Orange County Site : Tight Funds Shrink Fitness Academy Plans

Beset by fund-raising difficulties, officials of a major U.S. fitness academy proposed for south Orange County have sharply scaled back plans for the facility.

Former professional football coach George Allen and other officials of the nonprofit National Fitness Foundation told The Times they were abandoning a largely unsuccessful effort to raise $50 million in an ambitious plan to construct a single building near Laguna Niguel. They said they now will concentrate on raising $30 million to pay for construction, in stages, of a series of smaller buildings.

Allen, chairman and chief executive officer of the foundation, conceded that it has only about $250,000 in the bank to show for six years of fund raising. The foundation has now decided to hire a professional fund-raising firm.

The National Fitness Foundation was born after Allen, who formerly served on the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, decided that the United States needed a national training academy for coaches. But because the council was by law precluded from raising private funds for such a venture, Allen devised a plan to set up a nonprofit foundation to raise funds for the academy. Ever the optimist, Allen promised President Reagan in 1985 that the facility would be built before the end of his term in the White House.

It is doubtful now that ground can be broken for the project before Reagan leaves office next January.

Yet while plans for the academy floundered, a similar facility was proposed, built and opened in Indianapolis, largely due to the financial support of one of Allen’s former backers.

Foundation officials recently advised Orange County authorities that they want to build smaller, individual buildings as fund raising allows, rather than construct the single, 250,000-square-foot structure that was originally approved for the site in the Aliso greenbelt.

Allen and Hal Trumble, executive director of the foundation, attributed delays in the project to the time it took to win government approval of the facility and to difficulty in raising money from corporate sponsors.

“I used to think it was tough to get ready to play Dallas,” Allen said of his coaching days in the National Football League. “You could play Dallas seven times . . . in the time it takes (to deal with) all this red tape.”

Orange County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley said the proposed change “drastically” reduces the project’s size and cost. But Riley is uncertain whether the change will trigger a new round of hearings and approvals by the county and the state Coastal Commission, further delaying construction.

The scaled-down project may even be welcomed by the Coastal Commission, which approved the original project despite concerns with its size and configuration, said Riley, in whose district the academy is to be built.

European Model

As proposed, the academy will be modeled after similar facilities in Europe offering training and educational programs primarily for coaches and instructors using state-of-the-art equipment, playing fields, a gymnasium, pool and dormitories.

National Fitness Foundation backers originally vowed that the academy would be built without government money, but have since changed this pledge to “no federal funding.” Part of the lure of locating the academy in Laguna Niguel was the offer by Orange County supervisors to underwrite the program by providing a free 50-year lease of 175 acres. The land was donated to the county by the Mission Viejo Co., a major home builder which has developed adjacent property.

Trumble and Allen reason that by building smaller, separate structures as funds become available, construction can begin sooner.

Trumble said that “for a number of reasons the original concept is not going to work.”

“We have now looked at it on the basis of scrapping that plan and redesigning it on a campus-compound concept, (featuring) a number of buildings, each individual.”

‘Reachable Goal’

“I think it’s progress,” Trumble said Friday. “It’s a more reachable goal in terms of the amount of money needed.”

In recent months, the foundation’s trustees, who like Allen are unpaid for their services, have “realized it’s not too realistic to find somebody with that kind of money, particularly with the kind of economic conditions that exist,” Trumble said.

A former backer of the academy, the Lilly Endowment Inc., the nation’s fifth largest foundation, has used its money elsewhere.

Acting on the assumption that the academy would be built in Indianapolis, the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment granted Allen’s nonprofit foundation $250,000 when the fitness academy was originally planned for that city. But when the foundation chose an Orange County site in 1985, the endowment asked for its money back.

The National Fitness Foundation refused to return the funds.

Foundation attorney Jonathan Howe told a Nov. 13, 1985, meeting of the board of directors that “there was no legal obligation to return the money. The major problem has always been the ‘moral commitment’ that was made and how the trustees spend the money,” according to minutes of the meeting.

Contributed $6 Million

Since then the Lilly Endowment has contributed $6 million toward the construction of an Indianapolis fitness academy that will provide many of the same services planned at the Laguna Niguel complex.

When Allen’s trustees “decided they couldn’t do business in Indianapolis, interest remained,” said Susan Connor, communications director for the Lilly Endowment. “So another group was formulated.”

The $12-million, 125,000-square-foot National Institute for Fitness and Sport was completed this year and is operating.

The Indianapolis institute “is a viable organization,” Connor said. “They weren’t waiting for this Taj Mahal to be built while they got their act together.”

While waiting for construction to be completed, the institute’s staff operated out of adjacent facilities on the joint campus of Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis.

Allen’s National Fitness Foundation also has conducted various activities, many of them unsuccessful attempts to raise funds. Last year a benefit golf tournament managed only to break even, as did an exhibition hockey game between U.S. and Canadian amateur stars, Allen acknowledged Friday.

“Maybe we have to forgo doing some of the other programs and concentrate on funding the academy,” Trumble said.

This year, the foundation will not hold a summer camp for school-age children and teachers, as it has the past two years, Allen and Trumble said.

Allen allowed that: “Maybe we made a mistake. Maybe we shouldn’t have moved the academy from Indianapolis.”

Vows Success

But then the former football coach vowed that the academy in Laguna Niguel will “succeed because we’ve got a lot of good people working hard.”

Despite limited cash on hand, Allen said, the Ralphs Grocery Co. will sponsor a golf tournament to raise $1 million in coming years and Atlantic Richfield Co. has pledged to pay for the academy’s track and field facilities.

Allen also said a major backer may be confirmed in June, but declined to identify the individual.

“If we get this guy,” Allen said, “right away we could start building. However, if we have to go through the Coastal Commission again . . . then that’s going to slow us down.

“We’re struggling, but we’re going to make it.”