HomeMy WebLinkAboutCivic Center Board Meeting Minutes 2-19-25CIVIC CENTER BOARD OF MANAGERS WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2025 CENTURY CENTER – BENDIX ARENA
3:00PM
Members Present Members Absent
Aaron Perri Randy Kelly Cari Shein
Heather Goralski Canneth Lee Austin Gammage
Judd McNally Jill Scicchitano
AJ Patel
The meeting was called to order at 3:01 p.m. by President Aaron Perri.
Consent Agenda President Perri entertained motion to approve the consent agenda, including (1) Minutes of the
11/21/24 meeting; Randy Kelly motions and Canneth Lee seconds, motion carries.
President’s Report President Perri officially welcomed Dezha Moore as the new general manager of venues.
A couple other welcome notes on the personnel front, Cari Shein has been appointed, and she is taking Linda Doshi’s seat, a mayoral appointee. Some of you may know Cari from her involvement in the community. She is on the Art Museum board, she is on the SBSO board.
She's also a building owner here in downtown, she’s got a couple of buildings and just an extremely generously engaged community member, so we look forward to having Cari on this board. Mayoral appointees, both AJ Patel and Jill Scicchitano, have been re-appointment.
Perri clarified the city’s policy regarding remote board participation. Members may participate remotely for up to 50% of meetings, provided a quorum of five members is physically present. However, remote participants cannot vote on budgetary or personnel matters. He emphasized the importance of reaching out in advance if remote participation is needed. He concluded his remarks by commending the finance team for notable improvements in financial reporting, recognizing their efforts in delivering timely and accurate information.
Venues Report
Palais Royale
Dezha Moore, General Manager of Venues, stated she wanted to give a snapshot of financials for all venues and how we ended 2024. We'll also be talking to review our quarter one events for both the Morris and the Palais and we're going to share a couple charts that might be interesting for our event types of 2024. For the Palais, we are looking at both the operations and historic funds, fund 293 and 450; Combined revenues sat at $186k with expenses of $167k with a net gain of $18,000. And in the combined revenue, we included our Navarre concession commissions of about $16,000 as well as our interest rates of $5500. There's also our joint
licensing fund revenue there as well, which is about $34,000. So, for events for the Palais for Q1 and Q2, this is basically leading up to May 22nd, which will be the next board meeting. We're doing well with our events; we have 26 events scheduled for the Palais. This is in an improvement of where we usually sat in Q1 & Q2 in previous years. The highest number of events that we had in the first quarter and second quarter
Morris Performing Arts Center For financials, we have $7.7 million in revenue as well as $1.4 million in expenses
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I think it's great to see the $6.2 million in private donations as well as the community support that we have there. Unfortunately, we did see a deficit in net loss in operations for the Morris.
We have a revenue of $1.2 million with expenses at $1.5 million. We saw that deficit of $300k, we do believe that this was due to our Broadway shows not starting in the regular season start that it usually does in Q4. We didn't see any shows for Broadway until Q1 of this year. So, with
the projected revenue that we anticipated half in November and December, we saw a net loss there instead.
The total revenue fee is the amount we keep. So, you see that the total number to be sold was
at the highest of $81,000 and then on revenue fees were at $500,841 which is also an improvement in last year too.
We received 493 responses in 2024, which was a slight increase to the number in 2023 which
was 473. And of the 493, 82% did share they would return, and our average scores is 4.6 out of 5 in 2023 our overall score was 4.4. We do get feedback about the minimum leg space that we have in the theater. The box office staff are currently measuring the amount of leg space within every single seat, so they’re going to be developing a leg room heat map that customers will be able to see and determine where they'd like to sit. We did partner with the Department of Community Investment to invest in a $133k project to completely upgrade our sound system to a digital sound system. We also have additional speakers, 9 inner lobby, and even our admin offices. We also have wireless handheld mics and body pack mics as well.So, we are working with VPA to basically figure out how we can best share the best parking practices, we are working with Laz for basically removing Reserved parking signs that are not being used right now and aligned that to be a space for other parking
For the Morris report Q1 & Q2, we have 36 events scheduled and booked. In total we have 84 events scheduled for 2024. We usually try to have around 100 events. Kevin James has1056 sold and Bob Dylan sold 456 tickets in 30 minutes. His total tickets are 1633 sold as of now and
the Enchanted Kingdom Ball had $17k on their opening sales day and Paw Patrol combined has 1727 tickets sold. Dezha welcomed Amber Schisler, Director of Ticketing Strategy and Sales, to further expound on that information. Per Amber, Kevin James is overperforming as well as Bob Dylan and EKB, that one has tickets priced at $250 we sold 4 of them in the 1st 20 minutes and Bob Dylan had tickets priced at $750. Normally at that price point you didn’t sell any and he sold half of those tickets within the first 30 minutes
Century Center
In 2024, our revenue was $41k with expenses of $223k. capital projects include the improved skywalk restroom fixtures, and the water softener system. President Perri reminded the board that we have the 671 “rainy day fund” and they would like to keep it at about $1 million in reserves and currently it is sitting at $1.053 million as of 12/31/24.
Century Center Rebekah Love, General Manager of Century Center, reported Century Center had over 23k people in the building since last meeting. The Notre Dame Christmas lecture was produced and shown on PBS and already committed for next year. Popi con increased to 2 days instead of 1.
They hosted the Area 22 state convention (AA convention). This is over 1,400 hotel rooms three days a week. Mother son dance coming soon with 1700 estimated to attend and then we have the symposium that we are working with Notre Dame for. Talent on Parade for April 2026 will
have attendance between 3,500-4,000 people daily over the two-day competition contributing 1,500 hotel room nights. We did get The International Robotics Competition confirmed for June 18th or the 23rd, 2400 hotel rooms and over 5k people. We have four groups that are coming
back that we've lost back in 2022; Real Services Age of Excellence, 100 black men, Goodwill
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Industries and then Christian educators, that is over 8,000 hotel rooms. Financial this past year we were at a deficit of about $200,000, and that's a lot to do with the people we had that had
events booked and then cancelled. The city reporting for total operations was $400,000. EBITA food & beverage only, cost in line, ending at 34.1%. Projecting 30% for January. Hotel room nights, so in 2024, we actualized over 6000 projected for 2025. Net promoter score is 70% for
2024 we switched providers and needed to educate the clients on how it works. Almost 100% return rate with new company. In the moment survey is 91% of overall experience, 93% for likelihood to return.
About 15% higher than other facilities YTD we're at 99% overall experience and 96% for revisit Rebekah mentioned they use the internship program – “grow” through ASM – and have had great success with it.
Lastly, Rebekah gave a heartfelt speech about Cindy Masterman retiring after 32 years.
Raclin Murhpy Encore Center
Patrick Sherman, Director of Project Management for Public Works, Construction has been awarded to Larsen-Danielson, and the project is well underway with structural steel erected and significant underground work completed. The facility will include high-end finishes, large windows, and a VIP lounge with a second-floor bar. An “Equity in the Arts” space on the first floor will host rotating art exhibits, presentations, and community classes, with integrated AV and flexible seating. The project budget includes $9 million in funding, with support from General Fund appropriations, PSCDA contributions, $6 million in private donations, and a $1.5 million
READI grant, already disbursed. A steel topping ceremony is planned for March 6, with final completion expected in December 2025. Planning for Phase 3, including a new parking garage, is underway, and RFPs for development partners are due April 24. March 6th at 11:00 AM we're
going to have a steel topping ceremony. Then August 11th through October 8th, that is kind of dark time in the theater that’s going to be the point at which the contractor makes those penetrations into the old building. The building is scheduled to be completed in December of
2025.
Visit SB/Mishawaka
Jeff Jarnecke, Executive Director of Visit South Bend/Mishawaka, to give his annual report. Along with occupancy for St. Joseph County, we also saw a record number of demand on the short-term rentals. So as you think about VRBO and Airbnb, they had more than 322,000 room nights that we booked through private residence within St. Joseph County on peak there are about 1450 homes that were available primarily for football season but we generally averaged around 1100 homes that are in marketplace each and every day within the county. Of the 52 properties that we have within Saint Joseph County we're able to increase occupancy by about 3% year over year to get up to 52% so we're pleased with that increase. We saw demand
around 924,000 room nights, not a record number for us, but we're still shooting for that million number goal overall. Welcoming new projects and new assets to Saint Joseph County in the form of Indiana dinosaur Museum and Mishawaka Fieldhouse. That's anticipated to bring in
about 20,000 room nights into the marketplace as well as then the Link. And then later this spring, we will open the Icebox which should be active as well.
The first ever tourism master plan in St Joseph County is now being published and ready to be
enacted. St. Joseph County is our #1 initiative for this year. That's already been buoyed by the Hotel motel tax board on Task force that's funded, that's going to $250,000 in this first year. The second initiative that we have is to continue to invest in youth sports tourism and behind the pursuit of Notre Dame sports tourism is the number one driver. The two drivers overall in terms
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of bringing tourists to Saint Joseph and community. So, we were able to offer more than 90 events last year that brought in about $27 million of economic impact and about 50,000 hotel
room nights. The third initiative is deeper coordination and collaboration with the University of Notre Dame with 62% of our visitors and get to be really inspired in the manner suggested. 62% of the visitors that come to Saint Joseph County, which is about 5.7 million each year, come
because of the University of Notre Dame.
ASM Incentive President Perri then introduced the annual ASM incentive calculation. Based on contractual
criteria, ASM qualified for two incentive components: hotel room bookings and guest satisfaction. With room nights exceeding the benchmark by 5%, ASM earned $10,200. For guest satisfaction, they fell just short of the 10% bonus threshold, but the board approved rounding up the score based on mitigating factors and strong performance in supplemental surveys, awarding an additional $9,000. No incentive was awarded the third category related to the net operating performance because they did not meet or exceed the benchmark. The board unanimously approved the total incentive of $19,200 following a motion by Judd McNally, seconded by Canneth Lee and AJ Patel.
Resolution 2501
Jenna Throw, Attorney, City Legal Department, introduces Resolution 2501 which is in recognition of the fact that it is the Civic Center Board of Managers that are ultimately
responsible for executing any contract for the management of the Century Center. We propose this resolution to have the board appoint up to four members of the board to serve on a committee with members of the city administration, including BPA and legal to work towards the Century Center contract.
President Perri added this idea is that this is that periodic review that lines up well. This does not outline any type of outcome. Judd motions, AJ seconds, and motion carries. We have
adopted the resolution and now call for the board to select those 4 members. to explore options. The board unanimously approved the resolution and appointed Aaron Perri, Jill Scicchitano, Judd McNally, and Heather Goralski to serve on the committee. Randy Kelly motions and AJ
Patel seconds, motions carried.
Adjournment With no further business, President Perri adjourned the meeting at 4:17pm. The next scheduled meeting is for 5/22/25 at the Century Center.
AP: CLK