What’s Ahead for Elkhorn Rec Center?

By Rick Ruggles, Omaha World-Herald, Neb.

Apr. 8–Elkhorn leaders in 2005 named their new recreation center Common Ground in part to reflect cooperation between their school district and city government.

Now the name has a different connotation.

The City of Omaha has assumed the City of Elkhorn’s interests in Common Ground with Omaha’s March 1 takeover of the town to the west. After the annexation that Elkhorn battled for two years, Omaha leaders hope the recreation center will provide a haven for residents on both sides of that struggle.

“It’s a wonderful facility for everyone in the area,” Steve Scarpello, City of Omaha parks director, said. “It really gets a lot of use.”

Unlike most Omaha community centers, Common Ground is primarily for dues-paying members.

Elkhorn residents wonder how much change will occur under Omaha’s direction. Common Ground members, of which there are 1,320, hope Omaha will make no major alterations in the way the community center is run and in the dues and programs offered there.

Omaha leaders have said they expect changes to be minimal, but it is not yet clear whether Common Ground’s financial status will require more than that. Omaha Finance Director Carol Ebdon said she sees no reason to be pessimistic. Guarantees, however, do not exist for any city program, she said.

Ebdon said that last year Common Ground received several hundred thousand dollars in subsidies from the school district and Elkhorn. She said Omaha leaders expect to provide a $500,000 yearly subsidy to Common Ground.

Recreation centers, she said, are not designed to break even. “We knew going into this that a subsidy would be required, and we planned for that.”

Common Ground looks just the way it did before Omaha took over. Even the sign on the 60,000-square-foot building calls it, “Elkhorn’s Common Ground.” The sign will stay, too, Scarpello said.

Although the Elkhorn Public Schools’ contract with the City of Elkhorn gave the school district the right to buy the center if annexation occurred, that is highly unlikely, the district’s superintendent said.

During a visit one morning last week, numerous members exercised at Common Ground. Kim Dippel oversaw four toddlers, three her own, playing with balls in the huge Common Ground gym. “My kids take yoga while I go up and take a class” on the second floor, Dippel said. “It’s a good place to be.”

Elderly women swam in the large pool, a dozen people ran on treadmills and used elliptical machines, others ran and walked on the track. In a classroom, several women did strengthening exercises.

Theresa Osentowski uses Common Ground for water aerobics. “So far, no, we haven’t seen any changes,” she said. “But then again, it’s only been a month, right?”

Scarpello wrote members last month to assure them that Omaha “will continue to run this facility in the same manner that you have become accustomed to” and that there are “currently no plans to raise the rates” for members. Omaha rescinded free memberships for Common Ground employees but so far has retained free memberships — other than a $25 activation fee — for those 75 years of age and older.

Monthly fees have been higher for those who live outside the Elkhorn Public Schools area. For example, after the initial activation fee, the fee for an adult living in the district has been $39 a month, while an adult outside the district has paid $64. Scarpello said he intends to do away with nonresident memberships and allow everyone to pay resident fees in the near future.

Scarpello said he will seek a balance between the Elkhorn way of running Common Ground and the Omaha way of running all of its community centers. He said he respects the enormous investment that Elkhorn residents have in the large, high-quality center, and appreciates the inappropriateness of ordering full-scale transformation of Common Ground policies.

Common Ground, he said, is a “different animal” from Omaha’s other recreation centers.

The $7.4 million in construction costs were split unevenly by the City of Elkhorn, which paid $4.5 million, and the Elkhorn Public Schools, which contributed $2.9 million.

Elkhorn Schools Superintendent Roger Breed said that unless a benefactor came forward, the school district would not acquire the center. Even if a huge donation were made, Breed said, the school district’s operating budget probably would not enable it to run a community center.

Breed said he hoped he could take Omaha at its word to run the center similarly to the way Elkhorn ran it. “We’ve been well-pleased with the conversations that have occurred to date,” he said.

The school district’s main interest in Common Ground is its swimming pool for high school practices and meets.

Ann Long, a member of the Common Ground advisory board and president of the Elkhorn school board, said policies at the center have gone largely unchanged so far. The advisory board is made up of three Elkhorn representatives and two City of Omaha employees, including Scarpello.

“We’re working together. We have a common goal,” Long said of the Elkhorn and Omaha advisory board members. She, like most Elkhornites, opposed annexation. But that is in the past, she said.

“I just want to look forward on this,” she said. “Whether or not you were for the annexation in the beginning, here we are. Let’s make the best of this.”

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Copyright (c) 2007, Omaha World-Herald, Neb.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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