Residents need to push harder for new rec center

The headline on a recent Daily Herald story caught my attention because it made me want to shout, "Yes!"

Unfortunately, the headline question was posed to Lisle, not Naperville, residents: Do you want a new rec center?

On several days in March and April, Lisle's park district will have public meetings to find out whether residents are interested in building a 75,000-square-foot recreation center.

Unlike Naperville, which has no rec center to replace, Lisle has two aging centers, which are apparently in need of extensive repairs.

Lisle parks and recreation manager Dan Garvy was quoted in the Herald story: "We expect people to be (initially) surprised by the idea for a new facility," though some park users have been pushing the idea for quite a while.

Sounds similar to Naperville, where indoor recreation space is limited and desired by many, yet goes unconstructed -- unlike virtually every other suburb around us and throughout the Chicago area, not to mention the rest of the country.

Another recent Daily Herald story carried information that made me believe it won't be long until the subject of a recreation center in Naperville comes up again.

The recently hired Naperville Park District director is coming from Denver, where he has been responsible for, among other things, 29 recreation centers.

Twenty-nine recreation centers.

Well, you might assume, they must not have any YMCAs in Denver. Actually, they do. What about private health clubs? Plenty of those, too. The answers are obvious by a quick check on the Internet; I know first-hand because I lived in the area for nearly a decade.

Denver obviously isn't Naperville, but we wouldn't need 29 centers, just one or two. Even much-smaller Lisle has two.

Highlands Ranch, a Denver suburb of approximately 90,000 people, has four incredible public recreation centers, one just down the street from the YMCA in Littleton -- not to mention more private health clubs than Napervillians can begin to imagine. Mountains, too, but that's not exactly fair.

Imagine a city where public recreation centers, private clubs and nonprofit centers co-exist easily. That's what some thought could happen here until something blew up and the idea of an indoor recreation facility in Naperville faded into the background for at least the second time in 10 years or so.

Why can't this city offer at least the type of indoor recreation facilities that neighboring Lisle, at a fraction of our size, has offered for many years and is now considering upgrading? I'll bet Lisle will have a replacement recreation center built before Naperville has its first.

I hope and imagine the subject will come back to the forefront in Naperville with Daniel Betts, the new park district director.

Funny thing is, like the Indian Prairie Unit District 204 high school question, I feel strongly about the subject even though my family would not benefit from a future recreation center.

We benefited from the Highlands Ranch recreation center for many years. My kids spent a majority of their youngest days happily swimming, participating in park district programs and just hanging out with other families.

We missed public recreation facilities when we moved to Naperville. My husband and I joined a health club, but our family missed the rec center. A recreation facility in Naperville -- even if it were open within a year, which of course it won't be -- would be way too late for my kids to enjoy.

But memories of "our" rec center, the fact that virtually every other town around manages to have one and that it simply feels like the right thing to do, cause me to continue to support a rec center in Naperville, though for myriad mysterious reasons is has been a losing cause here.

Maybe I'll just go to the Lisle meetings and encourage them over there. They know what you're missing.