The City of Crookston held a Northwest Regional Event Center Task Force meeting on Monday night attended by representatives of the Crookston community, City of Crookston, Crookston School District, and the University of Minnesota Crookston. The meeting was a continuation of the October Parks and Recreation brainstorming meeting that took place in October.
Becky Kofoed, Crookston Park Board member, facilitated the meeting and asked those in attendance to think about the dream facility for Crookston including both what was needed in the community and what would be considered a want. “I think it was great participation this evening,” said Kofoed. “That was an objective that we were going for, to have participation, brainstorming. Create the idea of a facility that could support the needs of the community looking at our seasonal sports. Having a safe environment for our teams to practice and play on keeping them in the community to do that. I think everybody came up with their dream type facility and center, and then also gave some great input on location. A lot of consensus in the room on what we need, what we want. We did think big but now we have some energy to action.”
Tim Dufault, Crookston School Board member, commented that it would be nice for Crookston teams to play their home games in Crookston, referencing the fact UMC had to play its final three home games at the Alerus Center in Grand Forks. Frank Fee, Crookston School Board chair, built on that by saying it’s embarrassing as a community that the high school track team, the highest participation sport in Crookston, doesn’t have a track to practice or hold meets on (eluding to UMC not wanting to repair the track around their football field). Acting Mayor Dale Stainbrook also said it would be nice to not have high school playoffs crossing the river into North Dakota to play and that space was also needed for people to partake in non-team sports activities like walking a track or tossing a ball around. City Administrator Shannon Stassen also said development is a part of the quality of life and more people are looking to live in communities with multi-use facilities. Adding that a facility would be one of a number of important tools in addressing workforce issues, enrollment issues, and the recruitment of people to the community.
The attendees were broken into small groups to discuss what the needs are for the community that could be incorporated into a small space. Those included a turf football field, field space during the winter with a bubble, available courts, community rooms, indoor playground for young kids, child care center, proper amenities for hosting activities – locker rooms, concessions, safe seating, restrooms. The positive impact of hosting events was also mentioned from stays in hotels to eating and shopping locally in addition to improving the quality of life for residents by having amenities available.
There was some discussion about how to address the needs of the community, whether to go in stages or attempt one larger-scale project. Scott Butt said there are immediate needs like a safe dry space to play football and suggested starting by turfing Ed Widseth Field at UMC and addressing the multi-use field further down the road. Stainbrook, Dufault, and others commented that they would worry about the viability of getting people on board with several phases of a project because the momentum and passion can fizzle between phases. Kofoed also asked those who were involved in the Crookston Sports Center project what they leaned. Fee said the biggest lesson learned was to not take short cuts because those will cost you down the road. He said locker rooms that are now needed were taken out of the original sports center plans and also referenced the Crookston High School where they took a court out of the original plans and removed a center aisle in the auditorium creating wide rows of seats. Tim Moe also referenced the arena and the cuts that were made there that cost the city money in the long run with seating options stating we need to find a way to do it right.
After two brainstorming discussions, Kofoed said the next step is to get on the City Council agenda to get the go-ahead to continue to pursue a multi-use facility. “I think we had about 15 people in the room of which more than half the people have committed to being with us for the long run,” said Kofoed. “A million little pieces of the puzzle to put together – we need to get on the council’s agenda to can we keep going with this, is this a project we’re going to be supporting. Look to professional resources from a consultant standpoint, somebody who has done big projects like this before and an architect. And then we went really big, we’re going to need to narrow. Not narrow to kick out any of the fantastic ideas but narrow to what is the scope of the project. Have some professionals kick us off, give us that framework, keep the participation interest and contributions from the people that showed up this evening, as well as reach out to a few others. We’ve got some opportunities with folks in the legislation, just a lot of moving pieces. But we have to start first with, hopefully, we can get it on the agenda for Monday night.”
Tim Dufault said after the meeting that he was really encouraged about the direction the facility could take Crookston. “Really encouraged about it,” said Dufault. “Each table broke out to what we’d like to see if we could go for the brass ring, what would we want. And all five groups pretty much came up with the same vision looking a full facility – some meeting rooms, day care, senior uses, cradle to grave. There is a lot of unity there. Now its time to dig into details, what are we talking about in prospective cost. What is the economic impact of missed opportunities for all these events we’ve been missing in our area? So, I’m really encouraged.”
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