Improving communities through sport

Industry

Parks and Recreation

A park is more than just a beautiful place.

A park is more than just a beautiful place. It’s place where friends gather to toss around the frisbee, cookouts become community gatherings, and where the future sports legends get their start. Most of all parks (and recreation centers) hold the key to a variety of benefits that enhance the lives of citizens in all communities. We support community initiatives through guiding planning and funding processes for new projects, empowering recreation directors and city leaders with innovative tools and reliable documents, and providing outsourced management solutions to create long-term, sustainable recreation assets.

The mission of the Sports Facilities Companies is to enhance the health and economic vitality of communities everywhere. From the industry’s first comprehensive parks and recreation economic impact calculator to recreation center optimization plans, our team has the tools and services for city managers, parks and recreation directors, and economic development directors to strengthen the parks and recreation assets in their communities.

How We Help

Economic Impact Calculators/Tools

Our economic impact calculators drive the conversation around the value of parks and recreation by calculating their monetary impact in categories such as home values, health outcomes, environmental impact, tourism, and job creation.

Strategic Planning

Whether you are building a new facility or revitalizing an older one, our team of advisors work with you to create the vision. We then utilize market data from the over 2,000 communities we’ve worked with to determine the feasibility of the project and help you make adjustments where needed. We then can create a plan that’s aligns with your vision and is viable for achieving your goals.

Optimization

Do you have a park or recreation asset that’s potential is not being realized? The SFA team can help. Our team of architects, facility operators, marketing and branding analysts and planning experts can assess all operational, branding, and business development components of your parks and recreation assets and create a plan to help them reach their goals.

Management

The Sports Facilities Companies provides outsourced specialized management for sports assets and community recreation centers. Our services include facility operations and management, human resources, business development, financial management, programming, event management, and marketing.

Does your park and recreation system have under performing assets? While it takes a great deal of time and resources to turn it around, the benefits to your community is immeasurable. When you select SFC for the management of your parks and recreation assets, you immediately add a group with a track record of turning around some of the nation’s most successful sports and recreation complexes. Our team of facility operators, architects, business analysts, marketing and branding experts, and events professionals have worked in 1,000’s of communities and understand the components of successful parks and recreation assets.

With each our clients, we help them create a vision, assess their current performance from a financial and operational standpoint, and utilize best practices to help them reach their goals. Our management processes focus on achieving excellence in several areas that are essential for the growth of a recreation facility. These areas include financial performance, programming, operations, organizational structure, reporting, facility maintenance, and business development. Our expertise uniquely positions us to examine every facet of facility performance and put measures in place that achieves operational brilliance.

Featured Projects

Albertville, AL

This gorgeous 130 acre park will feature premier spaces for sports and recreation use, making the experience a "park within a park." The complex will feature spaces for sports including baseball, softball fields, long-field sports, a recreation center, aquatics, tennis, an amphitheater, and a dog park.

State of Florida

In one of SFA’s most important initiatives, SFA worked with Florida Recreation and Park Association, the Center for Disease Control, the Florida Sports Foundation, and dozens of other professionals and organizations to demonstrate the impact of parks across several impact areas, including property values, tourism spending, job creation, environmental savings, public safety, and health care cost savings. The Parks Impact Calculator is educating and empowering parks and recreation professionals as well as elected officials throughout the State to recognize the value of places and programs to play, and the reports that are generated by the calculator are being used to inform funding decisions for parks systems all over Florida. The Florida Parks Impact Calculator is now being used as the baseline for similar state-specific calculators SFA is producing around the country.

Featured Team Leader

Partner

Evan Eleff has created the industry’s most reliable financial forecasting and programmatic data for planning and funding recreation, wellness, fitness, and sports projects as well as community wide recreation master plans. Since joining SFA|SFM in 2012, Evan has led the SFA team in producing market studies, facility plans, financial forecasts, economic impact analyses, feasibility studies, and strategic funding initiatives for more than 1,500 communities around the world and a portfolio of more than $8 billion of planned assets. In 2019, he partnered with the Florida Recreation and Park Association to launch the first ever Park Impact Calculator – the culmination of a year-long, state-wide study that included members of the FRPA, CDC, and economic advisors. Evan is continuing this groundbreaking work in California and Kansas in 2020. To learn more about Evan and the other members of our outstanding team, visit our team page.

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