Mankato rec facilities starting to shine, but more work looms

Jun. 11—It's been just short of 10 years since youth sports advocates filled the Mankato City Council Chambers demanding improvements to local sports and recreation facilities.

And it was way back on Nov. 8, 2016 — the same election voters decided if Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump should replace Barack Obama as president — that Mankatoans overwhelmingly approved a referendum extending the half-percent tax for new rec facilities and other municipal projects.

But in the years that followed, it was easy for residents to wonder if some of the most prominent planned improvements had been forgotten. About $14 million had been spent for fixes and improvements to venues for watching sports — the baseball field at Franklin Rogers Park and the downtown civic center and hockey arena — along with the curling club and the flood-control system.

Major sales-tax-funded projects at places where average residents and their kids played sports were mostly absent. Partly it was because the sales tax didn't generate enough money to do everything all at once. More delays came when the COVID-19 pandemic and related recession left city leaders reluctant to commit to multi-million-dollar construction projects. And the steep inflation that followed the pandemic pushed up construction costs and scaled back what could be accomplished.

The situation is beginning to change, as the City Council learned during a tour last week.

An $8.4 million construction project is underway at Tourtellotte Park, focused on repairing and expanding the municipal pool. A sparkling new youth softball complex is expected to open by the end of the month at Thomas Park. The civic center has benefited from millions of dollars in just completed fixes to basic components ranging from the hockey rink to the failing roof to the deteriorating exterior walls. And the city's aging two-rink indoor ice arena on Monks Avenue is getting closer to a needed makeover.

The growing slate of recreational facilities, and the tens of millions of dollars being invested in them, is expansive enough that the city recently hired Claudia Hicks to fill the newly created position of "facilities recreation coordinator."

"The final piece was encouraging use," said Administrative Services Director Parker Skophammer, noting that Hicks would handle scheduling, coordination of volunteers, customer service and more for the community's rec facilities.

Hicks appeared fully ready to handle the promotional duties, telling council members about the 994 games, practices and tournaments scheduled for Mankato's 75 indoor and outdoor facilities in the first half of 2023; praising the quality of the city park playgrounds, the Sibley Park farm, the community gardens and the 18-hole disc golf course; listing the historical and cultural facilities such as the Hubbard House, the powwow grounds and more.

"It goes on and on ...," she said. "There's so much, and it's such a rich opportunity."

Thomas Park

The newest opportunity, debuting as soon as the weekend of June 24, is the youth softball complex at Thomas Park. Even with the finishing touches still pending on the $6.1 million in construction, the facility left council members duly impressed.

"This is something to be really proud of," Mayor Najwa Massad said as she walked along the pinwheel of four youth-sized softball fields, a fifth "championship field" with artificial turf and professional dugouts, a new concessions/restroom facilities adjacent to the championship field and the existing East High School softball field, more restrooms at the pinwheel, the electronic scoreboards and the trails connecting the facilities to the school and to adjoining neighborhoods.

City Public Works Director Jeff Johnson said the widespread landscaping, walking paths and other design features aim to put the "park" in the ballparks.

"It's not just going to be a barren site with softball fields on it," he said.

Serving as the practice and game site for the area's young softball players, Thomas Park will be capable of hosting regional competitions and statewide youth tournaments — matching the youth baseball complex the city opened near Rosa Parks Elementary School in 2012.

"This is REALLY cool," Council member Jenn Melby-Kelley said.

Bethany Lutheran College is of the same opinion. Johnson said the college is interested in making the championship field the home field for their varsity softball team. Remaining questions about parking on the adjacent East High School parking lot and other issues are still being discussed between the college, the city and school officials.

Tourtellotte Park

It took more imagination, along with the construction designs presented by city Facilities Director Jim Tatge, to picture what will be in place at Tourtellotte Park a year from now.

The Olympic-sized pool is bone dry. The ground just to its east is a dirt hole. The interior of the bathhouse has been gutted, even as the exterior remains preserved as it was constructed by the federal Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression.

Both the pool and the bathhouse were built in 1939, followed by renovations in 1982.

"Essentially, those were the only two construction projects ever done here," Tatge said.

The inside of the bathhouse will be as modern as the exterior is historic, with new men's and women's locker and shower rooms, five private changing/shower rooms, a lobby, a lifeguard locker room and a lifeguard manager office. The basement, which was long ago a community room complete with a bar, will be used for utilities and storage.

The main pool and diving well are to receive new tiling and coatings, and a new mechanical building on the northeast side of the pool will house pumping and filtration systems previously crammed into the bathhouse.

The biggest change for users will be the new youth area with a zero-entry pool sporting water-play features and a drop zone for a water slide that's inevitably going to be the focal point for kids visiting the pool in 2024.

"It's roughly a three-story slide," Tatge said of the twisty tube slide featuring three 360-degrees turns.

In a separate project, the number of pickleball courts at Tourtellotte is being doubled with a plaza area in the middle.

The hope is that the pool, after being closed for a year of construction, will be completed and open for swimming when school lets out a year from now.

Civic center complex

The city's downtown arena, Grand Hall and convention center are more than a sports and rec facility — offering space for a mix of sports, entertainment, and public and private gatherings. The complex draws big crowds for Minnesota State University hockey games, but it also occasionally hosts youth hockey practices. It is home as well to concerts, wedding receptions, expos, conventions, trade shows and business meetings — 611 total events of all types in 2022.

And it has consumed a big chunk of local sales tax revenues in recent years. Just this decade, there have been projects to replace the arena ice plant ($2 million), the arena roof and exterior wall panels ($5.2 million) and the arena air-chilling plant ($1.8 million).

In 2013, $1.5 million in sales tax proceeds were used to replace the rink floor and piping. And sales tax funds were combined with state bonding proceeds and MSU contributions for a $6 million remodeling of the space below the arena seating to create locker rooms, offices, weightlifting and training rooms and more in 2015-16 to make the downtown site the full-time base of operations of the Mavericks' teams.

The co-managers of the civic center — Eric Jones and Brian Sather — showed off the improvements during the council tour.

"This is regarded as one of the nicest places to go to be a college athlete," Sather said of the MSU hockey facilities.

In budget planning discussions with the council, Skophammer has emphasized the importance of ensuring the civic center is maintained in a way that makes it one of the nicest places in the region for concerts, conventions and other gatherings. With so much progress on updating the mechanical systems and exterior structure of the facilities, it will be possible to put more focus on surface-level aesthetics such as carpeting, restroom remodels and other fixes that increase the odds that clients will leave the facility with a positive impression — with plans to return.

That wasn't an option five years ago, said Skophammer, describing desperate reports of water pouring through porous roofs or all of the coolant escaping from the leaky ice-making machinery.

"The tone of the conversations has come a long way," he said.

All Seasons Arena

Phrases like "REALLY cool" and "one of the nicest" weren't being uttered when the tour reached Mankato's aging two-sheet indoor ice rink on Monks Avenue.

"It feels like 1981," Melby-Kelley said as she looked around the facility, pretty accurately dating it.

Built in 1973 and expanded in 1998, All Seasons Arena is the home rink for Mankato's high school hockey teams, the Mankato Figure Skating Club, a large youth hockey association and adult league hockey games, including MSU's intramural program.

Owned and operated in partnership with Blue Earth County and North Mankato, the Mankato arena needs more than $5 million in repairs to basic rink systems. But discussions are underway, too, to dress up parts of the bare-bones facility and create room to more easily navigate through the cramped building.

A consultant's study also found instances where the facility violates fire-safety standards and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Those and other recommended fixes outside of the basic rink work were estimated last year to carry a price tag of nearly $4 million.

More logical use of space at All Seasons is also being considered. For instance, the entrance lobby is extremely constricted partly because about half of the space is devoted to a skate-sharpening/rental room — something that might be moved to open up the lobby.

Shrinking the north rink from an Olympic-sized hockey rink to an NHL-sized sheet is another option for making All Seasons less claustrophobic. City Manager Susan Arntz noted another seemingly baffling choice made sometime in the past. The original rink's west side has a second-floor heated room with massive windows overlooking the ice. It's the premium spot for watching a game, but half of the space was eliminated when a dry-ground puck-shooting area was added for players to work on their skills.

Options include moving the puck-shooting, possibly to the site of coaches' offices no longer being used by MSU; relocating concessions stands upstairs so that they're not immediately adjacent to where young players are getting dressed; and improving second-floor access between the two sides of the main rink.

"We're going to have some productive recommendations," Skophammer said, adding that financing is made more complicated by the multi-jurisdictional partnership. "We don't necessarily have a timeframe now. We're collecting ideas and we're working on financing recommendations."

More to come

Even with the progress made and being made, big projects loom in the more distant future for Mankato's sports and recreation facilities. An expensive boiler replacement is still on the to-do list at the civic center, along with roof work on convention center buildings.

Additional indoor ice and possibly an indoor pool were priorities among the people that packed that council meeting back in 2014. But those projects will also be competing with flood-control pumping stations, affordable housing initiatives, other improvements to existing regional parks, the regional airport, replenishment of rainy day funds for future repairs at existing facilities and other eligible uses of sales tax revenue. The half-percent tax, which the 2016 referendum extended through 2038, now generates more than $6 million a year.

Then, too, there are the traditional parks funded with property taxes and other non-sales-tax revenue. Playgrounds are being upgraded, the pickleball aficionados are already suggesting more courts, and city officials are reaching out to teenagers to figure out what might get them to use parks (hammocking space is a common suggestion).

"So we're having some of those conversations about 'What else?'" Arntz said.