Rupright replaces another manager

WASILLA — The city’s recreation director has been replaced and the mayor hopes to see a new direction at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center.

“Bruce and the city parted ways,” Wasilla Mayor Verne Rupright said of the departure of Wasilla’s Recreation and Cultural Services Manager Bruce Urban.

Rupright wouldn’t get into the specifics of how Urban left but said that in his place he has installed James Hastings. Urban left Friday and Hastings began Monday.

The move is the third change of department head Rupright has made since taking over as mayor. The last two came in April with the departure of Wasilla Police Chief Angella Long and City Controller Troy Tankersley. Both have since been replaced with folks from inside their departments. Hastings, by contrast, comes from the private sector.

Efforts to reach Urban failed as of press time.

Rupright said Urban used to oversee the sports complex, the library and the museum. He said he’s split the job in two. The museum now reports to the library and the library directly to the mayor, an arrangement he thinks is more efficient.

Hastings is now overseeing just the sports complex.

“It’s not been any budgetary secret that that enterprise out there has never even broken even,” Rupright said. “I put someone new out there in the fervent belief that we can make that enterprise fund itself.”

Rupright said that although the complex is not on the same playing field as venues like Madison Square Garden or the Boston Gardens it could certainly learn something from those operations. Bigger venues, he said, are able to schedule a circus in the morning and a basketball game at night.

“I’m not saying we’re at that scale but you should be able to schedule and move yourself around quick enough that you can get enough bookings,” he said. “Everybody can work together so we can meet the needs of the community.”

He noted that the venue has a full-size kitchen and could easily accommodate a banquet or other such event.

Urban, he said, was very good at scheduling ice time and running the hockey side of things but he thinks Hastings will do a better job of bringing in other attractions. He said he’d talked to a few promoters who have held events at Raven Hall on the Alaska State Fairgrounds. He said the sports complex is a superior venue but the promoters felt they couldn’t get the space.

“They’d prefer to be over here but there was scheduling conflicts over hockey games,” Rupright said.

He said he thinks Hastings is the right man for the job, commending him for the work he did in turning around the Elk’s Club and bringing the Mat-Su Lodge back to profitability, nothing that the resort was recently sold to an Anchorage firm.

“That company out of Anchorage knows a good deal when they see it,” Rupright said.

He said that as mayor, part of his job is finding talented people in Wasilla to bring into the administration.

“You have to be out in your community to know what’s moving and shaking,” Rupright said.