MWR Central: Location centralizes access to activities, programs, events

By Nathan Pfau, Army Flier Staff WriterSeptember 18, 2014

MWR Central: Location centralizes access to activities, programs, events
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FORT RUCKER, Ala. (September 18, 2014) -- Fort Rucker offers a host of entertainment, fitness and recreation events and facilities for people to enjoy, but now the installation has centralized where people can go to meet their recreational needs.

Fort Rucker's Directorate of Family, Morale, Welfare and Recreation unveiled its MWR Central, which has been combined with leisure travel services in Bldg. 5700, during a ribbon cutting ceremony Sept. 10.

"MWR Central is a location where you can find information on all MWR activities and programs," excluding child, youth and school services, said Darryl Jones, Fort Rucker community recreation officer. "This is about consolidating and having a one-stop location where community members can come and get information for Fort Rucker.

"Bldg. 5700 is the hub of Fort Rucker life and activity, and we wanted to make certain that we were getting the information to everyone at the same time," he continued. "We see a lot of foot traffic in this location already, so it made sense to us to consolidate that effort and have information available on all our services available at this location."

The new service allows for people to register for various runs hosted by the fitness centers, beginning Oct. 1, and purchase tickets for various shows and events held throughout different venues across the installation, as well as all the services that were previously available at Leisure Travel Services.

"If we are doing the illusionist night and you want to purchase a ticket for that, instead of going to The Landing to purchase that ticket, you can come here to MWR Central to purchase the ticket," said Jones. "If you want to make reservations for lake lodging, we will have the capability to do that here soon."

Col. Stuart J. McRae, Fort Rucker garrison commander, was on hand to cut the ribbon and debut the new program, and said that fulfilling the need for a program like MWR Central was a team effort.

"Some of our leaders here in DFMWR saw a need for this, and said if we could centralize these services then we could be a lot more efficient and in the long run have better service for our folks," he said during the ribbon cutting. "We're heading in that direction and right now it's in its infancy, so you're just going to see this thing get better and better."

MWR Central has been in the making since April, so from inception to ribbon cutting, it has come along fairly quickly, said Michelle Harris, MWR Central program manager.

"We realized that we were not using our current office (at Leisure Travel Services) as optimally as we could have, so we started examining how we could justify changing it around to better utilize it," she said. "We wanted to see what we could incorporate or add on to our leisure travel. It really began with ticketing, such as the tickets for shows from The Landing, that weren't being offered here."

Harris said there were many people who would come to Leisure Travel Services for tickets to various shows and events on the installation, but were turned away because those tickets were only available at the venues where they were being held.

"That's where it began then, and it sort of snowballed and we decided to see how much we could really get in here to centralize it," said the program manager. "Now we're going to be doing the runs for the fitness centers and we are currently taking yard sale registrations, which will be held biannually. I just hope that people will take advantage of what is available to them here and look at this as a one-stop building -- not just for their military needs, but for their MWR needs as well."

MWR Central is located in Bldg. 5700, Rm. 130. For more information, call 255-2997.

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Fort Rucker, Ala.

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