(Memphis) For ten months the Salvation Army’s Kroc Center has been offering recreation and fitness to families across the city.
The center has also been doing some assessments to see what needs to change.
“One of the things we learned is how to best be structured and be flexible and meet the needs of the community as they figure out how to use the Kroc Center,” said Captain Jonathan Rich of the Salvation Army.
The latest change is coming to the Kroc’s Challenge Center, a space that companies and other groups rent for team building, parties and other events.
“Because it’s event-driven, rather than have a staff there all times, we have chosen to contract with a 501c3,” said Rich.
The Challenge Center is being restructured.
Four full-time and 30 part-time workers there will no longer be employed by the Kroc Center starting in January.
Kroc will instead contract out the work, as needed, to the same person who now handles events at the Challenge Center..
That person will in turn hire the part-time workers to assist him.
“It resulted in some people losing their jobs unfortunately. The big idea is to become more effective,” says Rich.
Kroc officials say the Challenge Center is booked most days, but they are also bringing in a consultant to look at marketing and make sure the community knows what the center has to offer.
Kelsey Boel is there several times a week for a spinning class and says there is no place like it.
“I have never seen anything like it and I hope they have more of it. It makes people physically active and they don’t know they are active because they are just having fun,” said Boel.
The Kroc Center says business is going well overall.
The center operates totally on an endowment, rentals and memberships.
Right now they have 8,000 members.
While the job status of those 35 employees is changing, Kroc officials hope the workers will still be at the Kroc Center. They will just get paid by a contractor instead of the Kroc.
