Sports USA offers our community noble opportunity

If you read our business page Wednesday morning, you know there is growing pressure on the Spokane Public Facilities District to assume control of Sports USA, the recently closed Spokane Valley court facility.

Let’s add more.

A court complex like Sports USA fits within the PFD’s original mission. With the governmental corporation in charge, the court complex can be a self-sustaining enterprise. There’s a niche and need facilities like Sports USA and John Stockton’s Warehouse fill.

But more important, it’s the right thing to do.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m no novice when it comes to court complexes. For most of the ‘90s I was part of a local group that studied the feasibility of a regional court complex here. We spent hours spread over days spread over months spread over years – along with some grant funds – before finally deciding such a facility could work – but only if it wasn’t privately financed.

We found debt service to be the poison pill. Build a $4 million complex and expect to pay $400,000 a year to money lenders. There was no way we could see to overcome such an obstacle. We told anyone who asked, including Kert Carlson, who made a valiant effort with Sports USA, that it just didn’t pencil out.

But a publicly funded facility, that’s different.

It’s the taxpayers who are the lenders – and the users.

Keep the doors open, maintain the facility, save for the future. That’s basically what a publicly supported facility – like the Arena – needs to do. Satisfy Wall Street with a 10, 15, 20 percent return? Leave that to Apple.

Make enough profit to build for the future.

It’s the future that makes keeping Sports USA’s doors open so important.

Our kids need park facilities. Eight months of the year, they have them – Manito, Mirabeau, Liberty Lake.

But the four coldest months? We need indoor parks, and even with the Warehouse and Sports USA open, the need still exceeds the availability.

So the classic capitalistic fundamental of supply and demand kicks in. There’s always a way to find room if you can afford it.

Need more court time, ask the parents for more money. Simple. But what if there isn’t any more money? What if dollars spent for youth sports means less for food or heat?

A publicly operated facility with affordable court time means fewer kids on the street, or worse.

But if that doesn’t float your Bayliner, how about an appeal to your pocketbook?

Organizations use the Arena, the Convention Center and yes, Sports USA, to attract outside dollars to our little burg by the river.

Everyone understands the U.S. Figure Skating Championships will bring the crème de la crème to eat at our restaurants and stay at our motels. That the Serra International convention will fill up downtown with out-of-town dollars.

But it’s a little less well-known that youth sports is one of the fast-growing tourism segments in our country – for better or for worse.

Without a facility like Sports USA, those dollars may well be spent elsewhere.

So whether the PFD owns and operates the facility – as is the case with the Arena – or just facilitates financing for Liberty Lake – as was the case in the City of Spokane Valley’s CenterPlace – it needs to get involved. If it doesn’t, where kids used to sink jumpers or spike sets, forklifts will be stacking crates.

Our community will be a little poorer.

We love to say kids come first.

It’s time to prove it.