Operational costs at Long Bridge Aquatics & Fitness Center are projected to grow by about $2 million over the next few years as a financial partnership comes to an end.
The county government’s net operational cost, funded by taxpayers, is expected to grow from $1.13 million in fiscal 2027 to a projected $3.14 million by fiscal 2030 as its agreement with Boeing ends.
In 2019, Boeing agreed to provide $10 million in funding to rename the outdoor athletic facilities “Boeing Fields at Long Bridge Park.” The park is adjacent to Boeing’s headquarters in Crystal City, and signage is plainly visible to travelers flying into and out of the nearby Reagan National Airport.
Boeing’s funding is being used by the local government to lower operating costs for indoor aquatics and fitness facilities that opened in 2021.
As part of the agreement, funding from the aerospace giant is being used to subsidize half the operational costs of the facility through fiscal year 2028. The following year, the remaining Boeing funding will subsidize 5% of operational costs before disappearing altogether in fiscal 2030.
Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) director Jane Rudolph outlined the fiscal implications during a recent budget-focused work session with the county’s Park and Recreation Commission and Sports Commission.
“That money is beginning to run out,” Rudolph told the advisory commissions. She did not provide any hints if there were efforts to work with Boeing to extend the partnership.
The agreement with Boeing provided an out for County Manager Mark Schwartz and staff, who had found themselves under fire during planning for the Long Bridge aquatics facility. Some fiscal watchdogs predicted it would become a money pit.
Absent finding a replacement for or extension of the Boeing sponsorship, that prediction may come to pass.
“This is yet another Artisphere, sucking the life out of DPR’s budget,” said Suzanne Smith Sundburg, who chairs the Revenues and Expenditures Committee of the Arlington County Civic Federation but was speaking on her own behalf.
Located in space formerly occupied by the Newseum in Rosslyn, the Artisphere was seen as a new kind of government arts facility when it opened in 2010.
But like the Newseum, which had left for D.C. in 2002, Artisphere struggled to find an audience in Rosslyn. After a sea of financial red ink, then-County Manager Barbara Donnellan in late 2014 recommended the arts center be shut down. County Board members agreed.
Sundburg told ARLnow she had seen similar signs of problems ahead during planning for the Long Bridge aquatics facility, which opened in 2021.
“The fact that taxpayer support is growing for such a large, costly, labor- and maintenance-intensive facility isn’t a surprise,” she said. “That’s why I attempted to talk the county manager out of it, unsuccessfully, back in 2018. I asked him point-blank how we could afford such an expensive facility.”
Another who raised concerns during the facility’s planning process was John Vihstadt, who served on the County Board from 2014-18.
Given the fiscal challenges on the horizon, Vihstadt told ARLnow the county government should take a four-pronged approach to addressing the issue, starting with building community partnerships “right now” in order to “help the aquatics center stay afloat for everyone.”
To help fill the Boeing subsidy gap, Vihstadt said, the county government should “rekindle discussions with a range of potential community partners who lack such facilities, in order to help defray either operating or capital costs or both.” Area colleges, hospitals, hotels, public/private employers and surrounding governments should be targeted, he said.
“Some of these discussions occurred nearly a decade ago at my and some of my County Board colleagues’ urging, but were then largely shelved when Boeing came to the temporary rescue,” Vihstadt said.
The former Board member said county officials also need to get ahead of the curve by recalibrating fee schedules, looking at staffing and programmatic changes and consider if it makes sense to curtail operating hours of days of the week the facility is in operation.
The idea of building more partnership also was brought up at the joint meeting of the parks and sports commissions. One participant said Arlington should make a play for regional swim competitions. Today, most of those go to Fairfax County facilities instead.
Sundburg said expected higher costs for the Long Bridge facility likely are a reason why Schwartz and Rudolph have proposed closing the Barcroft Sports & Fitness Center and eliminating the youth gymnastics programs housed there.
That proposal may or may not be ratified by County Board members when they adopt the fiscal 2027 budget later this month. But Sundburg fears it could be just the start of a battening-the-hatches approach to parks programming.
“If we must today close the Barcroft fitness center and shut down gymnastics programs — ones that appear to largely benefit disabled and low-income children — in order to keep our money-pit Long Bridge Aquatics & Fitness Center afloat, how many more facility closures, employee and program cuts [will there be] when the Boeing money runs out?” she wondered.
Asked whether the county government is working on a plan to address the matter, County Board Chair Matt de Ferranti said discussions are ongoing.
“These questions are part of the broader budget discussion the Board is continuing to work through,” he told ARLnow. “We will be reviewing the long-term cost projections for the Long Bridge facility and considering what options may exist to help manage those costs responsibly.”
Boeing has significant global-headquarters operations at its Crystal City facilities. But earlier this year, the company announced it would be relocating its Defense, Space and Security headquarters to St. Louis, nine years after moving those operations to Arlington.
