A New Reston Recreation Center: Will users be mostly Restonians or non-residents?

A key issue in whether Restonians should finance a new recreation facility is understanding who its principal—or “core”—users would be:  Restonians or non-residents.   

The 2009 Brailsford & Dunlavey (B&D) market analysis showed that a majority of the users of the costly major elements of the facility would likely be people who live elsewhere.  The conclusion extended across every type of usage except swimming (51% Restonians) using what B&D called a “conservative” ten percent assumption about the “capture rate”—the percentage of people in the market area outside Reston who would be “core participants” at the recreation facility by element.   

Using B&D’s 2009 core participation count data, a less conservative assumption of a 15-20% “capture rate” among non-Restonians using a Reston-based recreation center facility suggests that Restonians would account for only about 30%-40% of the users of the major facilities at a Reston community center—and certainly not the majority of usage of any recreation center capability.   

Since a significant portion—possibly a majority--of the recreation center’s likely future users will be coming from beyond Reston, it is unclear why Restonians alone should pay for it.