A no-bid contract to privatize the city-owned Stryker Sports Complex was blocked at the goal line Tuesday, after officials of the city’s biggest youth soccer league said it could run them out of business.
The City Council decided to put off a vote and take another week to try to resolve conflict between the owners of the Wichita Sports Forum, the for-profit business proposed to take over Stryker, and the Sedgwick County Soccer Association, the city’s dominant youth league.
The controversy comes 11 months after the council voted to spend $22 million to upgrade the mammoth sports complex near K-96 and Greenwich. City staff has proposed turning the operation over to Sports Forum, which operates a private indoor multi-sport facility nearby. Construction is now underway at Stryker to replace 13 grass fields with 11 artificial-turf fields, one of which would be indoors. The main goal is to attract out-of-town teams and families for regional soccer and other field-sports tournaments to boost local tourism and the economy. Mark Ohm, the president of the county soccer league, said some of the teams in his league would like to be able to play on the new fields at Stryker, but Sports Forum is planning to start its own youth league.
Ohm said the only option to emerge from months of talks with the Sports Forum’s owner would be for the nonprofit league to fold and turn its 4,500 players and 393 teams over to the Sports Forum’s new for-profit league.
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