City's management of Event Center passes one-year mark

ALLEN -- More than a year has passed since the city of Allen took over management operations for the Allen Event Center. Despite the facility's troubled past and lingering legal questions with the facility's initial management company, city officials feel good about the future of the 6,225-seat, city-owned sports and entertainment venue.

"It's going well," said Tim Dentler, director of parks and recreation. "That first year, I think we all realized it was going to take an education process of people knowing what the Event Center was and what kind of things are in the Event Center, and I think we're starting to see the rewards of that."

When the city takeover was first made public, city officials were optimistic the facility would be self-sustaining. As it stands now, the facility is projected to fall $380,900 short this year -- a figure City Manager Peter Vargas said could improve during the remaining six months of the fiscal year.

"Right now, we're below our projections for our revenue for the whole year, but we're also getting into the summer months where we have the possibility of some concerts and other activities that will come in," Vargas said. "We are looking at a pretty substantial calendar of activities, and we're optimistic that will bring in the needed revenue to operate the facility."

When the venue opened in November 2009, it was managed by Global Entertainment Corporation, an outside company responsible for the center's daily operations and payroll. Concerns over Global's management began within months of its opening, and city officials met with the company in April 2010 to discuss concerns over service-related customer complaints and a lack of event bookings. A parks and recreation employee was transferred that same month to the facility's community ice rink to assist with its daily operations.

Things came to a head in June of last year when Global asked to borrow $36,000 from the city to make payroll for Event Center employees. The city agreed to loan Global the money only if the company would turn over daily operations of the venue to the city, a transition made official on June 25, 2010.

After the split, the city determined Global owed $546,000 in loans for payroll and utilities. By October 2010, the city had drafted a transition agreement that would see the full amount gradually paid back through a 50 percent share on all Event Center ticket sales through GetTix.Net, a ticketing service owned by Global. By February 2011, Vargas said, it became clear that Global was not going to approve the agreement, so the city entered a new ticketing agreement with Ticketmaster as soon as the Allen Americans season came to a close.

The city is considering legal steps to recoup the money it feels it is owed by Global and will discuss its options with the council at a future date, Vargas said.

New directions

Since taking over, the city has been working to address the concerns and complaints made by guests during the center's first eight months of existence, such as high concession prices and a difficult-to-navigate website. The city responded with a 25 percent reduction in food and drink prices and a complete website redesign, which features an up-to-date listing of events and links to the center's new Facebook and Twitter accounts.

"We took those complaints and those concerns seriously, and in fact when we took over the operations and management of the building, we had our list compiled from those discussions with the citizens and those folks using the building," Dentler said. "That's one of the areas that we spent a lot of time on this last year: customer service, efficiency, and making sure we offered a good product at a good price."

The city has also ramped up efforts to secure more events for the venue, the lack of which was another source of complaints from Event Center patrons. By Vargas' estimation, the city has almost doubled the number of events since taking over, expanding the scope of the venue's use to high school graduations and proms. The city hopes to soon host at least one concert a month at the center.

"We've basically just opened up our vision, if you will, to not just the concerts and the top-line entertainment," Vargas said. "Let's go after the proms. Let's go after the graduations. We are basically open to any potential use of the facility."

One way the city could attract big-name performers for such events, Vargas said, is sponsorships -- a company can attach its name to an event and split the costs with the city while receiving a portion of the ticket sales. Dentler said the city has already received a few calls inquiring about such sponsorship opportunities.

In terms of promotion, the city has adopted a philosophy of awareness. Getting people into the facility -- whether through non-traditional events such as the March Allen Parks Foundation benefit concert with Neil McCoy or family events at the community rink -- is key to generating interest in the venue, Dentler said.

Brandy Rentz, marketing manager for parks and recreation, has been in charge of marketing efforts for the Event Center since the city took over in June 2010. She said she and her colleagues have adopted a strategy of "general-awareness marketing" for the Event Center.

"Our goal is to make sure everyone knows about [the] Allen Event Center first so they will naturally look to the venue for entertainment options," she said. "We are creating a 'pull' so people actively seek out events at Allen Event Center instead of a one-off marketing 'push' focused solely on each event that comes to the building."

Dollars and sense

Over the past 12 months, the city has mostly focused on securing rentals -- events in which organizations pay the city a fee to use the facility. Such events range from high school graduations to high-profile collaborative projects such as the Texas Stampede. While rentals still cost the city money, all rentals since July 2010 have turned varying degrees of profit, with the Central Hockey League's Allen Americans games netting the city almost $528,000.

However, the two events organized and funded by the city alone have proved less profitable. An August 2010 concert featuring blues guitarists BB King and Buddy Guy turned a modest $5,000 profit, and September's Skating and Gymnastics Spectacular fell short by $145,740 -- though Vargas said it did provide free national television exposure for the center.

Attendance figures have also varied from event to event. The Sean Hannity Freedom Concerts tour stop in August drew a capacity crowd of 5,725, but few other events -- aside from graduations -- have scaled such heights since. Vargas and Dentler both said the Neal McCoy concert and fundraiser, which was set up with half-of-house seating for maximum intimacy, is a good example of the building's versatility for events of all sizes.

"Neal was an excellent entertainer, and I think we all walked away from that thinking, 'Wow, this is a niche that this building could really play off of for many, many years in events for the future,'" Dentler said.

However, Dentler said, the economic impact of the event center extends far beyond simple ticket sales.

"Probably one of the most important things of any message I can deliver is the value this building brings, not only to The Village at Allen but to the community," he said. "It's amazing to see what impact it has, not only to the businesses around that area," Dentler said. "When we host events ... it's bringing hotel nights into the community. It's bringing people to the restaurants. It's bringing people to the shopping. So there's a huge value that this facility brings."

Final thoughts

"We're continuing to learn more and more about how to do things better, do them faster," Dentler said. "In this business, you may go from ... a hockey game, to a football game to a concert, back to hockey; and of course you've got to figure the most efficient way of making those things happen. Continuing to look at our efficiencies, I think we can get better. I think we've got some really great and talented people making these things happen."

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