EVRAZ PLACE A GHOST TOWN
Full financial hit yet to materialize
It’s anything but business as usual at Evraz Place.
Canada’s largest interconnected event complex has become a ghost town after it was essentially closed to the public earlier this week due to the COVID -19 pandemic.
“I’ve spent a lifetime trying to promote and encourage the public that coming together in large gatherings is not only safe but it’s exciting and fun and energizing,” offered Tim Reid, president and CEO of Evraz Place.
“What I find so amazing about this is our industry has probably spent the last 100 years trying to convince people of that and we’ve spent the last three days convincing everybody that it’s the most unsafe thing to do — and rightfully so.”
The 100-acre grounds at Evraz Place are usually a hub of activity in the wide-ranging realm of sports, recreation, entertainment, social and business events.
However, recent measures to limit the spread of the virus — including a government-mandated elimination of large public gatherings — will leave the city-owned facilities vacant for the foreseeable future.
“Our business literally turned off overnight,” said Reid, who described a surreal feeling as he watched “a campus that averages almost 10,000 visits a day” fall to “virtually none.”
That doesn’t include staff members who are in the process of closing up shop. In addition to the Brandt Centre and Mosaic Stadium, the on-site venues at Evraz Place include the International Trade Centre, Co-operators Centre, Queensbury Convention Centre and Affinityplex indoor soccer facility, among others.
Workers were in the process of removing the ice from the Brandt Centre on Tuesday. The Regina Pats were slated to play their final home game of the season on Friday against the Moose Jaw Warriors, but that won’t happen after the WHL shut down all activities “until further notice.”
The ice is also being removed from three of the six ice surfaces at the Co-operators Centre.
“The cleaning teams are going in behind (those crews),” Reid said. “We do believe this may be a site that the Sask. Health Authority may need for emergency purposes or the city may need it, so we want to make sure that all the buildings, as they’re taken off-line, are secured and sterilized and sanitized. If you were here today you’d see a ton of cleaning and operations staff essentially getting our buildings ready for what we think is a fairly lengthy shutdown.”
Evraz Place formed a COVID -19 committee early last week as part of the organization’s emergency response plan.
That already seems like a lifetime ago.
“We’ve done a really good job of understanding exactly the financial risk that this presents,” Reid noted. “That being said, the outcome is significantly more intense than we ever thought it was going to be 10 days ago.”
The Evraz Place website lists 18 events so far that have been postponed, beginning with last weekend’s Professional Bull Riders Tour. Seven more events have been outright cancelled, including the Cirque du Soleil performances from July 23-26.
“It already is devastating when you see weeks worth of major events (removed from the calendar),” Reid said. “Essentially, 90 per cent of our revenue (comes from) selling tickets and selling spaces and selling food and beverage. All the money that was coming in turned off almost overnight. Thankfully, we have some funds and resources that we can draw from. But it’s not a busy time in our business, so we have to be really careful with how we plan going into the future.”
Reid said the “vast majority” of bookings in the next 90 days are expected to be postponed.
That puts Evraz Place in a tough spot as the organization tries to come up with contingency plans during a time of extreme uncertainty.
“What we do know is that our business at some point will return to normal,” Reid added. “That state of normal might be different than it is today but, how do we navigate the situation at hand? There are so many variables. The biggest one is time. In most instances in my career where we have dealt with a crisis, relatively quickly you had a lens at when that crisis would subside and you’d return to business operations. In this scenario, that’s a big variable and question mark.”
All the money that was coming in turned off almost overnight. Thankfully, we have some funds and resources that we can draw from.