City Council - workshop

Good evening. The regular workshop council meeting for the city of Coppers Cove held July 7, 2026, is called to order at 5.02 PM. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

Mayor Yancey.

Here.

Christina Strophos. Here. Rita Hogan. Here. Howard Hawk.

Here.

John Hale. Here. Del Treadway. Here. Vanya Hart. Jack Smith.

Here. OK. The quorum is present. We move to item C, announcements.

None for me, Mr. Mayor. None for me, sir.

No, Mr. Mayor. Yes, sir. I have several. We are currently accepting applications for the Citizens Leadership Academy. It's class number three. The Academy begins on August 6th of this year and will meet every Thursday evening. There is a $50 participant cost and an application process. We actually have only three seats left. So if you want to participate, please go to the city's website and complete an application and get it emailed in. We also wanted to announce that we've announced the deadline for applications for city council places six and seven. Applications can be filed beginning July 18th of this year and ends August 17th of this year. As soon as the application packets are ready, it will be posted to the City's website. On July 11th, this Saturday, at the Negrete Firefighter Foundation is holding a fundraiser at Bubba's 33. So go and support that. Also, that afternoon from 1 to 3 p.m., Keep Copper Scope Beautiful is holding a painting for our cause scholarship fundraiser, which will be held at Urban Ernie's, 212 South Main Street. Again, that's 1 to 3 p.m. There's a $25 cost for that painting event, and there's 10 spots available. July 14th, next week, we will be holding a town hall meeting at the Civic Center. And there's different categories. From 1 to 2.30 p.m. is a focus on businesses, commercial businesses, and the development community on evaluating the city's strategy for communication. From 3 to 4.30 p.m. is a focus with civic groups and nonprofit organizations. And from 5.30 to 7 p.m. are residents and citizens of Copper's Cove. July 23rd is the Governor's Small Business Summit at the Civic Center. That is from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. You must register, and there is a small cost for that as well. And then July 25th at City Hall is the End of Summer Trash Bash from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Come and help clean up and take care of our community. July 29th. is the hiring event. It's the third annual regional hiring event sponsored by the Copper's Cove Economic Development Corporation. And lastly, on August 1st, it's Saturday from 11.30 a.m. to 2.30 p.m., is the Copper's Cove Parks and Recreation Family Day at Ogletree Gap. Lots of activities to participate in.

A lot of stuff. Thank you, Ryan.

I have nothing, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.

Nothing, Mr. Mayor.

Jack? No announcements. All right. We move to Item D, Public Recognition.

Item 1, Employee Service Awards, July 2026. Ryan Havilah, City Manager.

Mayor and Council, it's the first of the month, the first meeting of the month, and we get to recognize our amazing team members today. We recognize one individual, and that is gonna be Mr. Scott Mulligan, who is our Information Technologies Director, celebrating five years of service. Scott, you gotta come up here, and you gotta stand up here.

His beard was a lot shorter back then.

His hair was a lot shorter, it was tremendously shorter. He's had a few years to grow it out. But Scott began his career with the City of Copper Shcove on June 14, 2021, when he was hired as the Information Technology Director where he continues to serve. Throughout his tenure, Scott has provided great leadership and expertise in the area of information technology. Under his direction, the city has strengthened its cyber security posture, improved network reliability, and implemented technologies that reduce environmental impact, energy consumption, and privacy risk, which is we are reducing our technology footprint. He has consistently emphasized both the technical and human aspects of technology security, ensuring employees understand their role as well as council members, because you all have to take a test as well. That's coming up, by the way. understand their role in protecting city resources. Scott has also successfully negotiated vendor contracts and services that improve efficiency while providing value to the community. Most recently, he worked with a vendor to design and build a new and improved website for the city, and it looks good, Scott. Scott's professionalism, logical approach to problem solving, and ability to build good working relationships has earned the appreciation of the IT team, city leadership, elected officials, and staff across the organization. As noted on his recent evaluation, Scott is a goal and service oriented planner. As evidenced by his task board in his office, he can identify, track, assign, and report on nearly all services and projects by the IT department. His planning and organization of the IT infrastructure and networks has focused on reducing our footprint, improving redundancy, and securing assets. And while it's only been five years, it does feel like Scott's been here much longer because of the influence that he's had on our organization and really, the entire community. And as you can tell, one of the most recent accomplishments he's achieved is the fact that you are cooler today in this room. Scott, thanks for replacing the air conditioners. And thank you to Scott's beautiful family for being here.

Thank you, Scott. All right, we move to item E, workshop items.

Item one, presentation and discussion on the sports complex feasibility study. Jeff Stoddard, Director of Parks and Recreation.

Thank you, Lisa. Mayor, council, city manager. October 2023, during a retreat, we brought to you some of the issues that we were dealing with with Parks and Recreation with the number of participants, lack of field space. And at that time, we were given direction to have a feasibility study conducted on our new sports complex and possible location. We began talks with Texas A&M Central Texas to conduct the feasibility study. At some point in time, we decided that wasn't going to work out and we went a different direction. In January 2026, we signed an agreement with the sports facility company to conduct the feasibility study. February, they began by holding seven separate fact-finding sessions with specific groups, anywhere from restaurant owners, operators, hotels, parents, team ball meetings, and everything else. So I believe I have Kevin on the line, and I will turn the presentation over to Kevin to run that through for you.

Yeah, absolutely. And thank you, city council and city officials. I really do appreciate your time today. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. And I will walk through this deck previously provided. Are you guys able to see the deck here?

Kevin, this is Ryan Haverlaw. We do not see the deck. We see a line that does say presentation deck, but not the presentation. Kevin, we do see it now. You do see it, okay, perfect. Agenda for our time, correct?

Yes.

Okay.

Okay, perfect. Well, I'm going to go ahead then and... I don't understand why this keeps dropping, but I'll go ahead and kind of walk through this deck. But really the goal for today is to discuss our analysis in terms of our feasibility for new sports and recreation assets there in Copperas Cove, Texas. And in terms of today, again, this is about a 20 to 30 minute presentation, but really our goal is to walk through our process, how we got to what we got to, and then specifically what we're recommending, what the expectation of financial performance, and what the overall development cost will be for those recommendations. We did some further analysis for the team as well in terms of phase models and some various scenarios in terms of realistically going down the line and what this looks like. We did some additional field utilization analysis and then we'll wrap up with key insights. So founded in 2003 with the mission to improve the health and economic vitality of the communities we serve. We are members of International City County Management Association. We're founding members of the Aspen Institute's Project Play. We have an internal publication for Community Playmaker, all of which highlights sports and recreation and the communities that serve their residents through sports and recreation. We have an internal approach called Concept to Concrete within sports facilities companies. Where we are currently within this little map here is at market feasibility, kind of circling around and landing on concrete tangible venue that is serving the community and its residents. It's about a three-year process. And the biggest variation in time, as you could imagine, is the financial mechanisms or the funding mechanisms coming into play as you work through those funding strategies. In terms of facility examples, I will preface it with this. We reacted a little bit to the conversations within the community. We have other supportive examples that may be a little more thorough in terms of what we're recommending and kind of more built-out facilities. The Basin Sports Complex in Odessa, Texas, this is actually one that was through UT Permian Basin. This is now... I don't believe this is operating anymore, but the city of Odessa is in conversations, and they are building their broken ground on new facilities for eight diamonds, 12 multipurpose fields, and then an indoor facility of eight and 16 in terms of basketball and volleyball courts. And we are acting as owner's reps there. That is intended to open in 2028. City of Burleson, Texas, these are the Chisholm Hall diamonds, 10 baseball fields, five softball fields, two additional practice fields, a long multipurpose field for football, soccer, concessions. This is one that we are operating out of Burleson, Texas. and then Round Rock which is you know a very popular facility in Round Rock Texas with five synthetic turf multi-purpose fields five natural grass fields and really a location unto itself in terms of sports tourism and local recreation in terms of our process so we start out just just to highlight we start out with definitions of success And that's the most important part of our process. And as you can see in this little funnel here, no two communities are the same. We want to call that out specifically and understand what is going to be considered successful for the community down the road, not just in the short term, but in 10 years from now or so. We want to make sure that we're not building for one or two years, but we're building for the future. We factor that in with target market information, participation rates, competition, our input, our strategy in terms of the industry and our position within the industry to arrive at our forecasts and recommendations. To be more specific in terms of definitions of success, we call them out specifically. They're also in the executive summary presentation deck that we provided. They're also in the pro forma that we'll provide. But really, this steers the path going forward in terms of what the community is looking for. And so in calling those out, expand access to local athletic, recreational, and community-based programming, addressing the current shortage of quality facility spaces, allowing more residents, teams, and organizations to participate in programs. We do actually have additional analysis at the back end of this presentation that we'll walk through in terms of the lack of facilities that are currently kind of holding back program participation. Create a best-in-class sports tourism destination, attracting, hosting, and retaining tournaments and events in Copperas Cove. Generate economic impact, non-local visitation, and tax revenue. Again, generating that sports tourism piece. And then develop an elite sports recreation facility that delivers first-class user experience through premier amenities, high-quality design, and versatile event capabilities. And so we call that out and really define that in the beginning when we start looking at, okay, what kind of facility would be recommended and what do we think would fit in this community and really hit those metrics for success. And then we start working into our market analysis. And so looking at target markets, this is a four-hour drive time. The four hour drive time is important because industry-wide that's about the average people are willing to drive from point A to point B for sports tourism purposes to go to a facility. And within that, and I don't have to tell everybody here, you have some really large population hubs and a really large market capture with a lot of sports participation. There is also a lot of competition within that in terms of facilities, programs, and leagues, and so it is our job to work through that market analysis and that information and understand where a facility that we're recommending will land within that competition. In terms of overall demographics, this is a high-level demographic chart. As you can see on the top there, within 30 minutes is what we term as local, and then up to 240 minutes, again, that's that four-hour regional market. And then just some high-level demographic information on the left there, all reflecting a really positive market in terms of population capture. growth projection, median age, and then household income when adjusted for cost of living, and then also the spending on recreation lessons. While it does reflect lower than the state average, it also can reflect, at least within those drive times, the lack of facilities or opportunities to spend money, but there certainly is a willingness to spend on sports and recreation within the community. Participation rates, this is one that is a piece of the puzzle, but not necessarily something that we wanna just hold up and say, this is exactly why we're recommending this. But these are core participants within each individual sport within those drive times being the local 30 minutes, sub-regional 60, and then four hours, 240 minutes. And so when we look at core participation, that's simply described as or defined as somebody who is willing to participate or, excuse me, to spend money on a sport, whether it's a league, a clinic, a tournament, or retail. It comes from an industry, International Sporting Goods Association, blended with some of our own data. In terms of competition, and so when we look at the local competition, the the chart here shows up to 60 minutes there is 130 facilities between diamond multi-purpose and pickleball courts and so when we look at that again just understanding that while you're not going to capture 100 of that market to your facility how much will you capture and how much will the other facilities take away from some of that participation And then we have a sample of additional, this is our sample facilities within the region. This is not a full list. We do provide a full list within the supportive data that we'll send over. But this kind of shows you exactly how we look at these venues and within the drive times where you reside. Those are diamond facilities. These are multipurpose facilities as well. So going to the facility program and opinion of cost. So factoring in all that market analysis and the definitions of success, we arrived at our recommendation for the facility, with the facility being a recommended eight baseball these are flex diamonds so eight baseball at 400 foot diamonds that can be flexed into 16 225 foot diamonds or eight multi-purpose fields when i say eight that or when i say or that means that this is all on the same This is all in the same land, so you're not going to be operating 16 youth fields at the same time you'll be operating eight 400-foot diamonds, but it will give you that total inventory. When you match that with the recommendations for championship baseball diamonds and then championship softball diamonds separate from that inventory, that gives you a lot of flexibility and an overall inventory to compete within the market for sports tourism while also supporting your your very large local programming needs, current and future programming needs. In addition, we have the support areas needed, including food and beverage areas, check-in ticketing offices, flex and meeting rooms. We have an additional playground, children's playground for some ancillary activities for people who are not participating in the sports. And also Splash Pad, again, is key differentiators and community amenities. When you factor in the overall parking needs for the recommendation and the setback areas and green spaces within the facility, it's a total complex acreage of nearly 61 acres of land required for these facilities. And an overall cost, we'll lay out the mid-range here is what we'll refer to as $47.5 million. at this stage being pre-development this is pre-bid um this is not um we want to give a range in terms of the flexibility of the the uh the construction climate uh so 42.9 million to 52.1 million uh and again as you walk through there's no assumed land cost at this stage um and then you walk through the hard cost being site development field support equipment costs, the majority of that is your turf. Furniture fixtures and equipment, that's concessions buildings and FF&E for some of the indoor facilities and support areas. Soft cost construction includes your permit costs, design renderings, consultant fees soft cost operations that is assumed that about 12 to 18 months you're going to start filling roles and assuming expenses for the facility including legal fees accounting fees it fees staffing costs when you're filling those positions so those are your pre-opening costs and then escalation being three percent over three years again remembering that this the the ability to build within three years, and then three-year escalation overall. Jumping to financial performance. And so within financial performance, we'll cover total revenue, total operating expenses, and then your overall cost recovery or EBITDA. So when we look at financial performance, these are all revenue streams coming into the facility from operations of the venue. And so when you look at the pro forma itself is a full 20 year financial outlook. But we go up to five years within this presentation to kind of highlight that up to five years is what we call full maturity of the venue. And so we hope that we're being conservative. We do not wanna give a false impression of the performance of the venue by any stretch, but we do wanna give what we think is gonna be full maturity. If we're wrong and you get the full maturity by year two or year three, that is a win, but we do know there's a ramp up period within the industry and you're not gonna start off as strong as you will when you ramp up. So within year five, a total of $3.5 million in total facility revenue coming into the operation. Cost of goods sold being the expenses associated with generating that revenue. And then your overall total operating expenses, this is where, and these are all lined out in the pro forma. So understanding there's a lot of numbers and there's a lot of backup data that went along with this that we delivered to the team. But these are your utility costs, your maintenance and repair costs, janitorial fees, and then your staffing costs and management fees as well. Your total financial performance, operational annual performance is by year five of full maturity, a profit of $300,000 within the black of your operating costs. I do want to highlight that this does not include debt service. and does not include tax generation, which we'll get to in the next few slides here. But we do assume that, or we do project that this facility by year three will cover all of its costs operationally going forward within the venue. economic impact uh this is now what we're getting into some of the tourism numbers and the pieces of of of this facility in terms of the uh the additional benefits for non-local visitation So this slide is showing, again, by year five or full maturity, per person spending. This is per person per day from non-local visitor. And the way we define non-local visitor is a 90 minute person, 90 minute visitors coming from outside of 90 minutes, excuse me, and staying overnight. And so they're bringing new money into the local economy from outside of your, right outside of your community. when we project the overall number of events per year uh keep in mind this has everything to do with for one your inventory the kind of recommendations that we're making in terms of turf and support areas but also where you would fall within that competition because we know within four hours of this market you're going to have some competition within baseball softball tournaments and multi-purpose field tournaments So we're projecting 43 tournaments by year five total for the venue. And then of non-local visitation, these are, again, people from outside of the market coming in, 260,000 days in market from non-local visitors overnight, an additional 62,700 brew nights generated from this venue, and then economic impact of $38.2 million of total direct spending from outside visitors or non-local visitors. Additionally, we went on to project the tax revenue generation locally of over $1 million from that local spending, projecting out the city sales tax and the hotel tax going forward. A lot of questions we get are, what if we don't have the hotel inventory to support this? The goal is to capture this within your community. And there's management and operational functions that certainly will do that. It's very intentional. understand that these numbers are generated from this facility and where they're captured is a really important operational mechanism in order to make sure that your community is the one benefiting from this and not necessarily only surrounding communities. There will be a ripple effect and your surrounding communities will benefit as well but you want to make sure that intentionally those operational mechanisms and functions will be able to capture that spend right there in Copperas Cove. So some additional analysis that we did with the team as we work through, we went through some additional models to reflect just some discussions that we were having in terms of number of fields, phasing models, and then various comparisons as to whether internal or third party managed facilities and what that all looks like. So we've provided that within the deck. The three different models that we're showing here are The two are different than what we've already recommended. So the four diamond model is obviously a much smaller footprint and kind of a phased approach we recommend building towards the eight diamonds. But in a phased approach, this would be the overall opinion of cost of $22.5 million. for the four diamond recommendation. The eight diamond recommendation without the championship fields would be about a $40 million or $41 million recommendation there. And then the full city management model, or the full model, excuse me, inclusive of some of the ancillary pieces, including pickleball courts, would be $60.1 million in overall development costs. And then we broke out the financial performance of what that looks like also and compared that to, compared the two of one being city run and then additional model being third party operated. So I won't spend a ton of time on this, obviously happy to answer questions after the presentation, but I know this is just a ton of numbers that I'm kind of throwing out there, but wanted to show some of the additional analysis that we shared with the team. And then lastly, the team asked us to take a look at your existing facility utilization and looking at where you guys currently are in terms of your field, how your fields are being utilized, and then how we would project in terms of population growth within five to ten years, assuming that the population will nearly double in size within Copperas Cove. We did that. Again, this is probably not the easiest thing to read in terms of numbers and the way the charts lay out within a presentation like this. But we broke out the six diamonds and kind of took an overall look at where you guys are participating on certain fields and really reflecting some of the, probably some of the, I don't wanna say stress, but maybe just some of the issues that the facility is having and hosting its current facilities and I'm sorry, current programs and operations. And so when we factor in all the different age groups and some of the limitations, it's not six fields for all age groups. And then there's also additional usage We looked at a lack of currently, as you currently sit within your diamonds, there's a total need is about shortage of 24 hours per week just to service your current programming. And so additional three diamonds are required now to fill the amount of diamond programming that you currently have. When we project that out over population growth, that kind of balloons up to 313 hours per week of shortage and nine additional diamonds needed to service your community down the road as it grows. We did the same for multi-purpose fields. I know talking to some of the guys, Jeff and the team in the parks department, that they're forced to put diamond programs and activities on multi-purpose fields, which while probably feels manageable certainly is not as good a user experience and can lead to program decline and less opportunities as people don't want to participate and they start traveling outside of your community. So we don't love doing that. As you currently sit, again, it's showing a shortage of 135 hours and a total number of three fields for multipurpose. And then when you project that out, it's 403 hours and a total of 12 multipurpose fields needed to support what we would project as doubling your population. So just some additional analysis that we wanted to share within the study as well. To wrap up, just some of the key insights. We developed various models, obviously, with the key recommendations being the eight flex diamonds with the two championship diamonds, one baseball, one softball, and the support areas there, focusing mostly on the adaptability of those facilities and being able to react to the seasonality of the various sports that are being played on those facilities. The facilities represent tournament capable venues. So this is within the industry. This is the amount and the type of inventory that will be competitive within the youth sports tourism market and will generate a large amount of economic impact, $38 million of economic impact. This will allow you to serve your local community both through your current needs while also bringing in tournaments and also your community as it expands and grows over time. You can now look to the future and still have enough to increase your programs currently and in the future while also driving non-local visitation from the surrounding region and generating economic impact and tax revenue overall. So with that, again, I thank you for your time and I will pause there and hand it back to the city and answer any questions and stay along for any part of the discussion. But thank you again for your time.

Did you have anything to add? No, sir. Okay. Council, you have any questions, comments?

Mr. Mayor, I have a few comments and questions. First of all, I want to thank Parks and Rec and this organization for doing this study. I know it's been beneficial, so thank you, Jeff, especially the town hall meetings. They had actually had some people show up, so I appreciate that. But my biggest question is, with the revenue stream between the years of broken down, is that off a national average, or is that off the four-hour drive within the state of Texas?

So the revenue, you're talking about the revenue streams within the total revenue expense? Yes, sir. That's very specific to your community and that's very specific to the market capture within the state of Texas and that four-hour drive time.

Okay, thank you. Mr. Mayor.

Yes. I have one comment. Great job, Jeff, on this feasibility study. I sat with Jeff on a lot of these studies and comments and such. Great job, and hopefully we can move forward and get this to our city. I know it's going to take time, but it'll take money, I hope so.

Thank you. Anybody else? Okay, steps from here. You have a recommendation, right? Or Jeff, somebody?

Thank you, Mayor. Mayor and Council, as we've been going through this feasibility study, we've kind of taken it in a step approach. We did a survey first, we did town halls, we've done this study that Kevin has prepared, the analysis as far as is it feasible to have a sports facility that can operate within its own means? The answer is yes. And what is attached to the agenda item are two different scenarios. One is where city management, it's city managed, excuse me, where our own staff are managing this. And this is new staff, not... Not existing staff, okay. Understand that. The other scenario is a third party management where a third party is procured that already manages these types of facilities, runs these types of tournaments, bids on these tournaments, has the connections, and you can see that the difference is that if it is a city managed facility, it Its profitability is, it's still profitable, it's just not as, the profitability doesn't grow as quickly as a third-party management system or company. So our next step that we're looking at is if City Council agrees with the information that you've received so far, there are a couple of things I think we need to move forward with. at City Council's direction. One is we need a site location. We don't have a proposed existing site where this type of facility can go on. It's a total of 60 acres? 63, I think. 63 acres. The idea has always been, when we've talked about a sports complex facility, that it needs to go out at Ogletree Gap Preserve. We don't have 60 acres out there to put this type of facility, because there's a lot of hills. So we would need to identify a location for this facility to go. Second is, how do we finance this type of facility? $46 million, and I believe the number that Kevin showed was actually 47 million as that mid number. At $47 million, $46 million, and we use a low interest rate over 20 years of say 3% because we're looking at several years out from now, that's right at $3 million of annual debt service. If we look at a higher percentage, of interest, let's say 5%, that's $3.8 million of annual debt service. For this facility, it would have to go to the voters because there's no debt service capacity that we could recommend to council or that we could actually legally proceed with without voter approval on this at the amount it is. And then we need to talk with our financial advisor about how that works. Now, Mr. Stoddard and his team have also identified the fact that there are grants out there that we can apply for. Is it gonna fund $46 million? No. Is it gonna fund half of that? Probably not. But we need to look at the financing aspect of it. So with City Council's direction, we could proceed with both of those items. Jeff, is there anything else that we need Council's direction on?

I don't believe so, no sir.

Okay. So with that, Mayor, we're looking for Council's direction to proceed with a site selection effort as well as talking with our financial advisor and other financing opportunities.

Jeff, one of the things that I forgot to ask earlier, but is there a phased approach to this that would work? Or is it kind of do it or you don't do it?

No, there is a phased approach. I think Kevin covered that a little bit in his presentation. The goal would be to basically have a facility that would house what we currently need. The flip side of that coin, sir, is that you would also want a facility that when you cut the ribbon on it, that it can be a revenue generator right from the start. So you would have to have something that puts us a little bit apart from other venues that Kevin was speaking about that we've been competing with. And I believe the two championships fields that he spoke about, I'm sorry, the eight flex fields and the two championship fields would provide that type of facility.

OK. All right. So council direction? Mr. Mayor. We'll proceed with site selection. Mr. Mayor, I could support this.

I would just ask if we can. I understand it comes back to where we can find the land also. But the closer this to Interstate 14, I think, would be more beneficial. Sure.

Absolutely. Absolutely. You OK, Jack?

I'm okay with it as long as ultimately the citizens of Copper Scove get to vote on it.

Sure. Absolutely. Okay. You have direction?

Yes, sir. Jeff, anything else we need?

No, sir. Thank you.

Okay. It's the only item under workshop items for today. So the time is 542. We'll stand adjourned, begin the regular meeting at 6 o'clock.