Sportsplex plans paused as city seeks to prioritize charter school relocation
Plans to relocate Coral Springs Charter School will take precedence over the Sportsplex optimization project amid uncertainty over November’s property tax amendment.
During a June 24 workshop, commissioners ultimately landed on not raising the millage rate to help fund the new Sportsplex, which is estimated to cost roughly $100 million.
“There are multiple things that are happening with Sportsplex that we kind of need Sportsplex to go first,” City Manager Catherine Givens said. “The natural dominoes fall where it’d be nice to be able to build the gym at Sportsplex, and then have the project thereafter with Charter Schools USA.”
City staff framed the Sportsplex optimization and its ensuing revenue as enabling the charter school project.
At the workshop, Deputy City Manager Brad McKeone said the city has also been approached for additional projects surrounding the Sportsplex property, ranging from a hotel, a sports training academy and a university-affiliated medical facility. The Panthers’ IceDen could also see upgrades.
The public-private partnerships could raise $1.5 million to $2 million for the city each year through revenue sharing, based on early projections.
But commissioners expressed strong desire for the charter school to happen first if they can’t happen at the same time. The city faces a potentially major revenue shortfall if Florida voters approve a homestead property tax reduction this November, but commissioners also didn’t have consensus to raise the millage, which would generate additional funds.
“Now, the charter school needs to move,” Commissioner Joshua Simmons said. “We’ve been talking about moving that since 2018. It has to move. So however we need to figure that out, our decisions coming out of here, it has to be that we are moving the charter school.”
The projects are linked because a planned location of the charter school is a city-owned plot of land on Royal Palm Boulevard adjacent to the Coral Springs gymnasium, which the school would like to take over. Once it does, the Coral Springs gymnasium would be shuffled to the new Sportsplex complex.
“Fortunately, we do have two gyms under the city’s facility, so I do think it can be a part of a conversation,” Givens said. “We can continue to move forward with the charter school, while possibly pausing on Sportsplex.”
For nearly a decade, the city has been discussing moving the tuition-free Coral Springs Charter School from its current location inside a former shopping mall at the southeast corner of Sample Road and University Drive.
“We’ve been working on charter school relocation all seven years I’ve been on the commission,” said Commissioner Shawn Cerra, the former principal of J.P. Taravella High School.
Givens said they at least need to get the Sportsplex plans to 30% completion to reach a good stopping point and continue attracting investment when the project is resumed. That would require about $1 million, she said.
“It’s not a yes/no to the actual facility, it’s just timing,” she said. “So I would like to be able to get the Sportsplex project to a place where we can say, ‘OK, we can pause for a minute, continue the charter school relocation,’ because that deal is on the table of potentially $70 million that the city will not have to fund.”
Charter Schools USA is in talks with Coral Springs to contribute a large portion of funding to relocate the school, and the city is hoping to reach an agreement by this fall. The school could potentially be moved within three years, since the city land it would sit on is vacant.