Recreational and sports facilities add to a city’s quality of life.
Recreational and sports facilities add to a city’s quality of life. They encourage socialization, healthy living and civic participation. They celebrate culture, bring people together and build community cohesion. But — as demographics shift and assets age — many municipalities seem to be struggling to forecast and then deliver against current and future demand.
Recreational Facility Access refers to city-owned recreational facilities such as buildings, swimming pools, community centers, sports fields and arenas. For this report, we made a distinction between recreational facility access and recreational programming.
The average city spends around US$46 per program participant. The average city generates around US$19 per hour of facility usage (although many report no revenues at all). Labor and utility costs account for the greatest variances.
Efficiency
Cost of recreational facilities per hour. This measure reflects the cost per hour of recreational facility per program hour of operation. This cost is equal to the operating and capital cost of designing, building, operating and maintaining recreational facilities divided by the hours of program usage of the recreational facility. Recreational facility/program usage is the number of hours of operation of the facility and programs.
Points to consider:
Cost of recreational facilities per program participant. This measure reflects the operating and the capital costs less revenue for the recreational facility service and divides the costs by the number of recreational program participants.
Points to consider:
Effectiveness
We would have liked to capture data around effectiveness, specifically on revenue generated per hour of usage. Many cities either did not monitor this data or did not have it readily available at this time.
To ease the strain on existing sports facilities, Mornington Peninsula created a partnership with local schools where access to grounds is provided in exchange for maintenance and capital works.
Moscow’s digital Leisure and Recreation services portal allows citizens to sign up for clubs, register for events, provide feedback and vote for the creation of new clubs and services.
Recognizing growing water constraints, Cape Town’s recreational facility leaders have installed water-efficient ‘spray parks’ and synthetic sports fields across the city.
Sunshine Coast Council, where pools represent a key service, operations are delivered by outsourced service providers, and tenure renewals are aligned to management models.
Mississauga is creating operational innovation through its IT Roadmap that, amongst other benefits, better connects residents with recreational programs and services.