advertisement

Editorial: Harper rec center agreement shows benefits of collaboration

The partnership announced this week to renovate and rebuild Harper College's Recreation and Wellness Center blends foresight and efficiency - demonstrating that public bodies can work with each other and with private interests to benefit all parties, and taxpayers too.

In agreeing to rehab and expand the 37-year-old Recreation and Wellness Center, Harper College, the Palatine Park District and Northwest Community Healthcare are collaborating to achieve something each wants. Harper will make an old building useful. The park district will offer residents an indoor pool and aquatic center. Northwest Community Hospital will have a location to serve that part of the suburbs with a health clinic.

The Harper board of trustees became on Wednesday the first of the three agencies to approve the agreement to build the new $38 million health and wellness center. the park district, whose board is scheduled to vote on the proposal at its next meeting, will contribute $9 million toward the cost. Northwest Community will rent between 5,000 and 10,000 square feet for a clinic - and add more if the clinic does extremely well.

Building a free-standing indoor aquatic center would cost the Palatine Park District at least $15 million, according to estimates. What would it cost the hospital to open a free-standing health clinic in Palatine? For Harper to renovate the wellness center by itself? The costs surely would be equally prohibitive.

Without the park district's involvement, there probably wouldn't have been enough Harper students using the pool to justify the expense. Now, there's a good chance that at the end of the day, what Harper President Kenneth Ender called "the loneliest building on campus" will once again be a hub of activity.

With this collaboration, the building will be used seven days a week and more people will come onto the Harper campus. And, taxpayers benefit from the savings and the use of the facility.

Some may question the timing. Yes, Harper is on track to lay off 29 full- and part-time employees by June 30, and 62 positions altogether are being eliminated through resignations, department realignments and cutting vacant jobs. Some of that is due to the more than $8 million the state owes the college, but it is also attributable to the drop in enrollment to 2007 levels. All the more reason for Harper to be looking for viable partners.

Multi-governmental agreements are notoriously hard to put together. If this one proves as successful as officials expect, other institutions will see the results are worth the effort and be more inclined to try similar partnerships.

And that can only be good for all of us.

Article Comments
Guidelines: Keep it civil and on topic; no profanity, vulgarity, slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about tragedies will be blocked. If a comment violates these standards or our terms of service, click the "flag" link in the lower-right corner of the comment box. To find our more, read our FAQ.