Colorado city gets community boost as pot taxes help propel opening of new rec center
A collection of black-and-white photos is all that remains of the original Moorhead Recreation Center in north Aurora. In them, kids play baseball and swim in the pool at the 42-year-old center. These arent 3-by 3-inch images in a photo album, however. The images are several feet tall and adorn the walls of the citys newest full-service recreation center.
Its like home again, but bigger, said Jennifer Taylor, longtime program assistant at Moorhead Recreation Center. They really put a lot of time into this place, its not just a bigger building. It has heart. It has become something that our community members are really proud of.
The old youth drop-in center measured about 4,000 square feet. Itwas torn down last year and replaced with a 41,000-square-foot recreation center that reopened June 8 after an 18-month reconstruction. The $16 million project funded by $4 million in marijuana revenue tax money and the rest by other city funds added a three-court gymnasium, community rooms, a teaching kitchen, an indoor aquatic center with water slide, new locker rooms and a state-of-the-art fitness center.
All of the cardio equipment that we got has its own TV that gets YouTube and Netflix and Comcast and Facebook, said Byron Fanning, Auroras recreation manager. Our community meeting room alone is the same size as our old gym. It has an entire wall of glass garage doors that open up onto the patio outside. You can have a heck of a party here.
The long-awaited renovation aims to serve residents of all ages.
Before, we had one adult Zumba class in the gym, but because of the space limitations we would have to kick everyone out of the gym when it was time for class, and then those kids didnt really have anywhere to go, Taylor said. Or sometimes, wed send the Zumba class over to (Fletcher Community School across the street) so the kids could keep the gym. But now theres room for everyone.
Previously, Aurora had one recreation center with a pool, gymnasium and dedicated workout space Beck Recreation Center at 800 Telluride St. The other four community recreation centers served only one or two of those needs.
A demographics survey started in 2010 by the Aurora Residents for Recreation Task Force, revealed the city lacked indoor recreation space it averaged 0.44 square feet per capita compared to about 1.7 square feet per capita for the rest of the metro area. That totaled about 400,000 square feet of needed recreation space, city leaders said.
Another facility, Central Recreation Center, is under construction. By next year, the city will have added 85,000 square feet of recreational area. And recreation leaders expect few idle hours
Membership and drop-in visits at the Beck Recreation Center have totaled more than 70,100 since January, an increase of 37 percent, or 19,251 entries, over the same period in 2016.
Attendance has tripled in the last four years, Fanning said. It used to be that you could fire off cannon at Beck and not hit anyone, and now its so busy that even the regulars who have been coming there for years are, like, Wow, this place is packed. Its truly amazing how much busier it is.
He attributes that growth to a drop in fees. Since 2014, the fees at Beck center have been cut more than 50 percent.
Our mission is to encourage active lifestyles, and we had our prices set up so high that the average person couldnt really afford it, Fanning said. It was $450 for one adult membership. Now, here at Moorhead, a kid can get a full years membership for $50. We lowered all of our prices across the board in anticipation for this opening, and as a result, weve seen participation just mushroom ...
