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Volusia County Tourist Development Council
Meeting Minutes
April 17, 2002Present: Big John Chairman
Jim Bazemore Perry’s
Lori Campbell Baker Speedway
Darlene Yordon VCOG
Dana Li WTAA
Tom Staed Bahama House
Rick Hamilton Ocean Center
John Masiarczyk City of Deltona
Gilly Aguiar NSB/Pub 44
Stuart Arp Adam’s Mark
Frank Gummey Volusia CountyMeeting was called to order by Chairman Big John at 9:00 A.M.
Big John: Could we have a motion to approve the minutes from the last meeting?
Tom Staed: So moved.
John Masiarczyk: Seconded.
Big John: All in favor. Minutes are approved as mailed.
Big John: Mr. Wachtel of Dickens & Associates, Inc. has a new drawing of the proposed remodel of the building.
Jim Wachtel: Several meetings ago the suggestion was made that instead of spending the time and energy to build a whole new building, that was going to be disruptive. What was the possibility of taking this building and converting it into a true convention center that comes closer to the Johnson report goals and the square footages. So, after the last meeting we were asked to look at this building and study it to see what we could actually put into here and see how it could function and how much it would cost. That’s what we have done over the last couple of months.
What you have here are some drawings of the different floors and building sections, they are a little hard to see at this scale since it is such a large building. Basically with the exhibit floor down here, we have approximately 40,000 to 45,000 square feet of exhibit space now, and rather than try to transpose or build that somewhere else, we thought the best thing to do was to keep that as the exhibit floor, and put meeting rooms somewhere else. The first floor is taken up with mechanical equipment, electrical equipment, storage, all the stuff you need for the exhibit hall, so it really doesn’t become a candidate to tear out and replace. So the only place that we saw that could be renovated was this level here (the second floor). As the building goes, the concrete seats of the arena on the upper deck start behind the concession stands and go to about where Rick is standing (in the doorway to the conference room) on an exterior wall. That is why you have a much smaller and shorter concession stand over there (north side of building) than over here (south side of building). If we want to expand this area and make more usable space for meeting rooms, conventions, whatever, we are going to have to increase the volume over on that side (north side) to get meeting rooms in there, which means tearing out the seating, over this side (south side) over that side (north side) and over the office space on the west end. So what we have done is show a demolition of all that seating and in effect the concession stand the concourse and at least half of this room. But everybody knows that when you start demolishing things they have a tendency to expand! So we have assumed that from this wall out to the edge of the arena is the area that’s available for expansion into more meeting rooms. We’ve shown a new concourse pretty much where it is now with meeting rooms on the exterior, meeting rooms on the interior, basically doubling the amount of meeting rooms we can get on this level, and we have enough space here and there that we could even make a third floor with meeting rooms and other facilities up on a third level. When we do that we have to increase vertical circulation because now we have a lot more people moving up and down. Right now, people come up once and stay for an arena show then they go down. So the stairs function properly. But during a convention setting, you have people circulating up and down between the exhibit floor, the meeting rooms. So we’ve shown a couple more "passenger friendly" elevators instead of the freight elevators that we’ve got, and a couple of escalators in there and remodeling the front lobby that is where they would go on the west end rather than on the east end. It’s easier and more direct to the meeting rooms; so what the plans show is meeting rooms on this level and potentially a third level with meeting rooms. On this level we would have these meeting rooms where we are now, the concourse and a whole series of meeting rooms as far as we could go on this side, the same on the north end, some openings in here for vertical circulation to get people up and down to this level. Of course, we would have to remodel and revamp the offices at this point, and if we go on to the third level these elevators would go on up with these stairs and adding another stairs at this point to create another level for meeting rooms. That is really the fabric we have to deal with in this building. Or else we’re going to be spending a lot more money to tear out roof on the front side to get circulation up and down. That’s possible, but that’s a more invasive type of remodeling to turn this building into a true convention center.
What will all that cost? We have gone through and done a scope of cost estimate for the demolition and rebuilding of the first and second floor and for the third floor. That’s what you have on the front. Somewhere in the $3 million to $3.3 million to do the second floor revamp of meeting rooms and $6.5 million to $7 million if we want to add a third level. What we are going to keep is 48,000 square feet of arena or exhibit space, and please note that the Johnson report was looking for 72,000 square feet of exhibit space in phase I, so we are about 2/3rds of what the goal was at that point.
Rick Hamilton: In addition to what we already have.
Jim Wachtel: No. If we don’t assume the ballroom and meeting rooms.
Rick Hamilton: No, what I was saying is the Johnson report was asking for 72,000 in addition to what we currently have.
Jim Wachtel: It kept the arena as such; in effect we are eliminating the arena. We could still have some portable seating on the floor for an arena type of event, but we are going to loose 4,000 seats, so in effect we don’t have an arena with this scheme. We are going to pick up some 12,000 square feet of meeting space and reconfigure office space, so we’re loosing 4,000 square feet of arena space; we keep the same exhibit space and pick up 12,000 square feet of meeting space for $3.3 million. If you go up to a third floor you loose the arena space, you have the 43,000 square feet of exhibit, would pick up an extra 20,000 square feet of meeting space. But that’s an extra $3.6 million.
Tom Staed: Is this $6.9 million a combination?
Jim Wachtel: No.
Lori Campbell Baker: So you’re not adding those together?
Jim Wachtel: No. Basically for $7 million we have 48,000 square feet of exhibit space, a small arena, the ballroom and about 32,000 square feet of meeting room.
Big John: This exercise comes to you from comments made some time ago by Gilly about first thinking about doing something besides tearing down the building, and looking at remodeling the facility and this is this exercise you are seeing today. How many seats do we loose on the upper deck?
Jim Wachtel: 4,000.
Rick Hamilton: Jim, can you tell me the new additional square footage for the cost. If I understood you I think you said 20,000 square feet.
Jim Wachtel: About 30,000 square feet of meeting room for three floors.
Rick Hamilton: Additional?
Jim Wachtel: Yes. We would still have the ballroom downstairs; we would still have the meeting rooms downstairs.
Jim Bazemore: How many new meeting rooms would you have?
Jim Wachtel: About 25 new ones. We’ve already got some meeting rooms now.
Jim Bazemore: How many have we got now and how many total when you are through?
Jim Wachtel: We have about six meeting rooms now up here on this floor, and on the second and third floor we would have 26.
Big John: Are there any questions of Mr. Wachtel?
Lori Campbell Baker: Well actually not a question for Mr. Wachtel, but as the meeting progresses how that plays into what Sally and Evelyn have to say.
Tom Staed: The price is certainly right. One flaw I see in it is, the arena plays an important part in our community, and that’s the roll we started that process with some 20 odd years ago. I don’t know how many events you have in this arena that are citizen attended, but a goodly number probably.
Big John: You’re loosing 4,000. You still have the risers, and you still have the floor, what does that leave.
Jim Wachtel: We did about 1,600 in the risers and whatever the floor seating, you might have another 1,000 on the floor.
Rick Hamilton: Total seating capacity right now is about 10,000 so if you take away 4,000…
Big John: I think you’re at 9,500, so if you take away 4,000 you’re at 5,000. The question is, is that enough, and what do you cut out if you start cutting?
Gilly Aguiar: The way I see it we have 1,694 left plus the seating on the floor so you could have 2,600.
Jim Wachtel: Or 3,000, he’s saying we could get 2,000 on the floor. Again, that’s for a concert, something separate from an exhibit space. You couldn’t have an exhibit space and an arena space. That’s what you have now.
Gilly Aguiar: What would be the feasibility of going off the west side? Because when Evelyn gets up here this is not going to be a model people are looking for. What would be the feasibility of going off the west end and building a shell of a building?
Tom Staed: That’s the $3 million tent that they started with! You have to make it into a building.
Gilly Aguiar: I’m thinking about $3 million or $4 million, so now you’re up to $10 million vs. $40 million. If you did something like this you would have ample meeting space but we would be lacking exhibit space. But it’s not transferable, it’s not like some places where you can open the meeting rooms and do that. We would only have 48,000 square feet, and they are looking for 100,000 square feet. What if we came off the west end at the same angle as the exhibit hall and bring that out as an exhibit hall, have another entrance out that way, you wouldn’t have to go out that far to get another 70,000 square feet. Bring the building straight out.
Jim Wachtel: You could have entrances here and here (north and south) and put meeting rooms, and just demolish this and put meeting rooms on the second floor and not put on the third floor.
Jim Bazemore: I understand we need 100,000 square feet of exhibit space, is that correct?
Jim Wachtel: I believe it was 72,500 and 150,000 eventually.
Tom Staed: That’s how this project got started, four or five years ago, to build a facility immediately adjacent on the west side in the 75,000 to 80,000 square foot range and not do anything to the existing building other than fix it up and connect it.
Big John: I don’t support this plan because I think there are enough uses of the stadium that it would be a poor idea to tear down what we have got. I think we can recreate everything we need in the shell of a building and you can have all kinds of meeting spaces, all different sizes in that other building.
Tom Staed: Just build that kind of facility connected to the present lobby.
Rick Hamilton: You’re getting an additional 30,000 square feet for $6.9 million and you can get the same thing at about half the cost by going out to the west, without renovating this building.
Big John: The other thing we haven’t calculated into this is how long the building would have to be down, for this process, or wouldn’t it have to be down?
Jim Wachtel: It would definitely have to be down.
Rick Hamilton: Square footage cost wise it’s a bad move.
Big John: What is the loss of revenue? We haven’t calculated that yet? How long would it take to do this work?
Jim Wachtel: With the demolition and all this kind of stuff, somewhere in the 6-9 month range. We’re not doing major structural exterior walls or anything, but there is a lot of square footage here.
Big John: We went through this exercise because you guys said this is a possibility, and Mr. Staed, we said at the last meeting we have committed to go back step by step and make sure we haven’t missed anything. So this is one of our due diligence processes to decide whether or not to do this. So shall we table this till we hear from Evelyn?
Evelyn Fine: I bring you greetings from Chicago. Although they don’t know much about Daytona Beach, they are certainly willing to look at Daytona as a meeting destination. We went to Chicago in order to look at people who wanted and used 125,000 to 200,000 square feet aggregate space.
Big John: Have you and Bob and the other "lords and ladies" of the hotel industry decided this is the optimum space?
Evelyn Fine: This came out of Mr. Arp’s committee of this organization, and meeting with people from the Ocean Resort, Mr. Arp’s staff and people on the convention committee.
Big John: So this is the recommendation that we are going to shoot for this space.
Evelyn Fine: This is what they are considering as the users of the new and expanded building.
Tom Staed: What are the numbers again?
Evelyn Fine: 125,000 to 200,000 square feet aggregate, including exhibit space, meeting space, etc. So we recruited people that we got from IACVB (International Association of Convention & Visitors’ Bureaus) and the Hyland Group who work with the Daytona Beach CVB and The Adam’s Mark in Jacksonville. So they are intimately familiar with what we are looking for and what we need down the road. They sent us a very long list, and we recruited people to sit in the focus group from that list. They ranged from people from the United Way, American Association of School Librarians, a company that has in-home house wares sales, so they were the kinds of people who would think of Daytona as a market for their conventions. They had to have used the State of Florida at least twice in the last four years for major meetings. We wanted to have people who were prone to come to the state in order to do that. They were very candid and willing to discuss with us what they wanted. They were corporate as well as association meeting planners.
When we have started a meeting-planning group since 9/11 what we have always done is chat for a few minutes about what is happening in the industry, and the good news is they don’t see the industry as really changed. They see the industry as going forward even seeing increases in numbers. So they are pretty positive in what is happening in the industry itself. We are on the right track in terms of considering meetings and conventions for this marketplace. They are definitely willing to look at us. In addition to discussing that, we also talked about their experience with Florida destinations and venues, also why they choose those venues. What makes them happy in a particular destination, what makes them happy in a particular building, and we also looked at full service properties how they feel about those what the relationship is between properties and convention centers, etc. We asked them to do some paper and pencil work. We asked them to prioritize the factors that help them choose a destination, we also asked them to rank the factors that helped them choose a building. Then we told them about an existing anonymous building and asked them how they would make changes to that building we told them what the current size was and where to go from that. Here’s your chance, design the building you want.
Big John: Did you show them a picture? Of the inside of the building?
Evelyn Fine: No we did not. We told them how much meeting space there was and how much auditorium space there was.
Big John: What did you tell them?
Evelyn Fine: Whatever the existing is. We did break it out for them 48,000 exhibit, 20,000 ballroom, 10,000 meeting. We showed them in a list rather than in a picture. We told them what was proposed, and that it was proposed in three phases, so they had an idea of what the situation was. Again, I want to emphasize this was anonymous. At the end of the session one of them said, "Are you talking about Fort Lauderdale?" We were pretty good about hiding from them where we were from.
The findings were pretty specific, to remind you we did the same thing in Washington D.C. with meeting planners there as well. The interesting thing about Washington D.C. is, being on the east coast they are a little bit more familiar with Daytona Beach than the Chicago planners were. That’s always a mixed bag, when you talk about Daytona Beach most people think of it as a special events venue rather than a meeting venue, where as in Chicago they didn’t know enough about us to think about it any other way.
Clearly Florida is still (we heard this in Washington and again in Chicago) the major meeting destination, although they talk about weather being significant. The interesting thing the people in Chicago said (remember these are people who have national meetings) more people live closer to the east coast than the west coast, so they still think about the east coast, and they also say the prices seem to be more reasonable in Florida. What they are comparing prices to are places like Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and they say that even Miami and Orlando are better deals, they get more value for their money. So they think of Florida in a very positive way. The interesting thing is the place we heard about was Tampa. They have had good experiences in Tampa, they liked the building, they liked the aggregate hotel rooms in the area, and they liked the team approach between the building and the CVB. So their most important factors for a meeting destination were: Convention Center functionality & size, Large properties with 800 to 1000 rooms, direct flights from major hubs & a variety of major carriers (and if we have any kind of problem in this destination that is a major one), cost to attendees, cost to organization. The other important factors were hotels with in 3-5 blocks; we’re good on that. They want a wide variety of hotels and prices. We are good on that one too. They want nearby casual and fine dining, that’s coming. A lot of people who use this destination are not fine dining people. They want casual dining after the meeting, the kinds of things they are going to do after the meeting. Of secondary import were historic, outdoor and cultural sites, major professional sports of any sort. We were in Chicago and I thought football, basketball those sorts of things. I thought golf, that’s not important.
Big John: Fishing?
Evelyn Fine: Not fishing.
Stuart Arp: Ice cream on the beach is important!
Evelyn Fine: We have been hearing this for a couple of years. Meeting planners don’t like a destination where people can run off and play golf unless they have built it in as part of their meeting, and they’re at a national golf resort.
Big John: So what do they want as far as sports, what about the beach?
Evelyn Fine: They don’t want sports; the beach is not an asset as far as making a decision. Remember the places they are happy in, Tampa, Orlando and Miami downtown. Chicago, Boston, those places are not beach destinations they are business oriented destinations, and that is what they are looking for. As far as choosing a convention destination the most important factors were cost of facility and services, ample concurrent breakout rooms, ample exhibit space with good layout & functionality, navigation from point to point within facility. They want an "in your face" type of facility, we have to be careful to move people around in the space and not have the exhibit space way out of the way. They don’t mind the different floors (they want escalators not elevators). They complained about one building in particular where they had to go downstairs and across and then up again to get to the second and third floors. We have to make sure we don’t do things like that. Also important were high quality food and service (they’re saying that more and more in arenas and government buildings they are getting good food and good service) they were really talking about some fine food options in the buildings they are using. Good technical capability, they all said wherever they go they end up having to rent some stuff, they expect to have to do this, it is not a surprise to them, they just want the capability to use it. Shuttle service if needed from hotels to the center. They loved the idea of a 3-5 block walk to the center, especially in Florida they said that is acceptable, accessible and professional sales and planning staff. And while not as important as others recommendations from other people who have used the facility, and they want to track down those recommendations themselves. Least important was parking; their people were not coming here in cars, so that was not important to them.
They were also asked to consider the proposed extension of the existing building; they all said the existing building was too small. It wasn’t going to make it into their decision group except for some small regional meetings. They would not use the building unless it had both increased meeting and exhibit space. They wanted an average of 100,000 square feet more of exhibit space and at least 40,000 square feet of meeting space. They were satisfied with the projected increase in ballroom space and said that was important to them as well. These people use everything they can get their hands on. It’s important to note they were able to tell us how many breakout rooms they wanted, they could tell us how many people they wanted to put in them, but they couldn’t tell us square feet. Finally, we spent a lot of time discussing Florida destinations in general. They don’t have a negative idea about Daytona Beach; they would consider it, they like the idea of another Florida venue as long as it met the specs. and they are pretty clear on what the specs are.
Lori Campbell Baker: Just a clarification, you said parking is not an issue?
Evelyn Fine: No, we are talking about people who are flying in and will take a bus or cab or whatever from the Airport and stay in the general area.
Lori Campbell Baker: Then they are just here. None of them rent cars?
Evelyn Fine: Remember these people are from big cities, they are used to getting around on public transportation.
Big John: Any comments from Sharon and Sally?
Sharon Mock: I was pleased to hear they are very complimentary of the destination. That has not happened in the past, some groups were very critical of us.
Big John: And you did this in Chicago? How many did you have there?
Evelyn Fine: Eight.
Big John: Eight, and these were like SMURF planners?
Evelyn Fine: Yes. Sally is that how you would describe them?
Sally Gardiner: National association and corporate, it was a combination.
Big John: And you both feel that this is an excellent potential market for us?
Sharon Mock: If we are going to grow as a destination the employer, national and regional associations, this is where we need to go.
Big John: How much did you think they wanted us to go? They have some generic building, what is the golden number?
Sally Gardiner: 85,000 square feet.
Jim Bazemore: So if we added 100,000 square feet we would be right in the middle? Exhibit space.
Big John: And right now we have what, Mr. Hamilton?
Rick Hamilton: 60,000, but we don’t have anything else when we use the arena space and the conference space when we use that 60,000.
Big John: So if you took away the conference you would have 46,000, so say we put in another 50,000 square feet of exhibit space you would have what they want. Is that our target?
Rick Hamilton: That is not contiguous.
Big John: What do you mean contiguous? You mean I can’t have a little thing in the middle?
Rick Hamilton: They don’t particularly like that; they want it all together. I go to a lot of these things and Evelyn is right on target, and I think her numbers are right on what the Johnson report is.
Big John: So you’re saying we are going to saw off the executive offices and the west lobby.
Rick Hamilton: If you add it and want that as contiguous space. When you do that you’re compromising because you’re taking away your assembly space in the arena when you use that floor as an exhibit hall. When you use that arena floor as an exhibit hall you can’t use it for anything else.
This week we have 9,000 ladies coming in for a women’s conference that are using only the arena.
Big John: And if we use Wachtel’s plan we don’t have Charisma and LSO and we don’t have several others, we don’t have the ice show.
Rick Hamilton: I think one of the key things Evelyn said is they want to have the exhibit space and be able to get into the meeting rooms very readily and handily so that they can do both things at the same time. At the same time, for those of you who don’t travel, a lot of you do, exhibit halls pay for the associations meeting. Their exhibitors pay the bill for their members to come to the meeting, so that’s a very important issue. We need to decide on the number that we need and design something that meets that and decide on the cost.
Big John: So you’re saying we don’t tack on 50,000 square feet, we tack on 100,000 square feet.
Rick Hamilton: Whatever that number turns out to be.
Rick Hamilton: Yes, and I think it’s a better buy. If you look at Jim’s numbers, that $6.9 million for 30,000 square feet and how much that is per square foot price, retro fits cost considerably more than it does to go on land that we already own.
Big John: We got that part, so we’re going to tack on 100,000 square feet of exhibit. How much are we going to tack on in meeting rooms?
Evelyn Fine: 40,000 square foot of meeting space.
Stuart Arp: Does that include ballroom that we have now?
Evelyn Fine: No, plus ballroom.
Rick Hamilton: Plus ballroom at 30,000 and you said everyone liked that number.
Big John: Is your ballroom the room in the front?
Rick Hamilton: It’s not large enough, when you get into the ballroom situation and you need to seat 2,000 plus people.
Evelyn Fine: Remember, we went to the people who need big numbers. Because that was the considered opinion of the committee that if we’re building that’s where we’re going. They are at the national meeting level and they want these big numbers.
Big John: Are you saying we don’t need that much?
Evelyn Fine: I’m saying that if we want this business, we need that much.
Big John: What size do we want Sharon?
Sharon Mock: We definitely want to move up to that level.
Big John: So we want 100,000 plus 40,000, is that right?
Rick Hamilton: Plus 30,000 for a ballroom.
Big John: Plus 30,000. So that’s 170,000. Is that the number?
Rick Hamilton: Yes sir.
Jim Wachtel: I just have a question; this is one group of people. Are there others and do their needs concur with these people?
Evelyn Fine: We have no trouble finding people once we left the State of Florida and the southern region, of that size. They’re big and they are out there, and they’re in Florida. And if we build this, we are still going to have people who say, I can’t fly in here on United or American Airlines. That needs to be said. It is a very clear issue with them.
Big John: But is it such a clear issue that we shouldn’t be building the building?
Evelyn Fine: That’s not up to me. I’m just reporting back what we found.
John Masiarczyk: That’s just the point. The bigger your market gets the more apt you are to fly in.
Big John: But if we build the building, is it going to be empty because we don’t have the air service?
Larry Fornari: Just to add one variable, if you build a building of this size, it allows the sales people to book multiple meetings at the same time. And a lot of these multiple meetings are drive-time meetings. You might have two Tallahassee drive-time meetings at the same time that would give you the same revenue flow as a national meeting. It opens up all sorts of doors; it does not totally generate drive-time meetings.
Big John: So we could have more than one meeting at the same time.
Sharon Mock: I think the functionality issue, we don’t want to get locked into people saying this is a meeting hall or this is an exhibit hall or this is a food hall, it needs to be a multipurpose space.
Gilly Aguiar: Just to piggyback on that, this wall could be a movable wall so it could be one meeting room or two meeting rooms. But what I want to get at is this; Chicago, do we want that business? Yes. Are we going to get it with our airport? No. You’ve done Washington and you’ve done Chicago and you’re getting the same numbers. They want the "in the face" factor, so that when they come out of the meeting rooms, they really have to go into the exhibit hall to get to lunch or whatever the next place is.
So if we build that space, you might have two or three regional things that are going on, but you might have national things that are drivable. From Atlanta or maybe Washington. The other part about the Airport is important. The big boys want to fly in they want to get their people here, they want to keep them hostage at the hotels at night and do the ballroom stuff like we talked about before. That’s important. Where do we fit in with our airport? Where do we fit in as far as how Sanford is growing with their airport because that would be a very accessible thing with 415 and 417.
Evelyn Fine: I also think there are creative ways of getting around this. Sally and Sharon and I discussed this after the group, because this seems to be an important issue for us to discuss. There are creative ways, if we say that we’ve got two major airlines again, and encourage them to fly in on those two airlines, and if not arrange shuttle service or something like that from any of the other places. We have everything else right and the price is right, etc. there are some we’ll win that way. The airport is important, most important is the building has to be right. Has to be accessible, has to be flexible it has to absolutely meet their needs, because there are places that do meet their needs that they will go to easily. We’re going to have to be ahead of the others, not behind them, because that will absolutely not get them here.
Jim Bazemore: I have a lot of friends in Myrtle Beach, they didn’t have an airline, they built one themselves. The point I’m trying to make is that a lot of these conventions you go to when you get to the airport you are an hour away from the hotel. There’s no question, you ride a bus to the hotel then have you captive, so to speak. Our airport won’t grow with more airlines unless we have more people coming here. So let’s capitalize on Sanford and set up some kind of shuttle service. Let’s be innovative to the extent that we have the perfect building and the only problem is that people can’t get here then take them to the nearest place and we’ll take over, like Myrtle Beach did, and bring them over here.
Big John: We could make DOTS rich if we did that. I just want to tell you a little bit about Sanford. Sanford’s total enplanement last year was 30,000. That’s 1/10th of Daytona Beach. They have one airline that’s marginal…
Frank Gummey: That will not fly conventioneers.
Big John: There are a million passengers going in and out of Sanford, but you can’t buy a ticket on the airline, it’s a charter from U.K., there are several charters, I don’t know why you can’t buy a ticket, but you can’t. We are on the verge of making an international deal for our airport right now and a deal that I think will help our airport immensely. I’m going to report to you about Continental coming back. I think most of you know how hard the airport is working to try to develop new air service. We’ll have to go pick these conventioneers up in Orlando. Mr. Gummey has words of wisdom.
Frank Gummey: I just want to point out that the carrier in Sanford is not one that would be utilized by conventioneers.
Big John: Just recently friends of mine were going to fly and they were notified the flight was canceled till the next day because of mechanical problems. It’s not unusual to have a 3 or 4 hour delay on Pan Am.
Evelyn Fine: The truth of it is, they just love the Orlando airport, they just love the Miami airport, not only are they international, they are close to the hotels and close to the convention center. Tampa also, close. You land downtown.
Big John: Could we bus them? Would they get on a bus?
Evelyn Fine: If we give them every other thing they want, some of them will get on a bus.
John Masiarczyk: Some of them will get on a bus, let me finish that. You’re not going to get people here the second time if you put them on gridlock I-4 and it takes them three hours to get from Orlando to Daytona. If you tell them we are going to stick them on a shuttle in 90° Florida weather, to go to Daytona Beach, they’re going to laugh at you. That’s just a personal opinion.
Sally Gardiner: I was talking to Sharon yesterday about what Jim said earlier. If they come into Jacksonville, and the meeting is in Jacksonville Beach, it’s the perception that they are still in Jacksonville. It’s an hour from the Jacksonville airport to the beach. Coming into Orlando and transporting them to Daytona is two different cities. And that is the perception of coming into one city and going to another one.
Big John: So do we do it or not?
Sharon Mock: We talked about how to overcome that. We have two very successful shuttle companies doing it successfully.
Tom Staed: I’ve done meeting planning with various associations, that is an obstacle, it’s not impossibility.
Dana Li: Are we getting the most out of the facility that we already have? Are we capturing all the markets that would use this type of facility?
Tom Staed: If you redo this facility at the most reasonable cost, you would have a better opportunity with state and regional conventions. Then you could grow into the national organizations in a dozen cities around the country. People will drive from Atlanta, and other parts of Florida. They won’t drive from Chicago and Washington, that would come if we had the air service. You need most of these things to get this facility up to speed. You need more exhibit space and meeting rooms. You need additional space for food service, although you can use part of the convention space.
Big John: We have a report now from Jerry Langston, but before that I would like to introduce Lyda Longa from the News Journal who will be reporting on this meeting.
Rick Hamilton: So that everyone knows, the chairman asked about some information on CRA’s, and Jerry is here to explain what a CRA is and if there is any possibility we could get any funding from them.
Big John: CRA came up for the pier project, the city just got $6 million from the Community Redevelopment Trust in Tallahassee, and they have to match it with $4 million. Mr. Ludo said they might use CRA money for the project, the CRA has been used extensively in the city, and I thought this is a public project and maybe it would qualify.
Gerald Langston: I thought when Rick talked to me if there was an issue of whether on not you can create an additional CRA, and the quick answer is there can be just one, and you already have one. It doesn’t create new taxes, it’s just a reallocation of taxes that are already approved. In 1982 was the year we established the CRA, and there is a process under the Florida Statutes for doing that.
Rick Hamilton: Tell them what it is Jerry, what CRA means.
Gerald Langston: It’s under the Florida Statutes 1977 Community Redevelopment Act it specifies the process and the legal hoops you have to jump through to establish a community redevelopment agency. The city did that there’s one agency, that’s the City Commission itself, now there are four different redevelopment areas. Initially in the bonding for the Ocean Center there was some issue about getting a favorable rate, so tax increment for a period of time was a cursory pledge on that bond with the primary pledge being the bed tax and then the revenue from the project then the tax increment that helped to lower the rate.
Frank Gummey: We did not use the tax increment. The city chose to use electric franchise. Tax increment was used on the downtown harbor project, but not on the Ocean Center.
Gerald Langston: The situation is now there can be just one, because in 1982 the tax base was frozen and the major contributors, the county and the city and the hospital district all additional income, and there is a formula for that, goes into a trust fund to be spent just in that area. It accounts to about 14 mils on new projects coming online and those funds have been used to buy new parking, streetscapes and facilitate these public/private deals. The situation the city is in now, is there was such a commitment to make the Adam’s Mark and Ocean Walk work that they are very limited in what they can do. I doubt if there is any ability to use community redevelopment tax funds to support your project. It’s just not there, we did because we knew at the time that one property owner owned a major part of the block south of the Adam’s Mark, that there was the potential for a project there and that area was carved out of the deal for Ocean Walk, so the tax increment for just that super block that goes from Main St. to the boardwalk public area from Adam’s Mark south to Main St. is still available for that project. Other than that there really is nothing available to support the Ocean Center.
Gilly Aguiar: Can this district be added on to?
Gerald Langston: It has been added on to accommodate future projects south of ISB.
Frank Gummey: The current district is ocean to river (the sub district for the Main St. area), from 92 to Oakridge.
Big John: Any questions for Jerry? Thank you for your time. Let’s go back to Wachtel, is it too early to make a decision as to whether or not we want to do the demolition and redesign?
Tom Staed: The truth of the matter is, I would be very opposed to eliminating that arena use for the citizens of Daytona Beach. And the events we have in the arena that benefits the hoteliers at present.
Lori Campbell Baker: While the price is right, I don’t think it accomplishes what we need to accomplish.
Darlene Yordon: Maybe I misunderstood, but it sounded like what he presented isn’t what we need.
Big John: I requested him to do this as "due diligence" because Gilly once mentioned what if we get rid of the stadium. I learned that you pick at every little item so you don’t jump over anything and miss anything, and make these little tiny decisions so when we get to the end we’re satisfied we haven’t overlooked anything.
Darlene Yordon: So we’ll know exactly what we didn’t want.
Tom Staed: I think his presentation was very beneficial the size that we presently have in our mind, we have Evelyn’s research. We have the sizes that we need, and I think it jumps off the page at you that you can go to the west and build a high story building. I can picture this at the west end of the building and attach it to the present building, and build what we can build now with the ability to add to it.
Gilly Aguiar: After really looking at this and listening to the report, I think this retrofit wouldn’t meet the needs because it doesn’t have the "in your face" coming from the meeting rooms to transfer them from upstairs to downstairs. Maybe the escalators could drop them right in the exhibition space, but like Mr. Staed said, do we really want to take away from the community? That’s the only thing Rick makes any money on.
Big John: No more Elton John.
Darlene Yordon: Why?
Big John: If you tore out the seats.
Gilly Aguiar: One thing I think we really need to do is stick to the numbers that Evelyn came home with. She went to two different focuses, and this is where we need to end up. This is not something we can compromise on, if we’re going to go spend a lot of money on something, we need to build what we need.
Big John: So we’re agreeing not to tear down the building. Is it the consensus of the committee that we not tear out the stadium of this building? There may be some redesign of the meeting space; there certainly may be escalators in our future.
Lori Campbell Baker: Rick can you remind that your profit on that part of the business is higher than on…
Rick Hamilton: Yes, much higher.
Lori Campbell Baker: Can you remind us what that profit is?
Rick Hamilton: $40,000 per event approximately. The ice show was about $63,000.
Lori Campbell Baker: What is the percentage of revenue?
Rick Hamilton: It is probably seven or eight to one compared to many businesses. But I want everyone to understand that if we get into these larger groups and catering also, those numbers are going to increase also, which we currently can’t do.
Stuart Arp: Let’s not loose sight of what we want to do here, get people to come to town, and stay in the hotels. We don’t generate a lot of room nights for concerts, etc.
Rick Hamilton: But we just do five or six a year also.
Jim Bazemore: I heard the figure of 9,000 women coming to town soon. Are they going to stay here or drive in and drive out?
Rick Hamilton: They are staying here, up and down the street.
Stuart Arp: They are staying here.
Jim Bazemore: So there are going to be 9,000 people staying in our rooms. That’s where the money comes from.
Stuart Arp: They have my whole hotel starting tomorrow. They’re all up and down the strip.
Big John: So, we agree to leave the building alone. Stuart, why don’t you do the subcommittee report.
Stuart Arp: Last month on the subcommittee there were myself, Rick, Gary Brown, Sharon Mock, Bob Trillo from the News Journal, Darlene Yordon, Evelyn Fine, Larry Cohen, plus several people in the audience who participated.
We didn’t decide on anything, we just had a frank discussion about what kind of business we do here and where we want to go. Everybody agreed we need a bigger facility, the airport was brought up and stressed. We talked bout Sharon’s focus group; we talked about the initial feasibility study and what that entailed. I think we are hearing the same numbers from the focus groups and the initial consultant’s report about what we need. We talked about the quality of hotel rooms we have now, the shopping/restaurant complex that is going in now as being an important factor close by. Talked about the current business that’s here and their needs, they will basically take anything we build. We talked about the importance of another focus group that was just completed. We talked about comparing our facility to other facilities and that’s the information Rick put together. We talked about exploring some financially successful centers, but as Rick mentioned, there are very few that turn a profit, because there again they are there to generate room nights for the city, and are funded as such.
So I don’t know if we came away with any answers of what it’s supposed to be, but study it some more, talk to a few more people that would use it, and see if we are hearing the same things, and apparently we are. Now we have a pretty good feeling after listening to Evelyn and Sharon, and that we wouldn’t make too many mistakes proceeding with those numbers. I think we already have that, I’d like to talk to the architect again and go back a little bit to some of our redesigns we might have something similar to that, that meets those numbers and re-explore that. It was some good dialogue and everybody participated I think we all decided we need a little bit more study to make us feel more comfortable in where we are going with this, and I’m starting to feel that. We didn’t walk out of the meeting with the answer. We decided the facility needed to be bigger, we need to talk to the right people, and we have a good package now where in the past we didn’t have the hotel rooms, and now we have them. We agreed we need to listen to a few more people to verify what we want, and I think we’ve already done that.
Rick Hamilton: One of the big things we did was give Evelyn definite direction for her focus group as to what to go out and look for, and I think she did that, and she did it post-haste. From our subcommittee meeting she got it together, she went out, did it, came back, and reported to you today.
We have built some consensus and everybody is saying the same thing.
Stuart Arp: The minutes were sent out, I hope every one got them, if not I will send them to you.
Big John: At that meeting, Ms. Baker, we did not have a meeting from the Speedway.
Lori Campbell Baker: I noticed that, but I think we made contact. We had a conflict.
Big John: I would like to get the Speedway corporate sales person involved in this.
Lori Campbell Baker: He just got promoted, we are bringing in someone brand new, so there will be transition time, but I will talk to him about it to see what we can do in the mean time.
Big John: I think the Speedway could bring as much business as the convention and business bureau. They have a huge number of contacts.
While we’re on this issue, one thing that was not mentioned in anybody’s reports, I think it would make a huge difference if the CVB were in the same building as the Ocean Center. I think that would improve communications and productivity and make it easier on both sides of the table.
Rick Hamilton: Sharon and I have talked about it over the years, she has sent me a letter formalizing the request be put into the planning process.
Big John: Rick can we have your report?
Rick Hamilton: I went on the internet and pulled off some of the competing facilities that we have. I’m prejudiced to the top one, Cobb Galleria Centre, is a very, very successful facility due to its design and location. Whoever said location, location, location is absolutely correct. This facility is in Marietta, GA. At the intersection of four major interstate highways plus the loop around Atlanta, it has MARTA and rail transit from the airport directly to the facility, there are a lot of reasons. This facility uses resort tax collection in the area very similar to this one, but essentially they just escrow it. The first year it opened, it cleared $2.5 million, last year it cleared $4.5 million net profit just from it’s operations. Again, that’s not going to happen here. It is a very well designed building. When it was built approximately seven years ago, it was built for $40 million.
I don’t think I need to go through all of them. You can look at them; some sites are better than others. Myrtle Beach is in there. You’ll find out in Bob’s report next, that most of these facilities are looking at or have just completed an expansion. Look through these, they may give you some design ideas from where we are right now and where we need to go in the future. I also included some of their sales hype in there so you could get some ideas.
Big John: Ceiling height, 41 feet tell me about ceiling height.
Rick Hamilton: Ceiling height is put in to handle large equipment. A crane, a backhoe you may have boats in there that have fly bridges on them. Two and three story exhibits are things you look at from major corporate shows now. In addition, they like to hang signage from the ceiling down to where their exhibits are.
Stuart Arp: Is the Cobb Galleria the main convention center in Atlanta?
Rick Hamilton: No. World Expo is about 2.4 million square feet.
Gilly Aguiar: Just to talk about this one (Cobb Galleria), you said they netted $4 million. When you look at it, that mall, is it theirs also? This isn’t function money.
Rick Hamilton: The mall is theirs also. The $4.5 million is directly from the convention center business. There was a shopping mall there that wasn’t doing a great deal of business, they have a private, non profit board of directors that’s made up of business leaders in that community. They formed a group that bought the mall then they added the convention center to the mall. They are getting ready to double the size of this facility. They have built two new hotels since then and they are getting ready to build an arena and a performing arts center that’s going to attach to this complex.
Big John: When we build a building, when we decide what it should be. Should it be expandable?
Rick Hamilton: Yes.
Big John: This building wasn’t built to be expandable. The new building should be expandable.
Rick Hamilton: They got a great deal, because the shopping center was getting ready to go bankrupt.
Gilly Aguiar: Do you know what the Myrtle Beach center is funded by?
Rick Hamilton: Bob is going to tell you about that next.
Evelyn Fine: We keep hearing about Tampa, everywhere we go we keep hearing about Tampa.
Rick Hamilton: Tampa is a beautiful building.
Gilly Aguiar: They have put more hotels around it and made it very accessible.
Rick Hamilton: Tampa is a good one to look at. They built the building; they struggled when they first opened. They didn’t have hotels they didn’t have parking. There’s a great deal of similarities. We built the building we didn’t have the quality hotel rooms that we needed. Now we are at the next step, and I think that if you check into it, Tampa is looking at future expansion.
Evelyn Fine: I think that is the one in this State that we compete with. It’s the one we keep hearing about; it keeps satisfying people so much.
Big John: Let’s hear from Mr. Mills now.
Bob Mills: I did a lot of groundwork on this, and I went on the internet like Rick did. I took the list from the competitive convention centers, the southeast United States. I looked at a lot of these convention centers and found the ones that were similar to us and in a relatively contiguous geographical location. Then I found out the finance person in each of these facilities. I called about 20 of them and I was actually able to get into contact with about ten of them, as I’ve listed here. I talked to the finance director at the facility. I didn’t talk to the director; I wanted to talk to the finance person because they could tell me how they really get their money.
There is a lot of information here; I put a lot of footnotes in. I struggled with what the common thread is. The common thread is that these people go out and find the money wherever they can; there is no exact formula that everybody follows. But every one of these uses some form of bed tax or tourist tax to help fund their organization.
We mentioned Tampa that’s an interesting one that’s a city facility. If you look at the county wide bed tax of 7%, they don’t really get all that 7%. It is the bed tax, but they operate basically as a budgeted entity. They have to put a budget together and submit it to the city and as they need money, it is doled out from the city. Whether they make money to cover their events or not. Most of these convention centers did make enough money in their events to cover the cost of running the facility. The bed tax is basically used to cover the debt service on most of these facilities.
Big John: Is that true in our case?
Bob Mills: Yes. Our revenue covers our operations.
Tom Staed: When you said others cover debt service, and the operations are self -sustaining.
Bob Mills: Not always, but in most cases the operations are relatively self-sustaining. Some of them it’s a budgeted item such as a city owned operation. If the events don’t cover the cost then they go to the city general fund to cover that. But in most cases from what I found the debt service is covered by tax.
Jim Bazemore: Bottom line is that the monies we collect from bed tax pays the debt service for this operation and basically it carries itself.
Bob Mills: Yes, but there’s more to it than that. I’ve given you three sheets; the second sheet is our collections. One of the things the council asked me to do at the last meeting is to look at what our collections are so far this year on the bed tax (the 2% bed tax). The bed tax was going to be a little over $4 million this year and after covering the debt service our budget would be $2 million to help cover the operational cost.
Jim Bazemore: So we cover the debt service and put $2 million a year into the facility.
Bob Mills: But that said, we generally run a pretty nice surplus also. So we don’t use all that $2 million for operational cost.
Jim Bazemore: What percent to we use?
Bob Mills: It depends, in some years we spend a lot of money on capital expenditures, buying land, capital to replace bleachers, etc. But the actual operating cost, the staff is covered by the events. The administrative staff is pretty much covered by this too.
Gilly Aguiar: It seems to me I remember a report where we do run a deficit and we use some of the taxes.
Rick Hamilton: We do. What Bob is looking at is what is directly in operations, not marketing sales, capital improvements, all those types of things. He is relating operations to the guys that are making the changeovers and the engineers that make this thing work.
Jim Bazemore: Rick I look at this thing like a business, how much money do I have to dig into my room tax to make this thing run? It was never designed for our taxes to maintain the actual operating cost.
Rick Hamilton: The bed tax money, the operational revenues from this facility, when both go together debt service is paid, operations are paid, marketing and sales are paid and all capital improvements and outlays are paid we are running about $400,000 surplus.
Jim Bazemore: What we tried very hard to do was to ease this thing up to where it paid for itself. Then the additional money was supposed to be used to advertise. This was a cash cow if we got it going right. We haven’t done that, I understand that, but that was our goal.
Rick Hamilton: What the surplus has gone to, and Bob is right in that, is we have kept this facility up all these years, everything in this facility essentially has been replaced at least once. The roofing, we’ve bought property for expansion, we bought property for the parking garage, and all those things have gone into the mix.
Jim Bazemore: A lot of people don’t know that.
Big John: Now remember we lost $400,000 revenue from parking.
Bob Mills: Now going back to the first page, I did present some conclusions at the bottom, first there is no set pattern, second all of them did use some form of bed tax to help fund the operation. The third is pretty interesting; they all said they had a consultant in and they said pretty much the same thing as Evelyn has been saying about the size and growth. When you go on the internet and look at what they have for rooms, in terms of room sizes, how many rooms they have in terms of convention sizes, it’s not exactly the same as when you actually talk to somebody. For instance, when you look at Knoxville, when you go online it says there are 600,000, but when you look there is only 125,000 exhibit space, 30,000 ballroom and 26,000 square feet of meeting rooms. It is because they are undergoing an expansion. If you also look most of these facilities are either new, newly expanded, in the process of expanding or planing on expansion. So expansion is the name of the game. They have been talking to consultants and finding out there is more business out there and to capture it, we’ve got to grow bigger. The question is, do you want to grow bigger to try to capture the market that everybody else is trying to capture? Obviously if we don’t grow bigger the other guys are going to get it.
Number five, in conclusion, almost all of the people I talked to said the event costs as well as most of their administrative staffs are covered by the event revenue. In terms of meeting rooms you can see that the high number of meeting rooms was Tampa, that stands out, and the average number of meeting rooms is 21. An interesting note also, when I looked at the internet and talked to these people, a lot of what has been echoed here has been exactly what they said. Their rooms can be divided into multiple rooms. In Gatlinburg they have 67,000 square feet of convention area that can be divided into three rooms, so they can actually have three events going on at one time. They could be feeding people in one room and having exhibits in another room. You’ve got to have some flexibility in these things.
Number eight, basically the city owned facilities to operate not necessarily off the general fund, but they will go to the general fund to cover any shortfalls. They do get incremental tax funding from the bed tax, but at the same time that’s doled out by the city on an as-needed basis.
Big John: Somebody sent me an article from the New York Times that said everybody is expanding, going to these big businesses, and some of them are going broke by doing that.
Bob Mills: That’s obviously something to think about.
Gilly Aguiar: When we looked at it, we looked at the second tier level, not looking at the Atlanta’s and the Philadelphia’s. We want to make sure we don’t try to start trying to reach for something we don’t want.
Bob Mills: Again you can see that the sizes of the exhibit halls are all in the range that we have been talking about.
Rick Hamilton: When it gets to the point that it is crunch time, or decision time, prior to that, we will load everybody up and go look at some of these facilities. Let you ask the same questions you’re asking of us, to the people there. I think Evelyn’s absolutely right, Tampa is a must see, Savannah is close and it should be looked at also, and another one is Chattanooga, I don’t know if you want to go that far, but they are going through an expansion now.
Stuart Arp: I have a question about some of the funding, in Gatlinburg it says 1.2% business in the impact area, what is that?
Bob Mills: They do have a 1.2% general business tax there. I don’t know how they collect it, as I said I made notes as I talked to these people and some of this was a little fuzzy after I compiled it, but that’s a general business tax in that area. Just the affected area, like here it would be the redevelopment area.
Rick Hamilton: I was there when they did it. Essentially at the time, five families owned the city, and those five families leased their property to various businesses within the community. They had a city council meeting, and the five families decided they wanted a convention center so they imposed a tax on everybody within the city, which is themselves, to collect a tax to build the convention center and that’s how they funded it.
Jim Bazemore: What kind of tax was it, a sales tax?
Rick Hamilton: It’s on sales for everyone within the city.
Bob Mills: In Gatlinburg they also get some state income tax money because they are considered a primer resort destination so they get a special allocation from state funds also. One of them, I think it was Knoxville, are considering expansion and they are looking at sin taxes on alcohol and cigarettes and car rentals trying to come up with the money.
Rick Hamilton: Again that has been before the legislature, I’m familiar with that. It has been before the legislature three times and has been worked on for five years and probably will be passed this time, by the time it is done, it will have taken them six years to get a positive vote.
Mike Porter: He mentioned there is no common strings between all these convention centers. I lived in Tampa for a while, I went to school in Miami, and I’ve been up to Jacksonville. The one common string among them is the businesses are members of the convention center, they have a paid membership of better than a thousand businesses and when it comes to expansion they have their own little army to go before the county council or the city commission. They all pay their dues once a year, they give leads to meeting planners, the community deals directly with meeting planners, and it seems like from your numbers meeting planners like that. I know that they still do that, I still get notices from Miami and Tampa that it’s time for your dues.
Bob Mills: I didn’t have anybody mention that in any of my conversations, I did have one person tell me they did have a very large board of people from the community just like we do here and they and the planning was done through that board.
Mike Porter: I’m sure you could get a directory of members from any of those convention centers.
Big John: Michael, are you talking about CVB’s? We used to have a membership that you paid. We may get back to that, when we build certainly we have been discussing something like that so we can communicate better with the leadership.
Gary Brown: It would be interesting to see what the air service is in to these places. I know some of them have major airports, but places like Gatlinburg and Savannah, how far is it to the airport, what kind of air carriers they have, that might make some impact on how hard it is to sell.
Big John: That’s an excellent idea. We’ll have Cooke do that, make a note to call Dennis and have a regular report on that.
Larry Fornari: On that premier resort tax, is that something that is worked out with the state where there is a reapportionment of the sales tax where they get some of the sales tax back to the area or is that an additional tax?
Bob Mills: No that’s additional dollars out of the state funds. It’s coming back directly from the state.
Larry Fornari: Is that something that is possible with the State of Florida?
Bob Mills: One other thing I did ask these people is how important the hotels were to them, and every one of them indicated the hotels were absolutely essential, and of course the convention center is essential to them as well. In Gatlinburg they don’t really have an anchor hotel, they have a lot of hotels in the area, he didn’t come right out and say that hurts their business, but you take something like the Cobb Galleria where they are anchored by Courtyard, Marriott, by Sheraton Suites, Renaissance and Homewood suites. That’s obviously a big benefit for them also.
Big John: I was going to have a side conversation with Stuart or someone, I don’t understand how the Ocean Walk Village or the Regency, I guess it’s sort of like a hotel when it’s got vacancies. I would like to know more about that, maybe we could put that on the agenda and Stuart or somebody can give us some information about them.
Stuart Arp: Why don’t we get someone from their business to come?
Big John: I’m amazed they don’t come. Let’s invite someone so we can find out how their hotel rooms work.
Tom Staed: Time-share people historically use their own units a fairly high percentage of the time. Time-share units are rarely available; they use them from all over the country.
Big John: So, how many rooms do we have available?
Stuart Arp: I think there are about 125 from Ocean Walk are available for hotel.
Big John: You have 700+ and he has 300+ and the Radison. I think this report is a good start.
Gilly Aguiar: Can we include the Boca Raton where we had the governor’s conference last year.
Rick Hamilton: That’s private.
Gilly Aguiar: I know, but that’s a nice layout, as far as exhibit space and in-your-face space.
Stuart Arp: I think some of these funding sources are interesting, cigarette tax, meal tax, amusement tax on tickets, that’s what I find helpful as we proceed with this because that’s going to be our next big hurdle.
Sharon Mock: I’ve got some additional information about Virginia Beach’s funding package that the fellow up there sent me, I’ll be happy to share with you, I’ll send it to Rick.
Big John: Any input we could get from you hotel people sitting here. We’ve decided we’re not going to touch this building for the most part, now we have to decide what we’re doing. Anybody, who stumbles on a grain of truth somewhere, let us know about it.
Bob Mills: The other thing the TDC asked me to look at was the level of collections on the 2% tax so far this year. This second spread sheet has about 12 columns hidden on it. The county gives me information each month about what was collected the prior month, and I have to look at it in terms of historical trends and try to project what we will have for the year. So I’ve taken the last five years and developed averages and historical trends as to how much we collected each month. Based on the fact that March was a real terrific month, in the far right hand column I predicted we would only bring in revenues of $580,000 in gross revenues it actually came in at $642,000. Even though it says March there it is actually February, it’s always a month behind. So based on my projections we’re going to come within about $140,000 of the projections for this year. Rick says no, we’re going to do better than that.
Rick Hamilton: Ms. Weaver could not be here today, she is sending me a memo with the rest of the questions you had about auditing and collection of taxes and it will go out with the minutes package also.
Bob Mills: One of the other things they asked me to look at, and I went through the last year and out of 91 events there were only 26 events that used only the arena, however, there were 41 events that used a combination of the arena, conference center and meeting rooms. Fifteen were conference only and out of those only one used meeting rooms. There were 43 events where meeting rooms were used and the average was five.
Big John: I’m glad we decided to keep the arena, we would have really had a problem with the high schools.
Old Business?
Lori Campbell-Baker: What about the Peabody?
Big John: I have tracked that down, I am told it is with Ms. Evans. Darlene, I would like to invite the city council to the next meeting so we can find out about it.
Other items to be discussed? No other items to be discussed.
New business?
After some discussion it was decided the next meeting would be June 5th at the Adam’s Mark.
Meeting was adjourned at 10:50 AM.
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