New location for Family Fun Center to be discussed

"People have been approaching me about the Family Fun Center and asking me why it's way out there," said Mayor Pro-Tem Robert Rentschler, who requested the issue be put on the agenda. "And I've said well, that's what was on the ballot and it was a definitive location."

The location was again brought up in public comment at the last City Commission meeting and Rentschler said he felt the Commission should discuss putting it on the March 2016 ballot for voters to decide.

Rentschler said the original plan was to build a Family Fun Center with 24 lanes, having the city liquor license on the facility, a restaurant, and amenities for kids such as laser tag.

"One of the things that was crystal clear during the presentation by Brunswick (Bowling) was that we could never possibly do all that for $6 million," he said. "The reason we were thinking 24 lanes was because we thought we had to have 24 lanes for the leagues but from what Brunswick told me during the presentation was that leagues are a dying business in America, across the board."

Another thing that was crystal clear, Rentschler said, was that the City of Alamogordo doesn't know a thing about building a bowling facility.

"We build roads, we build water lines, the stuff you'd expect a city to build," he said. "We don't build bowling lanes. So our specifications were way off."

After the Brunswick presentation, Rentschler said he started looking at what a smaller facility could do.

"If you look at the recreation center, right now we'd like to enclose it with a permanent structure," Rentschler said. "If we did that and then off to the north side of the pool we build this with 12 lanes with state-of-the-art bowling, just some jazzy stuff, they gave us all kinds of things you can buy as far as lanes."

Renschler said he remembers at the Teen Center, now the Recreation Center, as a kid.

"It was kind of an outdoor area that was surrounded by a fairly tall brick fence and it had a raised area for people to have a band in or something like that," he said. "The place was just hopping on Friday or Saturday night, 200 to 300 kids, it was just a great place."

Rentschler said he'd like to build something like that in Alamogordo, maybe to add on to the Recreation Center or to replace the Amphitheater in Washington Park.

"Here's your real downside and that's that you can't have a liquor license," Rentschler said. "So ask yourself, are we building a Family Fun Center or an Alamogordo Bowling Facility with a liquor license? Do we want to do something for the kids or not?"

Rentschler said if you drawn a one mile radius around the Recreation Center, it takes in virtually every school in Alamogordo.

"All of sudden you're building something that all the school kids can walk to," he said. "We could build things we haven't envisioned yet by simply moving it into town, getting the liquor out of it and really making it a Family Fun Center."

If the agenda item is approved by City Commission during their next meeting, the location of the Family Fun Center will be placed on the 2016 ballot for voters to decide.

"All I would like to do is put this issue on the ballot and allow the citizens of Alamogordo to decide if they want to build an Alamogordo Bowling Complex or if they really want to build an Alamogordo Family Fun Center," Rentschler said. "I personally believe, and maybe I'm all wrong, that majority of the residents of Alamogordo would like to see a Family Fun Center."

The next City Commission meeting is Tuesday, Dec. 1, at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 1376 E. Ninth St.