About five months after the Marshalltown city council committed up to $75,000 toward the development of a Youth and Adult Recreation Sports Master Plan, the consulting firm they ultimately hired and city Parks and Rec staff hosted a come and go open house aimed at identifying goals and priorities inside the Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Tuesday evening.

Sports Facilities Companies, which is based in Clearwater, Fla., has a special connection to the community as the founder and CEO is Marshalltown native Jason Clement, the brother of former Major League Baseball (MLB) player Jeff Clement. The open house in the evening capped off a day that included a pair of focus group meetings, and there are more scheduled for Wednesday.

Kevin Schuh, an account executive with The Sports Facilities Companies, was on hand for the event Tuesday and told the T-R he quickly noticed a strong passion for athletics within the Marshalltown community after arriving Monday night, which isn’t always the case in places where he’s worked before. The company’s goals, he said, are to identify existing programs and facilities, outline goals and challenges for the future, define success from the jump and pair it with a market analysis.

“This is my first time in the community. I got in last night, so I’m learning a ton right now. But we’ve been studying and doing a lot of research and analysis and a lot of our work on the back end since September,” he said. “There’s a lot of people here that are really focused and really passionate about (sports). There are certainly some challenges, like every community has, but we see the opportunity for a number of different areas. Where those areas are, where those gaps are in operations or services (is) to be determined, but we see a lot of opportunity here.”

Tentatively, the company plans to bring back a strategic plan with three, five and 10-year goals next March. The plan will focus on publicly accessible facilities, and Schuh said he met with representatives from several organizations including the Marshalltown Little League, the Marshalltown Community School District (MCSD) and Marshalltown Community College (MCC).

“The recommendations will probably be centered around public facilities, but I don’t want to get too far ahead on that discussion because there’s also partnerships. And we work with communities, every community, especially this one currently, and we’ll continue to work together in a lot of those facets,” he said.

City Parks and Recreation Director Kelsie Stafford is excited to have Sports Facilities Companies onboard to conduct the study, especially in light of Clement’s local connection.

“I think he has a particularly vested interest in our community, which is great, but the deliverable at the end of this master plan is going to be a three, five and 10-year plan,” she said. “So we’re looking at short-term goals that we can do right now and then kind of the midrange things that we can plan for in the upcoming years and then long-term goals that we hope to accomplish within that 10-year plan.”

After the conversations with community members Tuesday, the biggest thing Stafford heard was a desire to improve the existing facilities back up to the standard that they should be and bring various local organizations together in the same room to get them on the same page so citizens and parents can find information easily and get their kids involved.

Some major projects such as the Little League and Franklin Field renovations — neither of which the city is directly involved in — are already underway, and Stafford hopes the three-year plan can identify gaps in programming, equity and access and immediate needs for the condition of facilities. As part of a larger growth and development strategy, she believes these types of amenities have a huge impact.

“I’ve heard businesses say ‘Well, we have a hard time recruiting people that want to move to Marshalltown, (and) if we do find good candidates, then they’re commuting from out of town. We want people to live, work and play here, and so we’re just missing that cohesive play opportunity to make people proud of Marshalltown. They want to stay here. They want to take their activities and not go into other communities,” Stafford said. “So I think it plays a huge part not only just for young families but also for the high school sports. It’s a grassroots effort, so it starts with parks and recreation and young kids activities, and then it builds and builds and builds to have successful sports and just youth in general.”

Attendees at the open house had a chance to use stickers to pinpoint their top priorities for youth and adult recreational activities as well as write down goals for the future. An online survey can be found at https://engage.sportsfacilities.com/city-marshalltown-youth-and-adult-sports-master-plan. Stafford said the survey will be available for about a month.