Fitness club at Wichita Ice Center won’t be free for Genesis members
Members of Genesis Health Clubs will have to pay something, though possibly not full price, to use workout facilities at the Wichita Ice Center if the City Council approves allowing Genesis to put a health club there, the city’s top park official said Monday.
Parks and Recreation director Doug Kupper clarified that Genesis members would need a separate membership to use workout rooms planned at the city-owned skating center, although the plan is for Genesis to build the facility and run it.
Whether they’d have to pay full price or would get a discount in conjunction with their Genesis membership remains an open question, he said.
He said they will have to pay something, though, “We don’t have that finalized yet.”
A point of potential confusion is an ambiguous passage in the proposed contract that reads, word for word: “The Facility shall not be a Genesis facility and current members of Genesis shall become members the Ice Rink fitness facility in order to use the Ice Rink fitness facility.”
Kupper and Greg Ferris, a former City Council member representing Genesis, both said the intent of that provision is that Genesis members will have to separately join the Ice Center health club at 505 W Maple to use it. Likewise, a membership in the Ice Center fitness club won’t grant use privileges at Genesis clubs elsewhere in the city, Kupper said.
The proposed contract specifies that Genesis will have to offer monthly and/or day-pass rates to the general public.
Kupper said his department now wants to get council approval to start renovations for the Ice Center health club and will work with Genesis to iron out details of the fee structure later.
The city now pays Genesis $42,000 a year to manage the ice-skating operations at the center. The city has already committed to paying for $316,000 in improvements at the center.
The proposed contract extends the terms of Genesis management of the Ice Center from the current year-to-year, six-year deal, to a 10-year agreement that could be extended to 15 years.
Under the new contract, the city would float a bond to borrow $750,000 to pay for renovations to create the Ice Center health club.
Genesis would make the payments on the debt, provide the exercise equipment and manage the workout facility.
Genesis would keep 80 percent of the receipts from day-use fees and 95 percent of the receipts from monthly passes, the contract says. The city would get the rest.
The City Council is scheduled to vote on the contract at its meeting at 9 a.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 455 N. Main, Wichita.
This story was originally published December 19, 2011 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Fitness club at Wichita Ice Center won’t be free for Genesis members ."