RiverWinds Opens to Non-Residents (Without a Juice Bar) Sept. 1

Effective September 1, West Deptford will open up membership at the RiverWinds Community Center to all non-residents.

The center offered expanded applications in a limited form last spring, opening its doors to Gloucester County seniors, emergency personnel and sponsored non-residents. 

Committeeman Sean Kilpatrick brought the idea before the West Deptford township committee at its Thursday meeting upon the recommendation of the RiverWinds advisory board.

“This will help us generate additional revenue for the community center, which should really increase the rentals, too,” Kilpatrick said, 

Kilpatrick even suggested that, with additional membership, the community center potentially could generate a surplus to be used for its capital equipment purchases. 

Broken air intake handlers at the pool and a leaky roof at the facility were among complaints voiced by residents at the last meeting of the township committee. 

Current membership at the facility is 9,600 paying customers, Kilpatrick said. He proposed a 10,500-member cap in the first year, and to which West Deptford residents are not subject. 

RiverWinds use hit a high-water mark of 11,300 members in 2008, he said.

Appearing before the committee, RiverWinds Advisory Board Chair and West Deptford Committee Republican candidate Jeff Hansen said the move “is kind of a logical one” that would “further enhance RiverWinds with additional revenue to hopefully pay for some of the things that need to be fixed.”

A focus on the building

But Committeewoman Denice DiCarlo said that additional memberships and rate fee hikes alone weren’t going to be enough to resolve the financial issues at the community center.

She asked whether the advisory board had considered additional real estate development to help pay off some of the outstanding debt attributable to the facility.

“When I look at RiverWinds, I look at it as a full development community,” DiCarlo said. “There’s $14 million in lots there that can be used. Has the advisory board gone outside the building in their research?”

When Kilpatrick and Hansen said that the board had not, DiCarlo said that she had “a serious concern” about the impact to local home values of opening up membership at the community center to non-residents.

“We’re constantly just going to raise memberships, but that’s not really going to eat into the types of problems that we’re talking about,” she said.

“There’s a value ascribed to [belonging to the community center] for people who live in town,” DiCarlo said, pointing out that real estate listings in the area often mention West Deptford residency as “a ticket into RiverWinds.”

The motion carried 3-1 along party lines with DiCarlo the lone dissenter; Committeewoman Donna Szymborski was absent from the meeting. 

No More Moose Juice

During the same meeting, talks of revenue generation at the RiverWinds community center turned to an update on the status of the Moose Juice beverage bar.

Discussion in the public comment portion of the meeting revealed that the project is now dead in the water because Tobey Karpicz, the proprietor who won the bid, couldn’t secure a full year’s rent—$30,000—up front.

Karpicz owns the Moose Juice Bar in Woodbury Heights.

“He agreed to it and when he went out to get funding, he couldn’t get funding,” Mayor Ray Chintall replied.

Township Administrator Eric Campo said that when the contract was provisionally awarded, “it was based on a recommendation that some sort of security or performance bond would be posted to protect the rent during the lease holding." 

Without that bond security, Campo said, the project fell through. 

“He said he offered $10[,000],” a resident replied. “That wasn’t reasonable?”

“The bank wasn’t going to support him,” Chintall said. “Why put the township at risk?”

“What risk?” the resident asked.

'More of an insurance'

After the meeting, Campo described how he and West Deptford Solicitor Anthony Ogozalek tried to broker a deal among Karpicz, his insurance agents and the RiverWinds advisory board, to get the business opened.

“The reality is when the township committee was presented with that proposal, the idea of doing some sort of café services…the recommendation came from the RiverWinds advisory board," Campo said. 

"It specifically said a security should be posted and would be posted by the vendor...for the entire term, not just for the first year," Campo said. 

"We attempted to negotiate something along the line of an annual term; we sent it back to the RiverWinds advisory board for a review to see whether it was appropriate, or were they in agreement with lowering that requirement, or modifying it, or dropping it altogether, since that security idea came from them and the township committee adopted it," Campo said. 

"I have not seen a further recommendation."

Kilpatrick said after the meeting that the security was necessary to protect the township property, and to recoup any losses that would be incurred by Karpicz "in the event he went belly-up."

"Really it turns into more of an insurance," Kilpatrick said. "We want to make sure that we’re covered."