The community desires safe and nice health and recreation facilities for community activity including programs for youth, adults, the aging, and the community at large.

First of all, we need to address our current facilities. Some portions of the York Recreation Center, for example, are (or have been) falling apart, even dangerous. These should be fixed immediately. Next, we need to look at soccer and other youth sports as an opportunity. Look at the positive outcome of the soccer fields built in Clover. That is a pretty simple facility, but it has great community impact. We then need to think bigger about developing some facilities that could be part of the Sports Tourism success of Rock Hill. Do teams need practice fields? Are there smaller events (that encircle larger ones) that could be held in York? The big plus for sports tourism is that the fields are public amenities, improving the quality of the citizens lives, as well as tourism and economic drivers. Such investments would also serve as catalysts to address our specific objective of recruiting and retaining economically healthy people because the facilities themselves are examples of the “nicer amenities” that this population seeks.

Also, we need to look at health and recreation as a lifestyle. Can people walk safely to the store or the downtown? Are the parks well kept? Are the neighborhoods walkable? We want our whole community to encourage health in its design and emphasis.

Also, we want to connect our health and recreation to our agricultural theme. Not only is eating local produce good for you, but picking it is exercise.

We want to teach our youth healthy habits – eating well, no smoking, exercising, etc.