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Crown Center Coliseum: Losses are down, confidence is up [The Fayetteville Observer, N.C. :: ](Fayetteville Observer (NC) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) July 13--Cumberland County hired Global Spectrum to run the Crown Center with two main goals: Book more shows and lose less money. Eight months into the contract, the private management company appears to be at least halfway there. The losses are slimmer and the Crown has hosted more events, but fewer people have passed through the doors than during the same eight-month period a year earlier. When Pennsylvania-based Global Spectrum took over management in November, the county-owned complex was expected to lose $4.3 million in the fiscal year that ended last month. As of June 30, the company was on track to have cut the projected losses by about $500,000. By this time next year, Global expects to reduce losses to $2.9 million. "As my daddy would say, 'Son, it don't get no better than that,'" said George Turner, chairman of the Civic Center Commission. "They have done far more than I thought they would have been able to do in six months." The commission oversees Crown operations and shepherded the shift to private management. That shift was prompted by years of flat revenue and climbing expenses. It is common for publicly owned venues to lose money, but local governments are generally willing to swallow the losses as long as the venues contribute to quality of life. Crown leaders were criticized for failing to bring enough entertainment to the complex, including the kind of A-list acts that coax Fayetteville's notorious last-minute ticket buyers. Private management is supposed to change that. County commissioners and the Crown board chose Global Spectrum after interviewing three companies last summer. Global gets a management fee, which is included in the savings the company has made so far. Global has streamlined operations at the Crown and cut expenses. It has revamped the website and marketing efforts, and it is sprucing up the facilities. The concourse has been refinished, the restroom floors deep-cleaned, and the coliseum club seats recovered. Global is working with the concessions contractor to improve the food offerings and has imposed a new customer service philosophy -- all changes that have been noticed. "It's a whole lot better," said Shelia Shaw as she waited to take her seat for the Charlie Wilson show at the coliseum last month. "The inside used to not have a good look. Now it looks real nice." Booking acts In the eight months since Global Spectrum took over, it has booked more events than the Crown hosted in the same period from each of the previous three years. But total attendance has dropped. From November 2012 to May 2013, the complex put on 150 events that attracted 358,617 people. From November 2013 -- when Global took over -- through May, 181 events brought in 325,656 visitors. That's about 9 percent lower attendance. Summer is usually quiet for indoor venues. The Crown's calendar lists seven public events for July and August, as well as a free dental clinic. Some have been at the Crown before, including a WWE wrestling show at the coliseum and a gun and knife show at the Expo Center. Others, including "Disney Junior Live" and a Christian concert, are new. The other events include a children's consignment sale, a soldier show and a fairy tale dinner performance. A total of 27 shows are booked through the end of the year, said Katie Mikos, the Crown's marketing director. Not all have been announced. Mikos said those dates are dictated by promoters. Jim Grafstrom, the Crown's general manager, called it a strong slate of shows. He said a dozen other shows are in negotiation for the fall and beyond. "If a quarter of them shake out in our favor, it's a good lineup," Grafstrom said. "It's going to take some time to drive the event revenue -- I mean, really drive it -- but we're certainly moving in the right direction. We're never going to be satisfied; we're always going to try to grow it." Grafstrom said Global Spectrum enticed promotional giants Live Nation and AEG back to the Crown this year, a key goal. Those companies brought country stars Jason Aldean and Darius Rucker to the coliseum. "They plain and simple said, 'We would not have come back had you guys not taken over that building,'" Grafstrom said. That is significant because promoters are looking for venues that are easy to work with, said Mark Lynch, who is on the Civic Center Commission and owns a 48-year-old audio and video equipment company. "It's unequivocally about the experience," Lynch said. "We've not had the best reputation in the past for a number of reasons, but we're doing a lot better now. ... No one in the entertainment and promotion business is going to believe that a facility is going to turn around overnight." Live Nation and AEG dominate the touring concert market. Re-establishing their confidence in the Crown will pay dividends, said Grafstrom. "Those promoters left here happy," Grafstrom said. "Now it's a matter of getting them to return and getting them to believe in Fayetteville as a market." The Fayetteville market has always been a challenge for the Crown. The venue competes with others in the Raleigh and Greensboro areas, many of which also have struggled since the recession. Fayetteville is a walk-up market, with many tickets selling the day of the show. That can make promoters nervous and has seen numerous shows called off through the years. "If they scheduled anything, it got canceled," said Yolanda Porter, who attended the Charlie Wilson show. The market's nature is often attributed to the military crowd, but Lynch said the reason does not really matter. "That's a giant problem that Fayetteville has," Lynch said. "It still has the impact on future shows." Artists booking a tour are more likely to skip a location that might not sell out than one they know will be full. Grafstrom said Global already has intervened to battle the Crown's cancel-happy reputation. He said Global has twice supported promotions that were struggling to make sure the shows went on. He would not say which. "When the reputation of the building's at stake, we do whatever we can to make sure that it's upheld and that the general public's perception is that if something is happening there, it's happening," he said. Global did not promise a specific number of shows in its business pitch to the county. But it did tout its network of venues along the East Coast as a way to route shows through Fayetteville. Grafstrom said that is how the Crown got February's Tyler Perry show, which came to the Crown between stops at Global venues in Augusta, Georgia, and Roanoke, Virginia. Perry's shows have been to the Crown before. The Crown also is preparing a new campaign to market its ballroom, convention and banquet space by mirroring what successful spaces in Global's network have done. "It's not the big, glamorous event that everybody's going to say, 'Yeah, they're doing what they're supposed to do,' but at the same time those are revenue-producing events that we need," Grafstrom said. Global has brought in two roller derby leagues. These kinds of events, rather than the national headliners, are key to a venue's success, its advocates say. "Clearly, the members of the general public focus on the brightness of the names and the number of the mega events," Lynch said. "But they're no more or less important than a big dinner by a brigade at Fort Bragg, or a trade show, or any other event that gets lots of people to come to the Crown." County support Even if Global Spectrum's financial projections pan out, it will not affect county spending in other areas. The Crown has not received a subsidy from the county's general fund since 2012. The Crown's losses are absorbed through a 1 percent tax on restaurant and bar receipts. Whatever is left each year is used to pay down debt on the coliseum, as is a quarter of the revenue from a 6 percent tax on lodging bills in the county. Those funds were set up by state law. Based on Global's projections, the county is budgeting for almost $600,000 less from tax funds to go toward operations. That money can be spent on debt and improvements at the facilities, including the roof of the coliseum, resurfaced last year and reaching the end of its life expectancy. "That would relieve the pressure on other sources to keep the facility in the condition it needs to be," said Melissa Cardinali, the county's finance director. County Commissioner Jimmy Keefe was chairman of the Board of Commissioners in 2013 and a prime mover in bringing private management to the Crown. "I'm very pleased with the selection the board made," he said. "I will never apologize to anybody for bringing this forward, because I believe it is in the best interest of the county and people that live here." Civic Center Commission member Liz Varnedoe said she is pleased with the improvements Global Spectrum has made but wants to see more shows brought in. Come November, she said, the commission will look back over Global Spectrum's performance in its first 12 months. "We'll review it again when it's been a year, definitely," she said. "We talked about that when we hired them." Lynch said the commission and Global Spectrum are still in a honeymoon period. "Everybody's happy because things were so tough, for so long, that to see any improvement makes anybody smile," he said. "But I don't think we're at the point of cruise control yet. Obviously, we have a lot of progress that's been made. There's still a hell of a lot more to be made, but I feel confident the team we've got in place now is working pretty hard at getting us to where we need to be." Staff writer Gregory Phillips can be reached at [email protected] or 486-3596. ___ (c)2014 The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.) Visit The Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.) at www.fayobserver.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |