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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. Two things can be true at once. Our community is sports crazy, and we absolutely love both watching and playing sports. We're also a community with a real lack of athletic playing venues for the sports that we love. This lack of facilities is made worse by the fact that during much of the year our weather is not conducive to playing sports. Today on the show, you'll hear from Travel Lane County about their plan to address the situation. The organization is in the midst of a plan to create a large indoor facility that can accommodate all sorts of court sports that would otherwise sit unused during the dark winter months. Then, in the second part of the show, we'll hear from one of our reporters about more challenges facing the Springfield School District. Samara Phelps, president and CEO of Travel Lane County, thanks again for coming on and talking to us. It's great to have you on the show.
Samara Phelps: It's always great to be here.
Dunne: You're traveling as well, so we're speaking over Zoom, but I'm excited to talk about this potential opportunity here in the community. Let's start with the general points. Talk about the need, as you see it, for an indoor sports facility in the community.
Phelps: I appreciate that question. For us, the indoor sports facility is really about supporting year-round economic vitality for our community. As president and CEO of Travel Lane County, overnight stays are the way we best support our community. As a billion-dollar industry, it's no surprise to our residents that a billion dollars in visitor spending does not come in in equal increments. We have a deep trough in the winter months. There is not as much visitation happening, and so we're looking at things that generate demand all year round for visitors to come into our community. An indoor sports facility is a really appealing project in that it meets this economic need we have in the community for driving winter stays. If it can host winter tournaments, that will bring in youth and amateur athletes during the winter months when we need it most. That's great for the visitor economy, great for our local businesses, and our local athletes have a shortage of court space in the community. The vision for the facility is something that on weekends generates economic activity by hosting regional sports tournaments, and on weekdays provides extra space for our kids to play and practice, as well as compete on the weekends in those tournaments.
Dunne: Give us an idea of what this facility could do. What kind of venues, what kind of sports do you envision could be played there? Any concept about size?
Phelps: We've looked at a lot of different models for what works in different communities, and what right now stands out as a solid model for this indoor facility is what we refer to as eight basketball courts. That gives you a sense of the size and enough space to be a regional tournament venue, which would get me the overnight stays we want to see. But eight basketball courts is really saying it's large, flexible space. That's 16 volleyball courts, and it would need to be lots of open, flat floor space, so that gives you the flexibility for those courts. It also gives you the opportunity to do flat-floor activations and mat sports like wrestling and cheer, which is really popular in this area. Our community could really benefit from being able to host those tournaments. It gives you a flexible space for a lot of different kinds of sports, but we refer to it as eight basketball courts or 16 volleyball courts because that'll get you a ceiling high enough for volleyball players and enough space to bring in multiple teams.
Dunne: Are there venues somewhat close by, maybe in Oregon, Washington, or California, that are a model of what you're looking at for our community?
Phelps: Absolutely, there are models of how this works in communities around the country. In the Northwest, and in Oregon in particular, the Rogue X facility in Medford is a really great example. That space is run by the city of Medford. It's a community center during the day and an event space and tournament facility on the weekends. That one has an aquatic center, so we're not talking about including an aquatic center in the work we're doing right now. But that model, if your listeners have had a chance to go down for tournaments in that space, that's a great contemporary version of what we're talking about. Also up in Spokane, they do a really good job. They have a slightly different shape to their facility, but that idea that you are driving a lot of tournament business into the community and that is driving dollars into local businesses: both of those communities do a great job of it.
Dunne: Where are we in the process for this? Are we still in the "nice wish list" stage, or are we further down the road?
Phelps: We are further down the road than a wish list. We're now asking not the "what" but the "how," and what that means is there have been different iterations of projects that could generate this winter tourism demand that Travel Lane County has explored at different times. Right now, the phase we're in is that we updated our market studies in late fall, in October, and arrived at this model I talked about: eight basketball court size, about 130,000 square feet. That's what would give us the space to host both the tournaments and the local practice, and the market study really shows there's very healthy demand for that. Now it's, how do we make that happen in our community? What's right for this community, and there are a lot of variables. There's how it's funded, who owns it, who operates it, where it sits. The shovel is going to go in the ground somewhere. Travel Lane County has engaged in a partnership with Lane County, and together we're doing what we're referring to as decision-grade feasibility. That work is for us to really dive into how to make it possible in our community. It's an integrated approach that will look at the variables of funding models, operation models, ownership options, and the opportunity for where a facility could be sited in our community. There's an RFP live now to bring a vendor with expertise into the community to help us ask the right questions and get the information we need. We're in that phase of the "how" right now, and that's a little bit invisible to some people who are like, "I'd like to put my kids' sports team in a tournament today." We are a long ways from that, but it is tangible work that's starting to happen.
Dunne: You said about 130,000 square feet. Are there potential properties or spaces you might be looking at that could accommodate something like this?
Phelps: We've done a market scan and identified some properties and some opportunities to use as models, so it really is about our community. But there's no site selected at this time. We're pretty focused: it's pretty clear the facility needs to be in the Eugene-Springfield metro area, which is the hub that has the amenities and access that traveling teams would need. Depending on where that shovel goes in the ground, it might be publicly owned land, or it could be privately owned land that gets purchased. There are a lot of opportunities to either use adaptive reuse of a facility or to build new. The decision-grade feasibility work will help us look at all of that. The sites we're looking at are models to make it tangible for our community, but there is not a site selected. I expect this shovel will go in the ground in Eugene or Springfield.
Dunne: You talked about those other venues, Spokane and Medford. Do you know what those funding models were like? Were those public-private partnerships? Were they entirely public? How might those models inform what you'd look at here?
Phelps: That's a great question to ask. In April, Travel Lane County brought in Sports Facilities Company, which has helped us do this updated market research and has done similar studies in our community multiple times. They've helped some of our recreation providers with the facilities we do have, including research on Willamalane facilities and KidSports facilities. They know our area quite well, and they held a public meeting with us where we brought in over 60 stakeholders. Those included everyone from elected leaders to community leaders and parents who have kids on travel teams to talk about how a project like this gets done in communities. What stands out from that is that the model is public-private partnership, and that usually comes with a lead from a public entity. A public entity steps up, figures out what it can contribute, how it can help make this happen in the community, and then that identifies the gap that private needs to fill in, whether through private investment or private through philanthropy, to get to the resources to make the project work. That model really excited the folks in the room and gave us a tangible path where public and private work together. We know we need to answer some questions so our public partners know how they can step up, and then how we will be inviting private investment into the equation. Ultimately, we think there will be a new nonprofit entity formed that has those stakeholders at the table, and that nonprofit would manage operations. Those private and public interests would have an ongoing say in what happens in this facility for decades. That model of public-private partnership with the public entity stepping up first is really how we're driving this project forward, and I anticipate that's what we'll see happen. That's the way it has been most successful in communities and is really the contemporary way it's done. The other path is full public ownership, more like a community center, and you don't necessarily have the same economic development priorities built in. What's really appealing about how this project is coming together is that we're talking about a facility that could serve our residents' quality of life by providing spaces to play and gather, while also generating over $20 million in new economic activity in the community annually. Getting both of those things is a pretty nice twofer.
Dunne: I know there could be a lot of twists and turns, but if things break your way, do you have a sense of when you might be able to open such a facility?
Phelps: The timeline would depend on whether we're doing adaptive reuse and how much it takes to get that done, or a fresh build. The decision-grade feasibility will help inform those timeline choices, but this project is probably three to five years out before we're seeing it fully activated in our community, because there just isn't a turnkey opportunity. It's not like I can sign a lease tomorrow and open eight basketball courts. It's going to take multiple years. But we're looking to get a commitment and make the project real within the year, so we can talk about real timelines and a real location.
Dunne: Samara, my last question for you is probably for a specific niche of my audience, but they're small but mighty. Could this facility accommodate the juggernaut that is pickleball?
Phelps: Pickleball comes up in every one of these conversations, and absolutely this flexible flat floor space could definitely help with access to pickleball. Pickleball is a great example of how a facility like this fits into what's already happening in the community. Emerald Pickleball has a great project going at LCC. Bob Kiefer and KidSports have great activations happening for youth recreation, and this facility can be how we take that to the next level. We would be very happy to have more space for pickleball included in this.
Dunne: Exciting. Samara Phelps is the president and CEO of Travel Lane County. Samara, it's always great to talk to you. Thanks so much for joining us.
Phelps: Thanks for having me on, Michael.
Dunne: Springfield Public Schools has been through a lot, and our reporter now joins us to talk about yet another challenge. KLCC's Zac Ziegler, thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate you coming in.
Zac Ziegler: Yeah, sure thing.
Dunne: Let's talk about the story you did. You broke it basically late last week about the Springfield School District. Talk about your story. What did you find out?
Ziegler: What I was given was a report released by the Oregon Department of Education, based on a complaint they had received, showing that the district's kindergarten through fifth grade science and social studies standards had not been meeting state standards for years.
Dunne: Remind folks how this even became an investigation. Were there complaints from teachers? What happened?
Ziegler: There was a now-former teacher with the district who came to the area from Silicon Valley and noticed that his students were particularly behind in those subject areas, with notable gaps in their middle school knowledge, like states and such. We all know how you can mix up Wyoming and Colorado, both being perfectly square, but he told me he noticed real, significant gaps in that knowledge. He filed a complaint with the school board in 2023. It was eventually escalated and given to the Department of Education in June 2024. What was supposed to be a six-month investigation took nearly two years to reach a conclusion.
Dunne: You had developed contacts within the school district. How did this come to your attention?
Ziegler: It came to my attention after attending a couple of meetings of teachers who were raising concerns about this. That's where I met this particular teacher. I'm trying not to use his name because he's also a Michael, and I don't want to confuse things. So, it was brought to my attention, and we started looking into it. It had been a fight trying to get some public records from the district, with some fairly steep prices quoted for those. But the Oregon Department of Education had them and wrote this report based on many of the documents we were seeking.
Dunne: Is this a mandate for corrective action? What happens? Does the school district get fined?
Ziegler: What happens next is that the wheels already rolling on this just keep going. The district was already in the process of updating this curriculum when this came out, so the report says no remedy is needed. The issue really was that this curriculum came as part of the English Language Arts curriculum the district was using. It was kind of a small carve-out, and the Department of Education said that wasn't one of their approved curricula for these subjects. The district was already replacing those, so the department said to just keep going, and no additional corrective action would be required.
Dunne: I imagine you reached out to the school district. What did they say?
Ziegler: They put out a statement on their website that I was referred to over the weekend, giving their side and pointing out that this is something they are in the process of fixing. Something else worth noting: there were two more areas in the complaint, human sexuality education and physical education standards, and the department concluded that the district is meeting those. So there is something to be said for the fact that yeah, they knew about this and were in the process of correcting the issue.
Dunne: There's been a lot that's happened at the Springfield School District. Remind folks some of the challenges they've been dealing with.
Ziegler: Big deep breath to get through them all. Like most schools in Oregon and across the country, they're dealing with dropping enrollment, which affects their budgets. On top of that, they've lost some access to money elsewhere. There are also issues with turnover on their board and the rather abrupt loss of a superintendent. They had to appoint a short-term interim to bridge to a long-term interim. It's been a lot of turnover as they try to get things figured out and move the school district in a better direction.
Dunne: And folks, if you're wondering why you're hearing more about school districts in general, it's because of Zac. That's part of his beat, and there's obviously a lot going on at schools, as he's uncovering. Zac Ziegler covers education, business and a whole bunch of things for us at KLCC. Thanks for coming in and chatting.
Ziegler: Yeah, sure thing.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show, as our population ages, more of our seniors need more assistance. Lane Council of Governments is working to provide that help and support for a population living with chronic health conditions. We talk about it tomorrow. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon On The Record. Thanks for listening.
