Wasn’t he hit in the head recently .....

Okay, so the key points are noted, but I am unable to determine just what Gordon’s position actually is on this matter.

Me neither.

Hey, y’all. Just click through “Read the full article” to see what I’ve written regarding my position.

I think that’s the point. I’m guessing Gordon doesn’t have a position on the matter yet. He’s sharing his decision making process with his constituents. Isn’t that a breath of fresh air?

And I know for a fact that he reads every email sent his way concerning city matters and takes them all into consideration.

So if you feel strongly about this issue, or any for that matter, tell him what you think.

“Without additional revenue options, naming rights are the best available route to achieving the improvements so desperately needed at our Civic Center.”

Having read the full piece now, it does give Gordon’s view, quoted above.

“-The process of seeking/receiving offers was delegated to Mr. Powers, who has been an excellent manager of the Civic Center as well as an excellent leader in our Economic Development efforts.”

This is a little on the light side with regard to specifics, isn’t it?  It would be reasonable to identify the specifics of the other offers, if there were any.

Perhaps this is a dumb question, but here goes anyway.

What avenues have been explored to make the Civic Center self supporting and why has that not been the case since it was first built?

I think the process question needs to be one of the pros/cons of this decision. Gordon touches on it,

“Such processes should occur only after open, formal community input…”

...but the process up to now has had a couple of serious kinks in it. According to Cecil, Council was informed in closed session (can’t talk about it) that a deal was in the works at least a month ago - why was the public announcement held until two days after the recent election? Whatever the rationale, this raises the question that certain people didn’t want this to be an issue as we’re choosing our Council members. That’s a shame.

I understand that the passing of Bob Ingle complicates unraveling this next one, but I’m not satisfied that we have a clear picture of whether in fact Ingles (or any other local company) had the opportunity to match a bid on naming rights. Jan swears he made the offer to Bob Ingles personally something like a year ago, but that’s not the same thing as letting them know that we were about to sign a deal with US Cellular, did they want to counter with a better offer? The current VP for marketing swears they were not aware this was in the works, and they clearly want to participate now.

Again, I’m not in favor of naming rights in general, but I would rather have a local name on our Civic Center than just be another hub in the US Cellular chain of ‘Centers Formerly Known as Civic’. At the very least, I would urge Council to put formalizing this deal on hold until Ingles could pull together a counter-offer.

And if that pisses off US Cellular to the point they withdraw their offer - hey, that shows them to be people we don’t want to partner with anyway, IMHO…

And that brings us to the argument represented by Esthers comment in the AC-T along the lines of “...council should be careful so that Asheville didn�t get a �reputation as a place you can�t do business.�”. We hear that every time there’s criticism of some shady deal in this town, yet companies and developers still want to build here, buy here, etc. Perhaps Esther & others should help instill a stronger ethical sense in the business community, so there’s fewer shady deals that raise the ire of the residents - that will ensure that Asheville doesn’t get a reputation…

That Esther (let them east cake) Manheimer…alway the bearer of dire warnings when it comes to Coprotate monies.

I would submit that the reputation that Esther & the rest of this lameduck Council should consider, is Asheville’s ‘weird’ reputation. No matter how you conservative folks out there might wish that Asheville were a straight-laced quiet little town again, the fact that the place has grown so much over the past decade has to be because of our reputation as somehow… different. How much of the national buzz about Asheville that has attracted the interest of big players like US Cellular is due to our rep for being offbeat, unique? How much of our tourism or (relatively) booming real estate market is due to the fact that Asheville is funky, independent, different from other communities in America? How much violence will you be doing to that Golden Goose if the world suddenly sees us with a big corporate logo on our formerly-civic center in the heart of town?

The other issues aside, I think you’re playing with fire if you announce to the world that Asheville is just another cow meekly submitting to it’s corporate brand.

If you look at how much free press this town gets around the world, the idea that our city leaders have to worry about “a reputation” for charging top dollar to get in betrays a real lack of sophistication.

I also posted the following on ScruHoo.
-c
***
Misconceptions abound.

The Civic Center turned a profit for the past two years. And if we would change our accounting for parking, to include the parking revenues generated by Civic Center events, it would show up as a large profit.

The upfit currently underway is going to radically improve the venue, thanks to about $5 million from Buncombe County, Asheville and the TDA. And this follows the City investment in a new roof the previous year.

The amount of money in the proposed U.S. Cellular deal is pretty small compared to annual revenues. While it is touted as a $1.3 million deal, that’s a POTENTIAL $1.3 million over 8 years.

It is actually $150,000 per year for five years, more or less depending on attendance figures, and then a possible renewal for three more years. 150K is not nothing, but it isn’t a real big deal compared to the City’s $132 million annual budget. For example, it would amount to approximately a .18 cent increase in property taxes.

If we float a bond issue for capital improvements (sidewalks, greenways, energy efficiency retrofits, etc.) and voters approve it, this amount of money for the Civic Center is less than an afterthought.

If we can garner a meaningful amount of money through sale of naming rights, it seems worthy of consideration. But it deserves a great deal of public discussion.

As the process has been described to date, U.S. Cellular came to the City with an offer. I would assume that Staff then contacted a couple of dozen other potential corporate sponsors to gauge interest, and I’ve asked Staff to provide that information, together with what if any other offers were made, and together with an explanation of the methodology used for calculating the value of naming rights.

There are three methods in general use, the most accurate is deemed to be an estimate of “impressions” (the number of times potential customers will see/hear a name) multiplied by the market price for impressions in the target city/market. (There is a current price per impression in print, radio, tv, Web marketing.) So the value of a name that appears on every ticket, in every ad for every show, and rolls off commentators lips when they’re presenting a basketball game or roller-girl match, is the result of best guesses and simple multiplication.

In this case, given our growing fame and Civic Center success, I’d think that the number of impressions will be huge, which is exactly why U.S. Cellular is interested. Naming rights payments across the country are all over the map with big venues in big cities garnering multi-million dollar deals. So far, I’ve seen this U.S. Cellular deal compared to Medford, Oregon, where the company named a sports field complex.

How many of you have heard of Medford? Raise your hands.

Thanks for the clarification.  Looking forward to reading about the process by City Manager’s office on this.

The “we had to conduct these negotiations in secret” argument makes me laugh out loud in this case. Does anyone believe that if the City had put out a formal RFP for naming rights to our Civic Center, that no corporations would have bid on it?

Interesting note here - this from the website for the US Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids Iowa:

“Naming Rights
In July 2000, the City of Cedar Rapids entered into an advertising partnership with US Cellular to rename the Center. The Center receives an annual payment of $125,000 over five years plus marketing support through US Cellular monthly bills and retail centers. In return, the facility was renamed the US Cellular Center.”

http://www.uscellularcenter.com/USCC/uscc.html

Adjusted for inflation, that is precisely the same deal we’re getting. I don’t think there were any “negotiations” at all. USC just said, “here’s what we give you”, and we are gratefully extending our haunch for the branding iron.

The “we had to conduct these negotiations in secret” argument makes me laugh out loud in this case. Does anyone believe that if the City had put out a formal RFP for naming rights to our Civic Center, that no corporations would have bid on it?

Interesting note here - this from the website for the US Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids Iowa:

“Naming Rights
In July 2000, the City of Cedar Rapids entered into an advertising partnership with US Cellular to rename the Center. The Center receives an annual payment of $125,000 over five years plus marketing support through US Cellular monthly bills and retail centers. In return, the facility was renamed the US Cellular Center.”

http://www.uscellularcenter.com/USCC/uscc.html

Adjusted for inflation, that is precisely the same deal we’re getting. I don’t think there were any “negotiations” at all. USC just said, “here’s what we give you”, and we are gratefully extending our haunch for the branding iron.

(sorry for the double post - if I’m not super careful, it posts twice. maybe it’s just my mouse button…)

BTW, US Cellular had $1.5 billion in revenue in 2000, and $4.2 billion in 2010. After 10 years of growth, they still get away with a ‘standard’ naming rights package that they first used in 2000, and now they just blow the dust off, adjust it for inflation & say “take it or leave it”?

Fine, so City staff “negotiated” this for Council’s up or down vote. I say Asheville deserves better. Council should vote ‘no’ and take a hard look at the naming rights issue, and whether it’s likely to to do more harm to the Asheville ‘brand’ than the pitiful amount of money US Cellular is offering is worth.

Someone pointed out to me that this deal won’t take effect until 2012, so the inflation calculation is off. That, plus I was being a little generous before, it adds up to… this deal doesn’t come close to even keeping up with inflation over what they paid Cedar Rapids, Iowa for naming rights to a similar facility 11 years ago.

I’m not feelin’ the love, personally.

If in 2000   (enter year)
I purchased an item for: $625,000  
then in 2011   (enter year*)
that same item would cost: $821,795.15

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/