The Jones Center in Springdale released its 2025 Impact Report earlier this month. Ozarks at Large's Jack Travis got in touch with center communications specialist Susan Cui to discuss the numbers and their implications. He offers this report.
The Jones Center is celebrating a lot this year. It's their 30th anniversary and the first year of their rebrand and new tagline, "Your Place to Thrive." Now they're revealing the numbers driving last year's community impact.
Cui says it's an equally exciting milestone.
"We kind of also see the impact that we contribute towards — like even just our total visits of 587,904, that being a number. People contribute to that. And it's also really exciting just to see our growth over time. Our memberships had an 18% increase this last year, and that's really awesome for us to see."
The center is a massive recreation space focused on providing community access regardless of background or income. In that spirit, the Jones Center offers low-cost day passes and memberships to its 220,000-square-foot facility. People can also qualify for scholarships covering those fees. In 2025, the Jones Center issued nearly 1,500 scholarships, a 10% increase from the previous year.
Cui says the center is eager to share stats like that — for the community and to inform the center's future.
Cui: And it also just kind of helps us track certain information, whether it's from regional areas of where people are coming from, how far away people are visiting us from, or if they're very local. We track a lot of these numbers already for our own numbers, so it's nice to put it together into one document so that way we can see it, but also everyone else can see it as well.
Travis: I'd love to hear what surprised you about this year's report. Was there anything that you weren't expecting to see that really came through?
Cui: I've been at the Jones Center for a year now, so I came in after they released last year's impact report. But something that I was really excited to see was the number of visitors — not just specifically that number, but also kind of where the people are coming from. Forty-three percent of our visitors are from Springdale, which makes sense because we are located in Springdale, but 57% is the greater Northwest Arkansas region. So we're not only serving people in Springdale, but also in our region as well. But then also to kind of see those numbers get separated into different categories — like the different programs we offer, from learn to swim and learn to skate and different youth programs, to people who visit our runway, bike park, or take a group fitness class, swim in our pool, go to our Tyson fitness center. It's really neat to just kind of see the different intricate areas of where this impact has been created. But then also, I'm excited for the future because I will be able to see it grow over time. We also have our nonprofit sector, our Jones Community for Nonprofits, where we serve different nonprofit organizations — we give them office space, a place for them to work. We have $2.6 million of in-kind rent for nonprofits, so that's not an overhead cost that they necessarily have to worry about, which is really great to see. We want them to be able to have an opportunity to do what they need to do, but also have the space to do their work.
Travis: A big word in this report is growth. The Jones Center saw a lot of growth. So how is the Jones Center able to grow while still maintaining these low fees and a lot of free programming that the Jones Center is really known for?
Cui: I think you can look at it a couple of ways. One of the ways that we're able to grow is essentially just the community interest of people coming here and wanting to be a part of different things or try something new, which is something that we strongly encourage. But our growth also comes from our staff — our programming team, our operations team, development team, and our marketing team — because we all work together to make this growth happen. We always try to generate new programs for people to come and be a part of, which creates more opportunity for people to come here, whether it be classes or a show or performance, or just an event that they'd want to be a part of. Like we recently had Whimstir, and that was new, so a lot of people came out to that event. We also have great donors who contribute to the things that we do, and that allows us to grow and expand our programs. But also just growth in general — going back to the people who come and visit, more people are taking a membership and being a part of the programs and things that we have here. We also offer scholarships, so for anyone who would qualify for our Access for Everyone scholarships, they can still come and be a part of the different opportunities we have here, whether it be taking a class or swimming in our pool or going to the fitness center. The people who come here contribute to all of what we do, and they're the reason why we do it. We want this to be a place where people can come and thrive, no matter what they're doing.
She says center staff relies on three pillars when choosing programming: sports and recreation, arts and culture, and science and technology.
Cui: That way it can interest anybody. Our next Fam Jam performance series coming up in April is called the Yuck Show — it's a show for families, but it does dip into the science and technology side because parents and their kids can come and watch different science experiments be brought to life before their eyes. And that's going to be really neat. And then with Wizard of Oz on Ice happening on April 25, that definitely dips into arts and culture because it's a performance — it's music, it's skating, which is a sport but also an art. And then of course sports and recreation — we have our gymnasium, people can come and play pickleball, do drop-in basketball, skate in our ice rink, swim in our pool, or use our Tyson fitness center. We try to have plenty of opportunities for people to come and find something here that they're interested in, or discover something new. Going back to growth — that does make me think about how other people can grow when they come here, because they may come for one thing but they stay for something different that they didn't expect.
Susan Cui is the communications specialist at the Jones Center.
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