Sportsquest: A Year Later

This is an intersting assessment regarding whether the 4 million in County tax dollars used to keep this project running was the best use of citizen revenue.

Early in the game, SportsQuest is falling behind

August 25, 2011 by Aaron Kremer 

An ambitious sports complex in Chesterfield County continues to trudge along, despite being months behind schedule and battling behind-the-scenes turmoil.
SportsQuest is having trouble paying its bills and keeping its employees, and the business will not be running an arena football team for the upcoming season as advertised.
Over the past year, at least nine former directors have left SportsQuest, depleting the development project of organizational expertise and future athletes/customers.
Money appears to be in short supply. Former employees and contractors say that they have been owed money for months. And while they worked for SportsQuest, they were not always paid on time. They said that when they asked SportsQuest about their money, they were frequently told that an investor is just around the corner and that they would be paid soon.
One landlord waited seven months to be paid a $2,000 monthly rent for a small sales office near the SportsQuest campus, and a construction contractor working on the fields said he has not been paid for work he did months ago.
A handful of former program directors also said that they were never given the stock options that were promised when they were hired. And private leagues and teams have left SportsQuest or not joined as earlier publicized.
SportsQuest founder and president Steve Burton said that, as a startup business, it hasn’t always been possible to pay everyone right away, but that all vendors and employees are eventually paid.
So far the project consists of 12 artificial turf fields and a bath house on what’s called the East Campus. The plan called for 17 fields, but construction has stopped for now. SportsQuest leased its fields to several tournaments this summer, including a girl’s lacrosse tournament and a field hockey tournament. Burton also said he’s working to get SportsQuest Academy up and running this fall as a boarding school for student athletes. He said he has around 25 students who will enroll.
In addition, he said construction is getting ready to start on the West Campus, which is to include an indoor facility with a pool and basketball courts. He said that’s the most pressing need for SportsQuest’s members and that he’s lining up financing. (You can read about the plans for the West Campus in a newspaper report here.)
Dudley Duncan, a board member of the SportsQuest Foundation who invested $200,000 in the project, said that there are five more fields to be built on the East Campus and that construction will resume once a financing package is closed to start on the West Campus.
“We’re really at a critical point, where financing for the West Campus is really critical to us moving forward,” Duncan said.
Although Burton rallies to keep the project moving toward the finish line, the cash-flow troubles have been painful for some former employees.
Sue Murphy joined SportsQuest in April 2010 as the executive director of lacrosse. At that time, she folded her existing business – Premier Lacrosse, LLC – into SportsQuest and established fall and winter indoor lacrosse leagues. She also helped bring in two of the tournaments that leased fields from SportsQuest this summer along with multiple travel teams.
Murphy left June 8, and by that time her title had been changed from director of lacrosse to director of professional sports to VP of operations and finally president of events.
She said she was not paid according to her contract, which she said would give her a membership interest in SportsQuest for folding Premier Lacrosse into SportsQuest and bring in customers.
And she said she was not paid the salary she agreed to. “When I departed, there were two months that I was not paid according to my contract,” said Murphy, who now runs New World Sports.
Burton denies she is owed anything and said SportsQuest paid $25,000 in refunds for sports programs to help her get started on her new business venture.
Another SportsQuest employee, Charlie Hildbold, was laid off three weeks ago from his position as the manager of the Richmond Revolution. He had moved to Virginia to help launch the arena football team, and in its first season, it drew capacity crowds at the Arthur Ashe Center. Last season, the team drew only a few hundred fans per game when they were moved outdoors on the SportsQuest campus. The team was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, Hildbold said.
Hildbold said his direct deposit paycheck almost never went through on time.
“I was paid every pay period, but for the last three or four months, it was late pretty much every time. The worst was 11 days late,” said Hildbold, who is in Richmond looking for another job in sports.
“That was the worst, because it was near the first of the month and so I ended up bouncing a rent check. That’s just embarrassing.”
Without Hildbold, there will not be football.
Burton said that the team will return once there is an indoor facility.
“We are going to delay one year,” Burton said. “The outdoor season just presented too many challenges. It rained every game but one, and people didn’t enjoy that experience.”
Brad Gamlin brought his flag football league to SportsQuest around September 2010 and left in January. Gamlin said that his pay was not as much as he had discussed with SportsQuest.
“I look at it as one of the biggest mistakes of my life,” Gamlin said.
“I was put on a salary with an aggressive bonus system. Whenever I asked about it, I was told that we’ll talk about it next week. I still don’t know what my bonus system was supposed to be.”
Gamlin is now running his league independently from SportsQuest.
Burton declined to discuss individual employees’ complaints, but he said that part of the turnover is from hiring candidates that didn’t quite see that SportsQuest is more of a facility for Olympic training.
As for the trouble with payments, Burton said that sometimes revenue from event and registrations comes in after an event, and that vendors also have to wait, just like SportsQuest has to wait for its cut.
“We remain committed and have made complete payments,” Burton said, “There may have been times where payment terms went beyond [what’s normal], but we always make good on our outstanding bills, and we will.”
Burton said that with a project as big and complicated as what he’s attempting, the vendors are partners in the vision. “This has been a huge undertaking, and of course there are bumps through the process, but this is a great big win for Chesterfield.
“Is it stressful getting there? Yes, but we’ll get there.”
The grand vision has meant small details often go unattended. For two years, Phil Evans worked at SportsQuest and helped establish professional football. When reached by phone, he said that the business might still work but that perhaps SportsQuest bit off more than it could chew.
“Unfortunately, SportsQuest consistently underestimates how much its going to cost, so cash flow is a persistent problem,” said Evans, who left SportsQuest in February.
Evans said he was not given stock options that were part of his compensation. He said a stock option plan was never formerly adopted. Burton denies that claim.
“It’s another one of those projects that had good intentions, but there just wasn’t the money or resources to get it done,” said Evans.
Aaron Kremer is the BizSense editor. Please send news tips to Editor@richmondbizsense.com.

 Email This Post

 Print This Story

Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors: Pay Increases (For Them)

Late in 2010 there was considerable debate over "bonus" pay in Chesterfield County being passed out to County employees right in the middle of what can only be described as one of the biggest economic downturns coupled with a severe housing crisis facing the nation. Now it seems our Board of Supervisors has seen fit to raise its level of pay while asking our School System to begin the process of examining the potential elimination of positions within the system because of the anticipated shortfall of school funding coming both from the State and the Federal government. The fact is the schools face millions of dollars in cuts directly on the horizon and our Board of Supervisors has known this for more than a year.

I am not really big supporter of trying to examine things in the vacuum that elected officials would seem to prefer, but the timing of the pay increase appears to be rather short-sighted. It opens those leaders who remain on the Board in 2012 to direct criticism for voting themselves a pay increase while simultaneously asking the CCPS to look at cuts with regard to schools. When the Board refers to "cuts" it is almost always talking about personnel. This out-going Board likes to tout Chesterfield County Schools as a "world-class school system" and yet at each step along the way seems to in act measures that frankly would undermine its potential for even greater success.

Of course, we are not talking about a real impact from a budget perspective in terms of the pay increase which is the argument you will hear from Supervisors, but is that really the point? The timing and appearance of such an increase basically reinforces the continuation of the belief that our local political system is self-serving and certainly demonstrates an indifference to citizens during this economic crisis. The Board has routinely sought to reward bonus and benefits to government employees instead of using "surplus" revenue from its own budget to bolster operations, update technologies, and simply look for more efficient means of doing business.

I have been highly criticized by some leaders in an effort to condemn me as an apologist for the schools and teachers in the County. I believe this effort firmly illustrates the disconnect our leaders have with citizens. I am not a teacher, nor do I work for CCPS in any capacity but do volunteer as much as I can and see each and every time I visit the schools as a guest exactly what our teachers face. Apparently, our Board of Supervisors has become complacent in its responsibilities and role in the process with regard to education in the County. While classes that I used to volunteer in would have 17 or 18 students, these same students are now sitting with up to 25 in some cases. When you are talking about kindergarten classes, ones that used to have aides when we were looking at 17 or 18 are know operating with no aides and teachers are educating up to 25. Teachers have already faced pay cuts of up to 2%.This hardly makes much since coming from the two bodies of County leadership; Board of Supervisors and School Board that seem to be ready to fire off platitudes about the status of our schools and not really address the real issues in our classrooms with any proposed solutions.

The pay increase for Supervisors seems to beg two questions. One, were we not paying the Supervisors enough salary in years past or two are our Supervisors facing increased responsibilities and workloads given the growth of the County that warrant an increase? If the latter is the reason behind the increase than the question remains why our Supervisors did not carry out 2007 campaign promises and increase the size of the Board to reflect our growth. A Supervisor may find that having 60,000 citizens to represent a daunting task, but frankly they should have seen this coming a decade ago. Many of us firmly expected an increase in seats on the Board with the 2010 census. You may recall the realignment of some districts as the General Assembly basically redrew the lines for this months elections. We could have used the census data and added Magisterial Districts. We currently have five Supervisors representing 316,236 citizens. Ask yourself how many councilman there are in the City of Richmond representing less population? Answer. A heck of alot more than five! Again, Chesterfield leaders seem content with consolidating power amongst five. The result is such votes as the pay increase to themselves.

So while we cannot seem able to budget increases in salaries for teachers, speech therapists and those addressing the special needs of our children, how is it that the "Board of Five" finds it appropriate to elevate their own salaries amidst a dark outlook with regard half of the County budget?

Info: CCPS received 38 million in Federal Stimulus FY09/10- likely not to renewed and likely not to be made up for by the State.

Board of Supervisors: What Direction Shall Chesterfield Move

As we move forward post-election, Chesterfield County appears poised to either return to the old path driven down by Republicans up until the change election of 2007 or one guided by needs and fiscal responsibility. Virtually all the candidates this year for the Board of Supervisors ducked the really tough questions regarding the future of Chesterfield. Instead, the usual consultant-backed strategy of making the election more about the opponents faults than one's own vision for the County ruled the day. Its a shame really that citizens of Chesterfield really have no real clear indication of the direction the new board will take; all those "Pledges" aside.Issues such as poor infrastructure, economic development, the Comprehensive Planning and of course the guerrilla in the room, School Funding took a back seat to the kinds of attack pieces like where fundraisers were hosted or where money was coming from. The elements of a fundamental vision for the future of Chesterfield was never really expressed by any candidate seeking a seat on the Board of Supervisors.

We have to ask ourselves exactly why these campaigns in 2011 were so void of solutions or fresh ideas? The answer may be in what lies ahead for Chesterfield. The agenda that has basically been placed in a holding pattern in 2011 because of the election- the Comprehensive Plan- will no longer be able to be be shelved as it faces its deadline from the State. Unfortunately, we have our State leaders to blame for passing requirements that localities have such plans that basically mandate New Urbanism. What on earth were the Republicans in Richmond thinking?

Chesterfield managed to send back both Senator Steve Martin(R-011 unopposed) and Senator John Watkins(R-010) back to Richmond. No word on whether or not Mr. Watkin's proposal regarding the cash proffer system will re-surface or not in the coming term to address the needs of adequately securing funding resulting from new development to assist in offsetting build-out expenses by localities. No doubt the Real Estate Associations will push back an any proposal they perceive as being an added layer of expense in terms of new home construction under the guise those fees will be passed on to buyers. Again, during the campaign season of 2011 no mention by any candidate regarding the broken Cash Proffer System or even a whisper about real estate tax revenue given the fact that property values appear flat moving into 2012. No mention regarding potential increases in sales and meals taxes given real estate taxes account for over half of the local revenues generated for the budget.

One question I sought to get answers from candidates regarded the unfunded pensions. The State saw fit to dip into the VRS fund, which has now dropped below 60% of its funding status. Given the number of teachers approaching retirement, this issue cannot simply remain to go ignored and like so many issues our local leaders will have to figure out means of addressing issues rather than simply blaming Richmond and the State.

Recently, County Administrator of Chesterfield James Stegmaier stated that "the biggest vulnerability we have is the apparent failure of the Commonwealth to find solutions to its fiscal difficulties, and the tendency of the Commonwealth to shift their budget problems to the local level". Mr. Stegmaier's statement illustrates a rather "entitlement" mentality regarding State revenues and how localities must secure those revenues or at the very least deserve them in order to solve its own budgetary issues. How can local leaders rationalize the dependence upon the State and most recently Federal Stimulus dollars to address its needs but act as if they believe in limited government and don't support bailouts from the national government and yet gladly take the money every time.

A week hardly goes by that Senator Steve Martin does not blast President Obama and the Progressive regime in Washington for its stimulus programs on his facebook page and yet remains silent about his own districts use of those funds through our local government. Isn't this the height of hypocrisy? Why has candidate Steve Elswich (R-Mataoca) and now a newly elected Supervisor avoided addressing such issues? In the coming months we may learn whether the County's newest Supervisor is the "outsider" he claims or merely just another establishment-type as his opposition penned him during the campaign.

The alignment of the Board appears to have shifted back to the Republicans. Supervisors Warren, Jaeckle and Elswich representing the Republicans with James Holland and Daniel Gecker residing in the minority. The Republicans have enlisted the support of Gecker the last two years or so, but the honeymoon could now be over now that Elswich has been elected and the Republicans have a block of three votes to carry any issue. The Republicans did not actively seek out a challenger in Midlothian for Gecker in 2011 and determined to concentrate its efforts in Matoaca and Dale. It paid off in Matoaca with Elswich's victory, but the Republicans were unable to unseat James Holland (D).

I am hardly optimistic that the new Board will chart a new path given the circumstances facing them. In years past, the Board has done about everything it could to avoid addressing most of the issues facing the County and rather has sought to inflame the debate with unproductive rhetoric aimed directly at the School Board. It is obvious to any objective party that a shortfall with regard to the CCPS is once again on the horizon and once again there is little a whisper from our leaders concerning and proactive steps to be taken or any proposed solutions to head off what will certainly be a contentious 2012. (posted at local blog http://www.alteroffreedom.blogspot.com/