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Tourist Development Council Meeting
Minutes
June 16, 2006
Daytona Beach International Airport - Volusia Room

Call to Order:
Chairman Frank Bruno called the meeting to order at 9:12 a.m.

Approval of Minutes of February 21, 2006:
Motion to approve the minutes was made by Lori Campbell Baker and seconded by Sharon Hughes.

Quarterly Financial Report:
Donna DePeyster, Volusia County Assistant Director of Accounting reviewed the Quarterly Financial Report, which was distributed to the TDC Board Members. The report included the comparison to the same time period last year. Sharon Hughes commented on how she appreciated the addition of the extra comparison column. Rick Hamilton said that, remarkably, with the number of hotel rooms down due to the hurricanes, our tourist resort tax has stayed up.

Status Report on Expansion:
We went out to bid for Phase III of our project, which is the vertical construction, and those bids came in on March 22nd. We received bid packages back on approximately 60% of the overall project. Of that 60% we received back, we were $8 million over budget. The remaining 40% of the project received no bids at all. We had a huge problem and did not know exactly what to do because we had been assured that we were going to see bids and response was going to be good on all packages. We had to go to work to look at alternatives on what direction we were going to go in. The staff and consultants worked diligently for several weeks to try and come up with a scenario that would meet the needs of this group, the public and to the elected body we promised we would deliver this facility to. We called in some of the consultants and the sub-contractors that had actually made bids on the facility to see if we could narrow down the scope. We did found some mistakes (steel was off 100 tons) but it was still not enough to get us back in budget. We worked with Hardin Peck whose original contract, at the time, was "Construction Manager At Risk". What that meant is that they would give us a guaranteed maximum price at 50% documents. They did not feel comfortable with that, we moved on through somewhat less than 100% documents and we are now currently at 100% documents and one of the alternatives that we looked at was to part ways with Hardin Peck, because they are no longer at risk, we have everything defined in the project, we have 100% documents. We then looked at how to complete the project with out them. We looked at increasing the scope of work of our owner’s representatives to add some onsite supervision on a daily basis; we also looked at increasing the architectural component to provide additional inspection services. That is what we took to the County Council and the Council approved it unanimously, so now the County will be holding all of the sub-contracts, first time in Volusia County’s history that has been done, and our owners representatives, along with TVS (our architects) will be overseeing the job. In addition to that, the County Council also did something they have never done in our history; they gave the County Manager authority to borrow up to $76 million on this project without coming back to Council. The other thing that occurred during all of this process, Hardin Peck had a 5% fee they were charging on the total project, so that money is being saved to put back in the project. The sales tax savings is a big number also. Everything we do as the County of Volusia is now tax-exempt, saving us an additional 6.5%. We feel good that the project is going to move forward and we can come in with what we promised the public. If you’ve not been over recently, a couple of exciting things are happening, we actually have steel reinforcing rods coming out of the ground, the major portion of the underground utilities are in and they’re finishing our foundation footings so there is a lot of activity going on at the site. Mr. Barry Lilja and his staff have the pre-qualifications for our bidders on the internet and they will be advertised in the paper, so within 2 weeks after Council approved this, the staff has moved forward. As of Friday, June 30th, Hardin Peck will cease operations on the site, they will assign all their contracts and commitments to the County of Volusia and OCORP will pick it up on Monday, so there will be no time lost in the construction process. The only time that will be lost is for the re-bid for the sub-packages for the project. We are now telling the world that we will be ready for business Summer 2008. We are still hopeful we can open sooner but don’t feel comfortable with making any commitments any earlier than that. Hardin Peck and the County of Volusia severed relationships with a mutual understanding.

Bookings Report:
Debby Misita, Ocean Center Convention Sales Manager, presented this report. The Booking Report is compiled by Fiscal Year and it reflects the events that are contracted from October 2006 through September 2008. The Ocean Center continues to attract new and repeat multi-day events, as well as community events bringing new dollars into the area. For the tenth year in a row the Ocean Center has Educational Testing Service renting the facility with approximately 2,000pp in attendance for over 23 consecutive days; following this will be the week long Showbiz Nat’l Talent event (another multi-day repeat event) with approximately 3,000 patrons using local hotels during their time here. Since the date of our previous meeting, the Ocean Center has hosted many large multi-day events such as the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors (3,000pp for 4 days), Spring Break National Car Audio Expo (6 days for 12,000pp per show day), National Cheerleading Association Championship and Daytona Beach Classic Events (4,000pp for 5 days), Cat Fanciers Association Cat Show (500pp for 3 days), Sports Network Drill Team Competition (3,000pp for 5 days) and the Daytona Double Portion Conference (1,000+pp for 4 days). The Ocean Center maintains many repeat bookings, which says just as much or more for the destination as it does for the facility and staff. The booking report reflects that each month there are several multi-day events scheduled. The booking report only reflects the events that are under contract, not events that are tentatively holding space until their dates get closer to sign a contract. Since the last meeting, the Ocean Center Sales Staff attended the International Franchise Association’s Annual Convention in Palm Springs, CA. This was a new event for us and we received several good leads. We attended the National Association of Consumer Shows Annual Convention and Tradeshow happening yesterday and today in Philadelphia. We will also be attending the Healthcare Convention & Exhibitor’s Association Annual Meeting & Tradeshow on June 24-28 in Ft. Lauderdale – this is the second time we’ve attended this event and it ties directly to the efforts of the County’s Economic Development activities to attract medically related products industries to Volusia County, and we will report those results at the next meeting. Rick Hamilton made the following several comments to the booking report segment of the meeting: Ocean Center’s contracted bookings are now on our website at www.oceancenter.com. The Ocean Center has a new booking system, hopefully it will be up and running within the month. Our advertising folks, Jim DiChiara with Exceptional Marketing will be here on June 27th to look at laying out our marketing strategy for next year and this will be reported at the next meeting.

Update From Partners
One issue for Hotel-Motel, Bob Davis reported that schools can not start now until 14 days prior to Labor Day in 2007-2008 and that will give us back our family business (for example: in 1998 or 1999, the bed tax was $1.4 million in August and last year it slipped down to $800,000).

Sharon Mock reported the CVB was fully involved in the marketing plan and taking their budget to the County next month. Sharon and Rick have discussed a co-op advertising campaign (which has been done in the past); the inter-face of the two campaigns between the Ocean Center and CVB should prove to be very productive.

Bob Davis has been working on the internet tax for the last year. Just received a letter from the attorney general who is looking into it – losing billions of dollars over the bed tax and sales tax. When he gets more definite answers Mr. Davis will report to the committee with them. Frank Bruno mentioned he’s Vice Chair on the Regional Council Leadership with Chairman Rich Crotty and that issue came up the other day and is a major interest to Orange County.

Lori Campbell Baker reported that the CVB just finished the Countywide Visitor’s Guide. Also, suggested visiting the re-design of Daytonabeach.com - really looks nice, user friendly.

Frank Bruno asked if the Ocean Center is unable to accommodate a booking request, do we refer the business to other Volusia County facilities? The answer is yes, according to Rick Hamilton we try to keep the business in Volusia County – Ocean Center has been working with Peabody for years, also worked with former management of BCC Performing Arts Center as well as Volusia County Fairgrounds. We have just started working with the News Journal Center.

Public Participation
Big John asked when the expansion would be complete? Provided we have two tranquil hurricane seasons, Rick Hamilton reiterated that the expansion should be complete by the summer of 2008.

Meeting was adjourned at 9:41am.

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