By Mike Donila, The Macon Telegraph, Ga. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Dec. 17--To combat the Centreplex's ever-increasing financial woes, Mayor Jack Ellis said he will propose several solutions, one of which could lead to the operation's eventual privatization.
The Centreplex, made up of the Coliseum, City Auditorium and Wilson Convention Center, lost more than $7.7 million between 1992 and 2003.
During the current fiscal year, the Centreplex is slated to lose another $1.4 million.
Mayor Jack Ellis said he will meet with City Council members in the next six to eight weeks to discuss ways of cutting the loss, including privatization.
'We're going to look at all our options,' he said.
On Tuesday, the City Council spent about an hour with Ellis going over a Centreplex operations assessment report released Tuesday by Macon-based Business Assessment Services.
The report, which cost about $30,000 and was completed in October, proposes suggestions similar to those from a study conducted about four years ago by a different company. This time, council members already have begun to act on some of the previous suggestions.
For example, the report says the city should begin selling advertising for indoor and outdoor signs and selling the naming rights to the Centreplex, something that Ellis has already begun studying.
The report said the Centreplex needs a connecting full-service hotel, another item that the city has made plans to develop.
However, to make additional revenue, the city also needs to:
--Increase relationship with its stakeholders, who include the city, its sports teams and the Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce.
--Increase advertising and promotion activities to support booked events.
--Establish a city employee discount rate to reward employees and expand efforts to attract new customers
--Outsource all services.
--Discontinue the use of outside catering, a move that could generate an estimated $129,495 a year.
Ellis said the report is timely because officials are working to build a convention hotel near the Coliseum.
'One of the things that came out of the hotel study was that whoever operated it should be involved in the management of the Centreplex as well,' he said.
Ellis said he wants Centreplex employees protected if the Centreplex is privatized.
'That's paramount,' he said.
Council members said they look forward to the upcoming discussions with Ellis.
'There are several businesses that do this for a living and could probably even bring in bigger name attractions,' Councilman Stebin Horne said of the privatization option. 'That alone could help bulge the economy.'
Councilwoman Elaine Lucas, however, said she's not sold on privatizing the Centreplex.
'I've always had a concern about privatization because you generally lose control of the city's facilities and its functions,' she said.
'We're held accountable for everything that happens in the city, and I would not want us to move away from knowing everything that's going on.'
Whatever the city decides, Chris Young, president of Business Assessment Services, said the Centreplex's mission still needs clarity: 'Is it there to make a profit or is it going to be an economic generator for the community?'
Young said event bookings are up this fiscal year and will bring in an additional $348,000, but the facilities still had too many vacancies.
For example, in fiscal 2003 the Macon Auditorium was used 34 percent of the time, or 123 days during the year. Likewise, the Coliseum was used 48 percent of the time, or 174 days. Officials said they could not properly assess usage for the convention center since it has several rooms, but no room was rented more than half the year.
Most of the feedback in the report regarding the operation's staff was positive. But, some customers cited in the report 'expressed dissatisfaction' with elements of service quality such as running out of food, not storing equipment properly, not getting responses to business issues in a timely manner and top management not being available during entire events.
The report said the staff needs to have tighter inventory controls of valuable materials, including catering items and food, and should develop a more effective system that would determine how much reserve supply should be maintained to avoid running out of concessions items at major events.
Ellis praised Centreplex Director Regina McDuffie and said most of the problems cited in the report were out of her control and 'should have no reflection on her work.'
McDuffie, who has been with the Centreplex since 1996, said the three-building facility routinely loses money, but the benefit lies in tax revenue generated from the visitors drawn to the city.
'This wasn't built as a profit retail center, but it's able to prosper in terms of offering citizens something,' McDuffie said. 'There's a lot of positive in what we do.'
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(c) 2003, The Macon Telegraph, Ga. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
