sports camps ... these programs aren't there to make money. We're here to meet the needs of all the citizens in our community and they're only looking at the almighty dollar."