Convention Center afloat, despite virus, panel told
Despite a steep reduction in business due to the covid-19 pandemic, the Pine Bluff Convention Center is managing to hold its own as a series of spending cuts have helped to offset revenue losses throughout the year, Director Joseph McCorvey told members of the Civic Auditorium Complex Commission during a conference call Tuesday.
McCorvey said through September, the complex had revenue of $960,944 and expenditures of $972,215, for a net loss of $12,271 during the nine-month period.
“Covid has obviously had an effect,” McCorvey said, “but we are still maintaining as best we can.”
Commissioner Debe Hollingsworth asked if the revenue the Advertising and Promotion Commission has posted reflected a significant increase as the result of collections from food sales at the Saracen Casino Annex.
The A&P Commission earmarks nearly 70% of its revenue, — most of which comes from a 3% tax on hotel rooms and a 2% tax on prepared food sales in the city — to the annual support of the convention center.
“The casino, obviously, has been operating the annex for a while, and I can’t speak to those numbers,” McCorvey said. “But the casino just opened, and I don’t think there will be any solid numbers until the first of the year.”
Sheri Storie , director of the A&P Commission, said the Saracen Annex convenience store suspended food sales during the
pandemic, which cut off the flow of tax revenue from that source temporarily.
“But the bottom line is,” McCorvey said, “all the restaurants in the big casino, and I believe there are seven, while they won’t all be open until November, at that time there should be an uptick in revenues and hopefully that will help us in the long run.”
Storie said that, even without the collections from Saracen Annex, the A&P Commission ended September with revenue running nearly $104,000 over what had been projected.
“That’s very encouraging,” Hollingsworth said. “Especially considering the shutdown and things like that. That’s real good.”
Reporting on the 2021 draft budget submitted to the A&P Commission, McCorvey said some projections had to be amended to bring the CACC budget into line with the A&P Commission budget. To do so, according to the draft budget submitted by McCorvey, required reduction in the budget from just over $1.7 million in 2020 to just under $1.3 million in 2021.
“[Monday] during the finance meeting, those changes were accepted so that the budgets balanced between the two entities,” he said. “So, you’ll see there, the budget we submitted for 2021, and again I can say we reduced some line items so that we would come into balance with what A&P was proposing.”
The budget proposal for the A&P Commission is included on the agenda for the A&P Commission to vote on at its meeting today at 4 p.m. That budget includes $898,085 in annual support and $112,915 in bond support for the convention center. That combined total is $109,250 less than what was
budgeted for 2020.
Also on the A&P Commission agenda is the recommendation that the commission allocate $30,000 to the convention center for covid-19 upgrades to the banquet hall restrooms, a pre-inspection boiler tear-down, and air conditioning repairs.
McCorvey said the convention center is realizing significant savings by having building repairs and installation of some upgrades done by the convention center staff, rather than having the work done by contractors or vendors. He said his staff will install the upgraded, no-touch fixtures in the restrooms, and he also mentioned a repair to the ceiling of the auditorium that is in progress by the staff.
“We save a lot of money by using the skills of our team,” he said. “It’s pretty scary going up on that roof. That’s a lot of height, but these guys built the scaffolding, and we’re going to have to rent a lift to go up on the roof of the hotel, but these guys are able to do those kinds of repairs. If we had to call contractors in, or vendors, you talk about me going to the A&P every month, but we save a lot through these guys.”
McCorvey said Thursday he will be meeting with a company, the name of which he did not disclose, and taking a tour of the Plaza Hotel property with an eye toward coming up with a recommendation for moving forward.
“I don’t want to speak before things happen, but we are going to take a tour,” he said. “It’s a whole process dealing with finance and all this other stuff too, but they want to take a tour of it, look at it, to see what our next steps should be whether it makes sense to try to do something with it or basically demolish it and start over.”
McCorvey said once he has a recommendation in hand he will report that to the commission.