02-28-13 Redevelopment Commission Minutes.docx

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South Bend Redevelopment Commission Regular Meeting—February 28, 2013 6. NEW BUSINESS A. South Bend Central Development Area (1) continued... to make a lot of money. There are better ways to do that. What you do is get involved in the business because you are passionate about baseball and also, because you love making memories. It is an extraordinary feeling to be able to walk around the stadium and see so many people having a great time. When he bought the team, the stadium was below league standards. When it was built 26 years ago, it was state of the art. Since then, baseball stadiums are more than just about baseball. They are about the family experience. Studies show that 85% of the fans don't even know the score of the game when it is over. They come for the fun and family experience. The stadium was built just for baseball purists; in todays demographic, it is more than just about baseball. So we had to really upgrade it. Also, at the time, the staff lacked baseball experience. There are a lot of baseball teams, companies, and governments, with lots of great ideas. However, if you don't have the right people in place to execute those great ideas, it doesn't matter how well the strategy is. So we had to recruit well, train well, and retain the people that did have the intellectual assets about baseball. Vendors and merchandise was nonexistent; safety inside, outside and around the park was an issue. The team was not as engaged with the community as it should have been. Cash flow was negative and customers were not thrilled. He uses a survey system called the Net Promoter Score which is used in business a lot to determine the customer sense of loyalty and how great the thrill is. It all came down to one question and that was, "Would you recommend this experience to somebody else?" Just from that score, we were able to tell how we were doing, because, if you love something, you will recommend it. If you hate it, you won't. If you're a fence sitter, I'm not sure how to think about you. So the scoring on Net Promoter when we surveyed all of our fans, was like this: If the score was 0-6 on this question, one would say they hate the Silver Hawks. Even a 5 or 6 would say it is a mediocre score. 7's and 8's are fence sitters which we didn't even count. 9's and IO's are, of course fantastic. They're lovers, and they are people who are thrilled and will promote us, and that sets the loyalty. So with using the Net Promoter Score survey system, the scores are aggregated; throw out the fence sitters, and hopefully there are more lovers than haters. The Net Promoter Score at the beginning of the 2012 season for the Silver Hawks was 13%. This means there are slightly a few more lovers than haters, which in the baseball business, is a very dismal score. Almost 50% of the population was not happy about their experience in that corner of the downtown South Bend area. We worked very hard. So what was accomplished during 2012 season was we really stepped up to the plate with resources. There is a whole new culture there. We hired passionate people who really want to do well, and we compensate them accordingly. We hired new staff with the right experience and traits. We also collected detail by doing a lot of focus groups in town hall meetings and received a lot of feedback from the citizens of South Bend area. We installed giant inflatables, some as high as three stories. We installed a Splash Pad which has been a huge success. We also installed a Jungle Gym with a baseball theme. The food, music, audio, video, and suites were upgraded as well. The City of South Bend invested in a fantastic score board, and as of 2011, it is the 15th largest scoreboard in all of professional sports. We 4