 For the second consecutive year the a substantial loss has been announced by Venuworks for the operations of the Ford Center. The Ford Center financial report states that operating income for 2013 was $8.5 Million. The Ford Center expenses were stated to be about $7.5 million.  The annual report cites extremely high utilities and labor costs is hurting the Ford Center bottom line. It also warned that the City needs to be aware that the Ford Center budget has no long-term  plans in the capital budget to make major repairs.  One of the major operating costs added to the  over all operating costs for the Ford Center was a 1.48 million expense incurred due to the contract with the Evansville-Vanderburgh County Building Authority.  These charges were for repairs, maintenance, security, traffic control, and utilities.  The $474,077 financial shortfall was paid by the city.  Posted below is the FORD CENTER 2013  financial statement.
                    VENUWORKS FINANCIAL STATEMENT FOR FORD CENTER 2013
                                          Actual         Actual               Budgeted
          Operating Revenue               FY 2012         FY 2013             FY2013
Event Related                     $ 3,613,803      $ 3,918,445          $ 2,743,993
Food & Beverage                  $ 2,706,546      $ 2,791,674          $ 2,689,500
Suites & Sponsorships             $ 1,734,242       $ 1,862,970          $ 1,440,320
       Total Operating Revenue            $ 8,054,591      $ 8,573,090        $ 6,873,813
                                                Operating  Expense
                 Event Related Expenses        $ 2,364,775       $ 2,565,872        $ 1,476,500
 Food & Beverage Expenses      $ 824,895       $ 839,659        $  752,410
     Personnel Full Time              $ 1,008,820       $1,010,005         $ 1,089,750
      Personnel Part Time                $ 844,141        $ 820,717        $ 726,300
  Operating Expenses                  $ 1,343,160        $ 1,409,381        $ 1,184,923
    Utilities                            $ 349,645        $ 554,687         $ 648,000
Total Operating expenses            $ 7,025,974       $ 7,559,599       $6,285,222
NET OPERATING PROFIT Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $ 1,028,616 Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $ 1,013,491 Â Â Â Â Â Â $ 588,591
Second year in a ROW, not ROLL or ROLE.
Or Roe.
Who wrote this? A 5th grader perhaps. That said where is the debt service for the arena. The payments have got to be at least $4Million a year. I guess these dummies dont even consider interest as an expense.
The entire article is rife with grammatical errors, which throws its content into question as well.
I’m glad Scott is still pushing for the creation of a future projects expense account. I can tell you firsthand this is a city that you have to stay on them time after time before you can get something done. I wish him good luck with that.
We need to get bigger acts and bigger events here although that’s basically been impossible when the city elected to go with a < 10,000 seat facility instead of a 14,000 seat facility. In the arena industry 15,000 has usually been the magic number for being competitive. Wichita was expected to struggle initially out of the gate with Intrust Bank Arena
Cramming events like UE, the GLVC Tournament, and Kansas that belong in a smaller facility is really starting to show. Wichita's Intrust Bank Arena has a hockey team that is in the Icemen's old league, only hosts one Shockers game here and there, and yet still sells enough tickets to be profitable.
This is not necessarily damning for Venuworks. Most companies expect new ventures to operate in the red for several years. The why you start off with enough capital to get you through until you become profitable. The convention hotel should help this and the medical school if it is built downtown.
+1 I actually agree with you, wow.
Next time the guns n hoses crowd starts telling us they should have the arena rent free we need to show them this balance sheet.
One “positive” is that the “Suites and Sponsorships” brought in significantly more revenue than was budgeted. That’s kind of a “shaky” source of revenue, though. Once the “new arena smell” goes away, that is subject to drop.
UE has become pretty pathetic. None of the students even go to the games.
Thanks for the spelling help. Bad hair day.
You only corrected the spelling error in the headline. It remains in the body of the article along with all the other grammatical errors and typos.
Didn’t the past Mayor and City Council say the Ford Center would be a big money maker?
They didn’t strike gold in Alaska the year after Seward’s original folly either. Maybe when they start excavating the hotel foundation something will pop up.
Have anybody get notice of tax assessment from Bill Fluty yet? i did and it’s not pretty.
Editor–I do not understand your headline:FORD CENTER SHOWS BIG LOSS FOR SECOND YEAR IN ROW” or the comments.
The finanical numbers indicate a NET OPERATING PROFIT of $ 1,013,491.
Explain.
So easy… well you know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8o_YqzMBoo
Wayne, please don’t embarrass yourself by ‘playing dumb’ as to the Operating Loss at the Fraud Center.
What is dumb (fraudulent ?) is VenuWorks releasing a financial statement which shows a profit. How could VenuWorks bribe someone enough to distort the financial picture of this facility ?????????
Was this why Weinzapfel decided to outsource the labor to run the Fraud Center through the Building Authority ? Recall that at Roberts Stadium, it was employees who did the setups and maintenance. So when you looked at the numbers, they were all there.
VenuWorks publication of a financial statement –which excluded all of the Labor to set up for events–is the equivalent to using “off-Balance Sheet financing” to trick prospective investors. Are the guys from Enron out of jail yet ? Could they turn a published profit at the Fraud Center ?
So simple even a GOP county chair can understand it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earnings_before_interest_and_taxes
Good find brains
Wayne I am using a fake screen name
He still hasn’t answered my question about how many names he has used here. Rather interesting isn’t it?
Wayne, that $1 million dollar profit became a $474,077 deficit because of the additional operating expenses of $1.48 million charged to the Ford Center by the Vanderburgh County Building Authority. You’ll right that the financial statement didn’t address this additional cost in it’s report so that why we obtained additional information from those in the know.
Ed,
I agree with the earlier poster. The act of VenuWorks publishing a P & L with a line which says ‘ Net Operating Profit’; and we find out they left out the freakin’ LABOR for Events gives me a lot of heartburn.
If VenuWorks left out the LABOR, and someone caught that, what else did they do that we didn’t catch ?
Remember–VenuWorks ‘double dipped’ the City to the tune of $ 65,000 of expenses they showed for reimbursement from both their ERC and ERA contracts.
This fact was noted in the IN SBOA Review of the Ford Center, yet no one (i.e., City Council) had the guts to stick this to the Administration and demand repayment.
I think the double payments to Venuworks should be recovered and applied to the Dental Clinic shortfall everyone is talking about !!!
Don’t forget the interest!! Evidently the interest on the bond will be paid with Winnezapful pixie dust.
Dental clinic now!
As for the rest, this was not meant to be something official, it was just a rough summary for the media. Wichita’s Intrust Bank Arena was criticized by their local watch dog group for not counting depreciation of asset when they released their multi million dollar profit statement. So if we use GAAP, their arena lost millions due to an expense that involves NO cash loss, but in reality it made cash.
This is slightly different. In reality it lost cash (where’s Dave rector releasing statements like he did at the Roberts tour? ) but that doesnt mean venuworks is being dishonest or the arena was a bad idea. Quite the opposite.
Seems fair to go after the double billing.
Was not the steel contractor for this building had a “double billing” that was found and the city went back and collected?
Dollar amount should have no weight on collecting.
My budget to spend at Ford center
2012
Budget -0-
Actual -0-
2013
Budget -0-
Actual – One Ice race ticket, no concessions
2014 and beyond
Budget -0-
Actual -Indy before Ford Center- *Supercross/football*
Editor: VenuWorks released the Ford Center 2012 – 2013 income statements— not the City of Evansville. The Redevelopment Authority annual bond debt costs are not included.
Editor: VenuWorks released the Ford Center 2012 – 2013 income statements— not the City of Evansville. The Redevelopment Authority annual bond debt costs are not included.
Give me a double bartender.
Funny–I do not know how that happen
I do
If anyone thinks this is bad, wait til the ball fields come online. The VPS report estimated that it will cost around $359,000 annually to maintain.
Are you Kidding me??!!! So how many tournaments did they project to get?? You know it’s a wonderful weekend to have a softball tournament!!!
No kidding. And let me ask you this, which area would you like to stimulate from this yearly loss, north main or a vast open lot in the middle of nowhere on the eastside?
Well is it too late to change it all? Was there enough room for at least 5-6 fields by Kleymeyer?
Because that is the MINIMUM you would need to host an elite traveling team tournament.
Newburgh/Warrick County already has some first class fields and the parents/teams already stay in Eastside hotels so if Evansville takes a tournement from them, there is NO net gain in travel and hospitality spending. Just swapping one for another.
No ground has been broken, the only thing keeping their momentum is the fact that no politician is coming out against that and that blame rests solely on Parke and his yes man followers.
Yes theres enough room for an eight plex regardless if walthers driving range were moved to hamilton. Theres already a three plex that we need to renovate. I had an architect go over the site very thoroughly. Theres no reason that site had to be ignored.
We should be using the methane gas under kleymeyer instead of wasting time on earthcare. Look up how mead johnsons gets methane from our landfill.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/02/26/president-obama-lays-out-his-plan-upgrading-our-transportation-infrastructure
Or build a fun frippery or a picayune, bagatelle,convention to nowhere center,over a poor environmental infrastructure.
Throughput logistics,and infrastructures to support them. $600 million in grants for transportation recovery alone,reason to start incrementally addressing climate change,makes sense.
Why, I laughed alot the other night listening to the leadership evansville plan talking up the downtown,while covering it with spent carbons to go to a ball tournaments in the county.
One incrementally out cancels the other,and the existing overall “daily” commerce,and throughput infrastructure is still crap.
Look at the line called ‘Event Related Expenses’.
If I understand this crap correctly, another $ 1,480,000 of Building Authority payments have to be ADDED to the reported 2013 Actual for this line item of $ 2,565,872.
That revised ACTUAL is over $ 4,000,000; and the Budget for 2013 for ‘Event Related Expenses’ is $ 1,476,500. Are you kidding me ? Does VenuWorks not even have a clue what the costs are ??
Fire VenuWorks, but please, please do not replace them with SMG.
Lets face it, everything Weinzapfel told us about this Downtown Arena was a fraud:
1) That it would spur economic growth downtown (how’s that working out after 2 years) and create some huge number of new jobs (I don’t recall the promised number of jobs, anyone recall ?); and
2) That the Arena would be profitable from Day 1. Nope, they are 0-2. When they start blaming the shortfall on ‘lack of available dates from October-April’ that means they screwed up in negotiating the Hockey and Aces contracts–as these two entities suck up all the dates in Winter and still don’t create a profit.
If IUMS is built on the DPat lot, Ford Field House will be completely blocked in and this report will be the last thing we will need to worry about.
Winnecke promised to bring back the 01 master plan when he was a candidate yet now goes with rready, fire,aim as mayor and the whole city is paying for it.
This arena is never going to spur growth and bring new jobs to the area. Arenas do not work that way. This will be a money drain for a long long time as will the proposed hotel. The ball fields have become a joke that Bob Warren just keeps pushing down Evansville’s throat. All that money that the ECVB has could be put to much better use but here it goes to something that cannot be used several months of the year nor in bad weather of any kind. In addition it would be used by a very small percentage of the population and would need to have very expensive maintenance as Jordan has pointed out. And isn’t it to be on pretty low soggy ground?
“Arenas do not work that way”
I can name several developments all over the US and Canada spurred by arenas. Granted arenas don’t affect their surroundings as much as ballparks do.
“And isn’t it to be on pretty low soggy ground?”
Yup, look at the flood plain for Kleymeyer vs Goebel…
http://cometokleymeyer.blogspot.com/2013/09/why-build-at-kleymeyer.html
Here’s another question:
WHY over pay for an inferior ball fields complex when the LST and Mesker Amphitheater are in dire need of renovation or relocation?
Downtown will not see the IU medical center unless they take a ride!
Is there anything positive at all happening in this town? I can’t think of anything right now. It seems like everything is falling apart at once.
1st week of October. Westside Fall Festival.
Current. Mater Dei girls basketball.
Local government or their appointees have not scr**ed these two good things! Yet!
Well recyling pct rates and volume are up.
Some LGBT rights were granted
Lloyd and Carol strongly support Wesselman Woods
Missy and company got some playground equipment installed
Captain Obvious things
That’s about it.
There is no plan for the city it is just catch as catch can.
The Westside still doesn’t have sidewalks
The Casino revenue is going down
The zoo subsidy is going up.
The Ford Center loses money
The Victory loses money
The parks are unkempt and disheveled
Lloyd Pool is a disaster
The bank accounts are not reconciled let alone the rest of the books going on two years
Cronyism and politcal favors run wild across both political parties
We’ve spent umpteen million on legal fees and we don’t even know what is was for.
♪ And the beat goes on ♫
And I left out the two biggies the Combined sewers and water system.
Brains you just hit the nail on the head. Get ready the Mayors mouth piece (Wayne Parke) to go ape sh– over your post.
Looks like Mr. Parke hasn’t check in with the Mayor to get directions what he should post next on the CCO.
Answers are getting harder and harder to come up with. They needed to “sleep on it”, and probably had nightmares.
Comments are closed.