WEBVTT

METADATA
Video-Count: 1
Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=zYdbZ6ZoScU

NOTE
MEETING SECTIONS:

Part 1 (Video ID: zYdbZ6ZoScU):
- 00:01:42: Meeting Opening, Pledge, Advertisement, and Initial Remarks
- 00:05:22: Pensacola Convention Center Analysis Presented by WT Partnership
- 00:20:17: Legends Global Presentation on Bay Center Renovations
- 00:32:55: Legends High Level Recaps, Slides, & Performance Projections
- 00:45:25: Legends Summary & Campuswide Approach (Doug Thornton)
- 00:47:40: Escambia County DMO Group Presentation on Tourism Tax
- 00:54:23: Open Discussion: Bay Center Revamp, Second Facility?
- 00:57:12: WT Elaborates on Multi-Purpose Facility, Financing, Private Dollars
- 01:03:07: Multi-Purpose Facilities, Walkability, and DOT Funding
- 01:10:57: Available Money, Event Centers, & Adjacent Facilities
- 01:15:24: Transportation, Infrastructure, Multi-Purpose Facility Discussion
- 01:19:14: Youth Sports, Business, Convention Climate, Additional Ice
- 01:22:24: Second Ice Facility, Location of Events, Public-Private Partnerships
- 01:26:15: Venue Convergence, Existing Demand, and Design Process
- 01:31:44: Convention Hotel Need, Financial Support, and Underwriting
- 01:34:02: Deeper Dive on Hotel Needs, Size, and Investment Levers
- 01:38:18: Multipurpose Design, Adjacent Sites, Connectivity Concerns
- 01:41:34: Transportation Grants, Convention Centers, and Attendance
- 01:47:40: Parking, Airport, Location, Hotel Proximity, Ice Anchor?
- 01:48:14: Convention Center vs. Event Center (Flex Space) Differences?
- 01:55:27: Consensus Check & Second Sheet of Ice Dissonance?
- 01:58:12: Second Event Facility + Consensus Building Recap
- 01:59:25: Reverse Engineering, Design Concerns, ROI, and Subsidy
- 02:04:52: Funding, Dollars, Caps, Team Collaboration, & Finish Lines
- 02:07:05: City Participation, Transportation, and Parking Planning
- 02:10:22: Private Money, Consultant Advice, RFI, and RFP
- 02:15:25: Dot Grants, Location Specifics, Area Poverty
- 02:23:18: RFP Process, Independent Consultants, & City Support
- 02:27:02: Collaborative Efforts & Meeting Adjournment


Part: 1

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All righty. To make sure that we stay on 
schedule, we will go in and get started. So, thank you all for being here today. We 
will start with the pledge. Allison, would you like to lead us in the pledge? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the 
United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, 
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Was this meeting properly advertised?

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Madame Chair, this meeting was advertised 
in the Pensacola News Journal on April 9th, 2026 in the board's weekly meeting schedule. 
Great. Thank you so much for that information. I want to thank everyone for being here today. 
This is a huge community project and a once in a-lifetime project for all of us. And it's rare 
we get the opportunities to invest such a major amount of money into something that could change 
our entire community for the better and that we'll all be able to see the benefits of. So, 
I appreciate everyone being here today to take

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the time to be a part of that conversation 
and help steer that in the right direction. Good morning. And um I want to just say thank you 
to everybody. I'd love to see almost a full house uh today. So excited to talk about this 
topic and see what we can do um to move a big project forward for our city. Um, thank 
you to uh, Commissioner Hoffberger and the uh, county commission for being willing to do this 
joint session. I'm very hopeful that today, you know, we're able to to get uh, together with 
a plan to move forward in some way, shape, or form

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um, in a positive way for our city. So, I really 
look forward to our discussion for the to the information we're going to have today and um, 
just to something that we can action when we leave here. So, thank you. Uh and yeah, quickly 
uh again, thank you. You see the full house and it's because this matters to us uh as a region, as 
a community, and to put us in the best position to be successful. So, uh again, thank you to to 
Wes and county staff. You see what it takes to put on something like this to get us all uh in 
the same room. Um looking forward to uh from the

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administration standpoint, just try to be the best 
facilitators we can to to help move this project forward in any way that we can with the council, 
with county commission, and looking forward to the conversation. So, thank you. For the sake of 
time, we have asked that our presenters keep it to 20 minutes a piece and that we hold questions 
until the end of the presentation. Our first presentation will be from Michael Caps, presenting 
in person on behalf of Legends Global. Michael,

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it appears as if Michael might be running 
behind. We will switch one and two. We can go on and move to the Pensacola Convention 
Center analysis by WT Partnership. If you guys are ready to go, thank you so much 
for joining us in person or virtually, hybrid. In person. Wonderful. Thank 
you so much. We really appreciate you taking the time to invest in our community. 
I assume this is okay. Standing right here. Okay.

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Right. Uh, thank you. It's lovely to be 
in your city again. I'm SA Data Boy. WT Partnership. Here's my colleague Jose. I'll have 
him introduce himself quickly and then we'll start running through the presentation. Jose Davilas, 
senior vice president with WT Partnership. So, um, we'll kick this off with just saying that 
what we presented is what we think a strategic framework for analysis. And we're hoping, 
uh, that this provides you with a way of looking at an overall development as opposed to 
just picking up pieces from it and saying that,

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you know, let's let's look at this, let's look at 
that. We're just hoping that overall you'll you'll look at the thing as a whole because that's what 
we did. So our strategic frame framework focuses on long-term implications of development. Uh it 
also looks at high level comparison of delivery approaches an overview to what's possible under 
different scenarios. How those scenarios will impact the entire area and then this uh is a sub 
this is a planning tool uh but it is not a final uh procurement documentation or final 
recommendation to go with a particular

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structure. Our project priorities were our sort 
if if you could say they were our guard rails for this project. Uh these aligned really well 
with what came out of the resident survey and the stakeholder engagement. So that was nice to 
see that the priorities were aligned with what the people of Pensacola wanted. Uh so we looked 
at uh infrastructure impacts outside of the site including the Grand Hotel, the Bay Center 
and Tech Park. We looked at improving safety, mobility and connectivity. We also considered 
preserving uh preserving the historic character of

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the society as well as advancing public engagement 
and community alignment. Um another critical thing that came out of this was job creation and 
local economic growth as well as identifying funding sources. So we hope so the these were the 
guardrails with which we evaluated this project. So it's a very interesting site if I could call 
it that because uh you have the Grand Hotel and then you have the tech park, you have the PBC 
and then you have the site itself which uh you know a part of it is owned by the city and then 
a part of it falls kind of under um with with the

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PBC site. So overall you have about 6.84 acres but 
you have different ownerships across the board. So uh no doubt that uh to uh execute anything 
it would be very challenging because of that but at the same time we still thought it was 
worthy considering all these different parcels considering your water connectivity considering 
so many things that are going really for the Bay Center and that's why we we believe this is a this 
this is a transform transformational opportunity just beyond one site looking at the whole area and 
activating a whole district. So in our analysis,

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if you look at our more detailed report, which 
is about 150 pages, we actually start with a top- down overview. Think of it more like a funnel 
that we start looking at the federal level. Then we move down to the state level and we finally we 
move down to the county and the city level. Uh the federal highlights trends such as tightening 
uh immigration which leads to labor shortage. We look at higher construction costs. So overall 
just higher cost of a project. But then you move down to Florida and you see a story of growth. you 
see a story of vibrancy. You see people moving in

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constantly as I'm sure is a lived reality for 
all of you. So, uh, you know, definitely very encouraging for development. Uh, and then more 
so when we moved down to Pensacola, we saw um tremendous sort of potential in the retail sector. 
Your hospitality sector is also is also very healthy. And then multif family, while currently 
solid right now, it is at risk of uh an over supply. And then office we've seen just generally 
being challenging everywhere post pandemic as people have moved into hybrid structures and um 
work from home has really taken center stage. So

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with that we focused on the the retail hospitality 
and um sort of an offshoot of retail FNB food and beverages. Here are some emerging trends and 
potential for private funding. Now this is not specific to Pensacola. This just shows you what is 
going on currently uh in in these three markets, how they're being developed, how people are 
looking at them as they're moving forward. So for ice rinks, especially in warmer climates, 
what we noticed was that uh a good partnership, a solid partnership can really activate your 
ice rink. I think um the current job that ASM

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does with Pensacola Bay Center is a testament 
to that that having sort of the ice flyers, having that regular programming can really be a 
good um idea for launching an ice rink. Moving on, you have an indoor sports complex. Uh these are 
typically county-led models with very defined payback sources. Uh we've given some examples over 
there of a few uh indoor sports complexes that have um that are currently in play or at least in 
the planning stage like the Valuchia County one. And then lastly, we move to the convention center. 
What we've seen is that convention centers at

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standalone facilities uh do not do underperform. 
We see the ones that are more as part of a district activation perform much better. And you 
could say probably the same thing for all three of those that if you the more revenue sources you 
build around it, the higher foot traffic you build around it, the better um your facility will do. 
So as I mentioned, we looked at three distinct uh sectors. We looked at hospitality, food 
and beverage and retail. And then we looked at uh the visitor profile for ice rink indoor 
sports complex and a convention center.

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Uh just uh a point to preface here is that with 
a convention center, we're looking for regional uh conventions. So we're looking at anywhere 
between north of 12,000 to 15,000 attendees uh coming to these. And so our base case is 
that you would be filling up your entire sort of city with these conventions with with 
and all your hotel partners would would be able to take part of it. U because of local 
visitation, it has the most limited impact. uh it does have the potential to attract outof 
town teams. Uh however, that is more seasonal in

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the south than it is if you were doing this up 
north. For the indoor sports complex, we see a moderate ADR with uh youth athletes and coaches 
just shorter teners uh and more they reliably fill mid-pric hotels. For convention center, you 
see higher ADR, higher corporate spend as well as uh filling up of mid upper and luxury hotels. 
But like I said, if we're doing an event that is between 12,000 to 15,000 with Pensacola's 
current supply of about 11,000, we're pretty

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sure that if those types of events take place, 
everybody would be able to benefit from this. So, in assessing the feasibility of a convention 
center, we looked at demographic trends. Um, I think uh next to the PBC site, the 2.1 
mile uh radius uh has uh high incomes and high population growth. That's a uh that's a 
positive indicator. We looked at accessibility, which is ease of travel. Uh and I think 
we have a few more slides about this, but uh we do think that uh Pensacola compared to 
its regional peers has a lot more accessibility.

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Uh we looked at corporate presence and major 
employers including your Navy. So these would be great places for you to start also with 
filling up your programming. Uh we we we've talked a little bit about hotel supply. That's 
another thing that we looked at. Then we looked at uh hotel and retail activity and tourism drivers. 
uh that would influence vis uh visitation. So, what we're trying to do is hopefully create 
uh do some placemaking, create a space where if people come for a convention, they're happy to 
invite their families over and spend the weekend uh enjoying your your lovely city and the 
amenities that it offers. A little bit more

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on accessibility and what is expected as we move 
forward in 2031 with about uh with about 2 million in in plainment. And here is uh accessibility 
compared to your regional peers. So you can see that Pensacola ranks a lot higher than the 
surrounding airports. Uh so this this uh this points to the fact that currently people are 
probably landing here and then driving to other destinations for their conventions whereas you 
could offer them a convention center right here and they would probably attend it here. So this 
this is a regional sort of look at what's around.

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Lastly, we looked at what is currently being 
offered in terms of square footage, and we want to highlight that uh Pensacola currently 
significantly has lower square footage. So, we're looking at about between 25 to 30% uh 
lower average size and we've talked to the Hilton um downtown as well. Sometimes they have to open 
up the other hotel and their convention experience ends up looking a little bit more like people 
scuttling back and forth uh which is less than desirable. So there there was definitely 
a documented need for larger facilities,

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more modern facilities. Uh we do also want to 
emphasize that regional competitors are improving their offerings and increasing um their their uh 
their airport and their amenities. Um so we see significant demand drivers but we do uh understand 
that the convention center cannot function without an adjacent hotel and at the same time there are 
some risks which include um parking challenges. I think that was another one that emerged very 
strongly uh from the stakeholder uh engagement

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and resident survey. So you cannot really address 
we feel a facility without considering how it's going to impact parking and what you're 
going to do with the displaced parking. And here's a little bit about our resident 
survey that we did. I know there have been some questions about how we did this. And so it it was 
a random sample. Uh it was mailed out using the city's portal to as many residents and nearly 
anyone who was within the city could take it. And here are our findings. Um we saw the highest 
demand for a mixeduse type of development, live,

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work, and play. Uh we saw second highest demand 
for community activities and then infrastructure improvements, parks and green space and then we 
had a few others but largely uh with mixed use development you can address community activities 
as well as infrastructure improvements and parks. Uh so here's a pie chart of what we received 
for convention center ice rink and indoor sports complex for strongly support neutral and oppose. 
Uh the convention center came out leading uh very

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favorably for strongly support and support. Uh 
the ice rink was a little bit of a polarized um option with as many as strongly support. 
we had uh about the same people who were uh opposed to it or you see the big black um pie 
over there that's the neutral and then indoor sports complex was clearly a second favorite 
that emerged. So our key takeaways for this was um the the vision for the district and 
strong support. We saw uh that if this

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were to move forward, we would need the city, 
county, and tourism and industry to align uh pre preservation of natural uh assets as 
well as modernized facilities and trade-offs. Here is uh our program about what the convention 
center looks like. Plus 54,000 ft of exhibition space. I think we've emphasized repeatedly that we 
would like uh that we that this should be a modern modular sort of facility that can house multiple 
events. Uh the more events that that that it has,

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the more you can fill with it. So we see indoor 
sports as a demand. We would definitely encourage a high community programming uh schedule. Here 
are your pathways to development. We laid out four scenarios. Uh so you have number one where you 
just build a standalone convention center. It's got limited impact. Then we have a hybrid delivery 
where you build a convention center and you have a hotel. Number three, you have a P3. So, uh you 
deliver this alongside retail or mixed juice and really kind of activate that area there. There 
would be some pre-activation and some activation

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that then bleeds right into the project. And 
then lastly, we considered scenario four with which incorporated u safety and infrastructure 
improvements. Scenario 4 also unlocks federal grants and federal funding um as as well as a 
wider role for FDOT. I would uh for scenario two onwards. So scenario 2, three, four, the risks 
and the benefits all carry from one to the other. So if you have benefits that are outlined in 
scenario two, those benefits are implicit and assumed in scenario three and four. Whereas 
for scenario one, that kind of is a standalone

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um case. And here we highlight the next steps. Uh 
this is very broad and it does not at this point uh assume that you've chosen a scenario. These 
would happen regardless of the scenario that the city and county ultimately choose to advance. 
Those are to confirm the project objectives and success met uh metrics. Determine site control 
and zoning clarity. As mentioned earlier, uh we do understand the challenge that you have 
different sites, you have different ownership. So we do not anticipate this being an easy process 
but nevertheless it is probably required if you

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want to activate the entire district refine 
and confirm a clear project vision transaction structuring. So if you're adding in a hotel or 
a mixed juice or retail or anything else how are you going to capture those revenues? So um and 
hopefully have those feedback into the uh upkeep of uh the bay center as well as the convention 
center. So to avoid that deferred maintenance log um depending on project structure uh we 
gave a few revenue considerations. So this is what we would be structuring out uh 
whenever we decide a path forward. Finally

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we would advance to a market sounding or an 
RFI to test the market's appetite for this. Uh we we f uh we attached three project examples. 
Uh the William uh convention center is a standalone facility. It has a waterfront similar 
to Pensacola and then the other two operate uh within arena kind of like PBC. So that's why 
we chose these as samples that maybe Pensacola could consider in their development. And 
compared to the here's a comparison for

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um the the characteristics of those facilities 
and their markets compared to Pensacola. And then finally we provide some pictures and 
some um information. So, as you can see, the Willmington uh convention center is operated 
by Legends. They're probably very familiar with it. And you have the Rush and the Green Bay, 
Wisconsin. And then finally, the exhibition hall. I hope that was under 20 minutes. You did perfect. Thank you so much. And then you'll 
be around for questions after. Okay,

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great. We appreciate it. Michael Caps, are you 
ready to present on behalf of Legends Global? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Um, thank you again for 
everybody to be here. Uh, Jose is going to pull up our team that's remote with Doug Thornton out of 
New Orleans. He was here presented last time. Um, as well as Mike Kenny, our regional from 
Jacksonville. And then Bill uh Krueger with uh CSL out of Minneapolis. And then Aaron uh out 
of um Boston with uh Populace, the Architect. So,

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I'll kind of give you some opening remarks. um 
kick it over to Bill with CSL to give you the the feasibility study just a high level. This is the 
same information that we presented to you before, try to condense it down to get to those high 
points and then ask answer some more questions that you may or may not have. Um I'll run 
through the renovations for the building, the event center uh makeup, the uh additional 
ice facility. Uh it's not just a practice rink, it is an actual facility that can do other 
events. So, we want to make sure that that

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is framed properly. It's not just a practice 
rink. It does it can actually operate as an additional 20 to 30,000 square foot space. So, 
you could put Marty Gro ball functions in there while you're doing a convention in the event 
center, while you're doing a concert in the uh in the arena here. Uh so, that was 
our strategy and approach to it. So, um So, uh, with that said, uh, I'm 
going to go ahead and kick it over to Bill and make sure we have 
him on online. Bill, are you there?

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Hi there. Can you hear me? Okay. 
Yes, we can hear you. Okay. Okay, I've had really really choppy audio and video. 
So, just let me know if um if you're not able to to hear this. I don't see a presentation. Are 
you able to share that on your end, Michael? Yes, we are. There's going to pull it up. Michael, 
you're gonna This is Doug. I can pull it up if you um if you can't. Yeah, we've we've got it, 
Doug. Okay, great. Well, I'll just speak for a few minutes and then I'll turn it back over to 
Michael after this. Um so yes, I'm Bill Krueger

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with uh CSL International. Um I've been doing 
feasibility studies of this nature for projects of this nature for 30 years uh in markets uh 
all throughout the country including actually process. The charge, as Michael alluded 
to, was to focus on um new facility product

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development that could really enhance 
the market performance of the Bay Center um and uh in terms of the financial performance 
in particular, drive new economic impact and and better serve different event markets that are 
currently underserved in the Escambia County, Pensacola area at this point in 
time. So, as a part of our study, uh we had a a significant amount of engagement. 
Uh we we met with more than 50 uh stakeholders and user groups and some of the tenants as at the 
outset of the project. Um we also then followed

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up with interviews and surveys of different types 
of event planners, convention planner planners, meeting planners, amateur sports, uh uh 
tournament and other types of event producers, um and and a variety of other events including 
concert promoters and entertainment promoters as a part of our data collection and our research 
and our outreach process. So very extensive in terms of how we do these studies uh throughout 
the country. Um and certainly we we spent many months really delving into what to really 
determine what the market demand was and what the

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best type of product solutions uh that might be 
available coming out of this. Next slide please. This is just a summary very quickly of some 
of the feedback and of some of the convention planners that we spoke to. So really the 
takeaway from from what we learned from all the different event uh user groups uh 
that that we that interface with as a part of this process is there definitely is unmet 
convention demand largely from more the state and the regional groups. Our survey of more 
of a targeted set of niche national groups

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that can rotate anywhere around the country 
um really demonstrated that most of them um prefer some of the other destinations within 
Florida. if they're going to visit Florida, they're going to go to some of those common 
destinations for some of the larger events. So, the demand for the larger event conventions was 
relatively limited. How uh however, some of the smaller and the midsize events, particularly 
from the state and regional marketplace, uh were were relatively significant. However, their 
space needs and their hotel needs in particular. If you look at that pie chart on the right side 
of that page, this really underscores something

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that's really really critical uh that needs to 
be considered is that 90% of all the groups that expressed an interest to us of incambia county 
and and some kind of a product development in downtown Pensacola said that they require or 
prefer a headquarter hotel that's attached or is uh walkable within um uh one to two city blocks. 
And so that feedback is really important because it ties together the need for a fullervice hotel 
to serve as a convention center headquarters hotel

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uh if you're really trying to penetrate into the 
convention marketplace. Next slide please. So overall in terms of all these other interviews and 
surveys and everything that we did with regard to the market demand analysis really highlighted the 
fact that the demand segments that that express the most opportunity in terms of unmet pieces 
of business that we could compete for were more the smaller conventions and conferences and trade 
shows uh in addition to a significant interest by amateur sports. So when we say amateur sports, 
we're talking about of the indoor variety that

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largely would be basketball, volleyball, dance, 
cheer, wrestling, pickle ball. There's a whole bunch of those kind of sports that oftentimes 
will go in some kind of an indoor environment like that. And and there's really a significant 
need for that. Um and then in particular and also looking at again a potential new event center 
concept and and a potential, you know, practice sheet of ice as a part of that. Um the theory 
really landed on the fact that we could create a convention product but we would definitely 
need both concrete floor space, carpeted

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uh space and then hotel space all connected and 
all together. So so but the convention center you you know they like that. However, uh if you don't 
have all that equipment that's baked into your facility uh inventory of of uh of equipment 
and spaces and FF and E, then that cost has to be borne by the event planner or it has to 
be borne by the facility itself in order to to

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convert that space to be able to be suitable for 
amateur sports. And so, uh next slide, please. And so then the recommendation uh really coming all 
out of this just to summarize and we've got all that detail in our large 100 plus page report uh 
really landed on a flexible new event center type project that has an enhanced FFD package. And what 
that means is you've got the you know as a part of your building the construction of that project 
you're also purchasing all the equipment. So,

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portable hardwood, maybe have portable uh uh 
synthetic turf. Um you've got a bunch of nets that can that separate the spaces and create some 
additional spaces, but you've really got to and you got retractable seats and other things like 
that. So, you've got this very highly flexible building that's really being designed and thought 
about in lots of different markets throughout the country in our experience. And it's really a 
way to maximize the level of activity and also maximize the revenue generation within a building 
like that. Uh and and an important part of that

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strategy would then be to lure and attract a 
uh a fullervice 200key or larger full-ervice upper upscale chain scale hotel uh that would be 
attached via Skyway or or connected to an adjacent parcel. And and when you think about a full-ervice 
hotel that's 200 keys or greater, they've already got baked into that building model, they've 
already got a substantial amount of carpeted conference space and meeting space in that model. 
And when looking at all the survey results from

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the convention planners that we talked to, the 
a typical full-ervice hotel, if you were able to secure that under a P3 transaction, you you 
would have the right amount of carpeted space to marry with this size of the event center space, 
which is concrete floor, but highly flexible for other activities as well. And when you put 
all that together, you're able to leverage the private sector investment in the hotel product to 
secure their carpeted space and marry that with the concrete floor space in the event center. So 
you're able to really go after where all the meat

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of the demand is in the convention business in 
terms of our program recommendations. But then importantly with the practice ice sheet, what we 
did find is that, you know, the nearest additional ice sheet to Pensacola is more than three hours 
away. And so you've got all this pent-up demand for tournament activity and other league activity. 
And by adding a second sheet of ice, it really allows the Bay Center itself, the historical base 
center to really focus on those events that that it really is designed for. and that frankly is 
spectator and entertainment events, concerts,

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family shows, um, uh, ice hockey games, you 
know, by by the minor league ice Flyers, etc. And so once you have two sheets of ice, 
you can automatically start competing for ice tournaments and major figure skating competitions. 
And so when you've got this product together, it's really allowing the Bay Center to really 
do what's intended to do and focus on maximizing those entertainment events. And then you've got 
the event center that can do the conventions, the amateur sports and trade shows and other types 
of events and public public shows. And then you've

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got the second sheet of ice that all of a sudden 
now can really bring in a lot of tourism and hotel room nights by virtue of allowing it to 
be a tournament building with all this pent-up demand within the region. Uh that that currently 
is being very much underserved by the single sheet of ice that's offered on a on a a seasonal 
basis within the Bay Center itself. Next slide. This is the concept just to show you how 
you could convert that space within the event center concept. Again, about 
55,000 square ft for that space. You

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got it here. at which counts the evidence of the 
the center that exists today. You'd have the secondary practice sheet and then 
you'd have the hotel with their carpeted. As we go through the technical difficulties, 
I'll recap this in a high high level. Um I am

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tracking. We got 11 minutes left on the 20. 
So we'll we'll make sure we keep your time. Bill, you there? I feel like the old phone game 
with the string and the the 10 can.

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So, we're at we're at 10. Michael, the 
uh pres looks like the presentation went away and has come back up. If we want to go 
ahead and go to slide 17, we can start with the Pensacola Basin renovations and have you 
walk the group through the plans. Thank you, Mike. I'm going to touch on the performance 
projections real quick and then jump into that. We've got about 10 minutes left on our time. 
Um so I did want to highlight this slide. Um we talk about investment and ROI and what's 
big what's going to you know contribute to the community. You know from a tourism aspect 
and quality of life for our residents. So one

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one point I do want to point out on this slide 
is uh you look at the direct spending and the indirect spending um just from the uh event 
center and the practice or the ice facility. It's uh a return of 60 million economic input. Uh 
but you're also looking at 24 million additional uh monies and income uh salaries that would be 
created generated by additional jobs that are coming into the market. Um so now you're looking 
at and that's on an annual basis. So for each year

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uh you're looking there at you know 80 million 
plus uh in a return. So we're talking about an an outlay of 190 million. You're getting 80 back in 
year one. and this is a 20 to 30year um endeavor. Uh you're going to get a good return on your 
investment here. So, I'll jump into the uh from there into the Pensacola Bay Center renovations. 
These slides, a lot of people have seen them, so I'm going to touch on them real highlight level. 
Um what you see is the base center on the left, event center in blue, the ice rink in uh the 
green. Um and then the condi com uh combined

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space is the orange that connects everything 
together. uh we represented a hotel on the property. We understand that that's probably not 
the best direction to go in. Um but we wanted to touch on that to show you that uh the event center 
by the demand uh and drive from all of the users, they do want that type of headquarter hotel 
that's either close, walkable or on property. Uh getting into the renovations for the Bay Center 
that we all agree on that needs to be done. Uh touch on this real high level. Uh we would open 
up the entryway for the main floor entrance and

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create a bunker club. So a premium we'd actually 
add a grab and go marketplace concessions that's there not currently. Uh that's highlighted in 
the red and the yellow there. Uh in the green uh is where we would remove some seats where we 
could increase our capacity to 80 uh 800. Uh why that is key is 8,500 is the magic number uh for a 
market our size to try to attract those next level uh talent. Now obviously we've got the warf 
that competes with us. The mobile arena is

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coming online here soon. They will Mobile 
will basically be the same size as ours from a concert standpoint. Uh but the Warf 
is 10,000 seats when they open their door. So we're right now at 6,800. That's roughly 
3,000 seats. If we can get to close to 9,000, that puts us in a better competitive market 
for uh the the concerts on that side. This just gives you a closer view of the bunker 
club. Um if you've been to an event and uh you've seen our kitchen, you know where our 
food comes from. All the food in the building

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comes from one kitchen. Um so we'd actually 
add a service elevator, a freight elevator, which the building currently does not have. that 
would access a second level and a third level to be able to have better movement where 
we're moving food and beverage and other uh operational uh endeavors without having to 
interact with the public. Uh right now we have to interact with the public. Everybody uses that 
one elevator. Uh moving on to the second floor, the rooms that you are in right now is highlighted 
in red. Uh so this would become what we call our

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club loge level. uh that would actually have a 
kitchen facility on this side as well to be able to support do private events on non-event days 
but then have that higher next level premium um option uh for to increase revenue on the east 
side. You see the purple highlighted there. Um that would be your next level would be accessible 
from the the top down. Uh that gives you kind of um another different level. So we're looking at 
three tiers of premium seating. Bunker Club, just imagine that's a hundred bucks to get in. This 
level is maybe 50 bucks to get in. The purple on

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the other side might be $25 to get in. Now, those 
are just working numbers. We obviously need to do more market research demand. We've put some time 
and effort into that on what we would price out, how we would do it versus an annual subscription 
versus a per show sell add-on, that kind of thing. uh we can work through all that, but that's what's 
really going to generate the additional revenue that helps us get into the black for the operation 
of the Bay Center because again as the operating model that we proposed with all these renovations 
being done, uh we should be in a position to where

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we can restructure the contract for the Bay 
Center to be able to uh operate more as a P&L uh where there's no longer a subsidy for the the 
Bay Center. uh then that subsidy then in turn goes back towards the debt service and can help uh 
our our math problem there. Uh this just gives you a close-up look uh for the uh the club loge 
level. Moving up to the third level concourse, the orange is the uh atrium uh enclosed glass 
area that would connect the event center. Uh the

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concessions are in the purple. Right now we have 
what's called belly up concessions. If you've been to New Orleans Super Dome or Jacksonville's going 
through renovations or you've been into a building in other markets nowadays, a lot of it's you go 
in, you grab your items, you tap, you walk out, you go. That's what all of these concessions would 
be instead of walking up to a counter, placing an order, them going and get your food, come back, 
process the transaction. Where that's key for us is time is money, money is time. So we can be 
able to improve that experience for the guests

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but also increase our our ROI with uh the revenue 
generation. Highlighted here is also some upgrades to the exterior of the facade. Um you know we've 
candidly called this the white elephant for many years. Um so we were going to kind of dress it up 
a little bit um and put some time um and I I think that goes towards where you're rebranding the 
building. So then you're getting the opportunity to get those naming rights for the building 
itself, for the box office, for other different areas that we've worked into the performer for 
that operating model. Uh this gives you that

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uh $25 uh area that I was talking about as an 
example. It's just an additional it could be just an additional uh food and beverage space, but it 
does have a kitchen on that side as well. So we're going from one kitchen in the building to four. 
So, we actually have one on the ground level, two on this side, and then one on the other side, 
east side. Uh, an example of what we talk about with uh concessions is points of sale. Uh, so part 
of this is adding additional points of sale. Um, and roughly one point of sale can generate $1,200 
uh an event. So, the more that we add to that,

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the more speed of service that we can go through 
and be able to keep our price points to the market base. Uh, some of you have been to Orlando or 
Miami or Atlanta or bigger markets. You're paying $18, $20 a beer. Um, we're trying to make sure we 
don't do that here in Pensacola. This gives you an example of uh the the marketplace where you grab 
and go. Um, this gives you an example of a new club space. Uh, branded it with the Ice Flyers. 
Um, it could be a naming rights. It could be the the Mercedes-Benz or Crown Royal or or something 
to that effect. Uh we talked about the increase in

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capacity as far as the uh seating count. So you 
look at where we would go. We create that stage pocket where you see the stage in the screen right 
now. We would move that back by taking seats out. Now everybody's going to say, why are we taking 
seats out to get more seats? Well, it's about the configuration of stage placement. How does that 
impact hockey and Sunb Belt basketball that are in the round? Uh it actually gives them another 
premium area that they can do. If you've been to a hockey game, you've been on the flight deck, 
this now gives us another multi-tered flight deck

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option that's very similar to what the Wahoos do 
in left field and right field, you get additional spaces that can be a private space uh for an 
event or uh it can be just sold uh to the public in general. Uh talked about um exterior facade. 
Uh this gives you an example of naming rights. Obviously, you dress it up. people more enticed 
to, you know, open their checkbooks and and write checks to support the the the mission. And 
this actually had some RGB lighting as well. So,

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when you come across the bridge coming from the 
beach, you're going to see the base center top lit up. When you're coming down I 10, you're going to 
see it. It's going to be a focal point that you're uh going to be proud of. Um on the back, 
this just just shows you a rendering of the connection to the uh the back side. We did talk 
about deferred maintenance and some efforts that we've done. Highlighted here is the 10 million 
that we're still finishing up, but a lot of has made a huge impact with a brand new sound system, 
the lighting system, uh the the fence around the

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parking lot. You'd be amazed at how many comments 
our calls I've gotten about that. Thank you for taking that rusted old chain link fence down. It 
doesn't look like a correctional facility anymore and that kind of thing. So, you know, a little bit 
goes a long way. So, we did still factor some of that in where we did a full facility condition 
assessment which identified up to 172 million I think in different things. Do you need all that? 
We've done without it for many years. We can

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um but we want to get out of that, you know, put 
some gaff tape or duct tape on it and actually fix the things that need to be fixed because if we're 
going to invest all this money, we don't want the pipes or the concrete that supports all that to 
break down. Getting into the cost projections. Um, this gives you all itemized going to highlight uh 
the high level. The base center renovations is now at uh 71 million. It does include that 15 million 
in deferred maintenance. Uh moving into the event center. Um this is a rendering from the tech park 
side that shows you the event center in the middle

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uh with a hotel or um additional facility to 
the right. That could be a parking deck that's built there in in place if we can't find another 
solution with the hotel property or the tech park. Uh but it gives you those options. The uh event 
space event facility that we're talking about, this is the event level uh where it is 55,000 
square feet but can be divided into three separate rooms. Bill highlighted and touched on bringing 
in sport court, hardwood court, retractable seating and all those different configurations 
where this could be utilized. You have a lot of

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multi-use space as far as pre-unction with the 
lobby entrance area and plenty of back of house. The way it is configured right now is to maximize 
the loading space and the backstage space. So, both buildings budding up to each other uh with 
the base center on the left and the event center on the right. It gives you that functionality to 
be able to to perform and do the shows. This gives you the breakout rooms that are on the next level 
up above the event level for the uh com the event center. So it doesn't have that 20,000 30,000 foot 
big ballroom to be do the big functions but it

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does give you some of those additional spaces and 
that's where Bill with CSL had mentioned the hotel would come into play with those additional meeting 
spaces would actually supplement and augment this to be be able to u make it work with the math 
problem that we have. These are some examples of trade shows. Uh sport court facility. Uh the 
atrium uh entryway pre-unction space. Uh again, new modern updated, not 1980s like we have right 
now. Um this is an example of a basic uh layout

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where you've got the high ceiling where you 
can still rig and do conventions, um banquetss, uh Marty Gro balls, you name it. Uh but you can 
also do the the sport competition from basketball, pickle ball, volleyball, wrestling, um you name 
it to in another exhibition floor. We do booths uh exhibition shows with about 100 is our max 
here. This can get you up to 250 booths. So think I'm over my time. Uh I'll wrap this up. 
Um, so we're uh 84 million for the event center.

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The ice rink uh again it's an ice facility. 
It can be also utilized. So when we're not I would categorize this as a building that can 
do ice. It's a it's an event building but it can also do ice. So think of as an additional 
auxiliary space that would add to that. Um, and the decision that's before you is, is 
it worth that 29 or $30 million that that we have out there? Um, I think it is appropriate 
aligned. Um, but with the campuswide approach that

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Doug's going to touch on is that it does actually 
operate in a positive uh revenue stream uh for the building. Projected cost is 29 million there. Um, 
again getting into the campuswide approach. Uh, and this is where I'm going to kick it over to 
Doug real quick. Doug, are you there? I am. Um, thank you, Michael. My name is Doug Thornton. 
I'm the president of our Legends Venue Planning Services Division. Um, I work with municipal 
and private owners like yourselves to support

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new or renovated venue development, uh, like what 
we're talking about today. And I think you can see we've spent a considerable amount of time with 
our consultants CSL and populace on the design side and feel comfortable that these improvements 
will provide a creative value to the community. So um Michael has taken you through some of the 
architectural plans uh just to show you you know some of the things that we've looked at in terms 
of incremental value. If you can go to the next slide, Michael, actually if we can go on and stop 
it there. I think we're at time for you guys. Is

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that okay with the board? because we do have one 
more presentation and then we do have questions after this. Any objections? I just want to make 
sure that we're keeping us on track. So, if we can just table that and then probably loop back to 
some of that for questions. Absolutely. And what he was going to go through is the same information 
that we provided to you before. Um, this was trying to condense it high level to get it to you. 
Okay. And we can address those at any of the Q&A session. Perfect. We appreciate that so much. We 
do have one more presentation. the Escambia County DMO group um representing the hotel years in the 
area. Um Ted Int is going to speak on behalf of

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those folks. We appreciate you guys coming here 
today. We know that you um provide wonderful hotels for people to stay in and that allows 
us to levy this money to invest back into the community. So madam chair. Yes, sir. So who's 
representing a visit? Is there So visit is not on this for today. This is they call themselves 
the DMO. It's the hotel group here in So this is not visit. Visit is not being represented here 
today? No sir. Okay. Thank you. First I'd like to say thank you to all of you. I guess I'll 
call this the dis today, the collective dis.

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Um as you know we have studied this topic 
for almost 50 years. There have been multiple studies done over those years. uniquely almost 
every study that's been done has come back in one way or another very similar to the other ones. 
There are a few things that make this opportunity different in this space and time. Uh Mr. Mayor, 
I want to thank you and your uh council for your vision and seeing that this could be the catalyst 
for us capturing the connectivity of uh Hollist T. Williams. The redevelopment that's happening at 
Jefferson and North Palifox and the redevelopment

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of the Bay Center with an addition of some 
event facilities could tie all that part of our city. Excuse me. Commissioner Ray, did you have 
something you wanted to share with everybody on that? No. When the time ends, I'll share it. Okay. 
I also want to thank the county commissioners for recognizing the value of our tourism tax. passing 
the fifth cent, I believe we did that in 2020, has put us in a position here today to have this 
generational decision uh and conversation. And we do see, as Madam Chair mentioned, this is a once 
in a-lifetime opportunity for our community. In my

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career, this will probably be the largest public 
investment that our our county makes. And uh so it needs to be thought through very carefully and 
thoughtfully. Uh we have reviewed all the recent studies that have been done and uh despite some 
people's opinion, we don't really dispute any of the information in either one of the studies, 
but what we've been able to do is extrapolate the information from both those studies plus the 
previous studies that have been conducted as well as our experience as uh the tourism community 
and the DMO is not just the hotel years, there

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are also restaurant tours represented on that and 
also other constituents that participate in our tourism economy. And what we know is the future of 
tax collections is a critical piece to this. Due to the size and nature of our community at this 
time, due to the kind of airlift that we have, we believe there's an opportunity here to do a 
multi-purpose event center that can do indoor sports, conventions, conferences, trade shows, 
all the things that we listed in the letter that we sent to all of you. We believe that in today's 
world, a proper design that can be made that can

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satisfy all of our communities needs for at least 
another generation. And I go back to something I heard Senator or uh Mayor Reeves say about a month 
and a half or so ago. He said, "In an ideal world, we'd be able to afford everything, a 
standalone purpose-built convention center, indoor sports." But the reality is we have to 
make the best decision for our community. And our group believes after careful consideration, 
our own analytical work as generators of the tax that will largely be used to pay for this that 
we believe a multiple multi-purpose center is the

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best best opportunity for us. We also believe that 
because of over 500 plus rooms of new development either under construction or in the planning 
stages right now in downtown Pensacola in the related area that adding a new hotel at this time 
is not a good idea. There's also the grand hotel next door to this facility that likely has a 
giant redevelopment opportunity if everybody can agree to do an expansion and renovation of 
the Bay Center. So, we believe that from a tour or from a a lodging capacity situation, we have 
more than enough inventory. And I'd like to speak

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to one thing that I don't think any of the studies 
that I've read, and some of these studies go back to 2012. The nuance of our historic Pensacola, our 
community, gets missed in these studies. We know now that when people come here for soccer events, 
basketball tournaments, dance competitions, baseball tournaments, and other things, a lot of 
those people go to the beach first, which is where my organization's hotels are. And once that starts 
to fill up, that compression comes back across

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the bridge. We want to see a facility built that 
can create compression that fills both sides of the bridge at the same time. We want to leverage 
downtown Pensacola. And all of you know because I've said this to all of you both in public and 
in private. We spend a lot of our own energy marketing downtown Pensacola at Inisree hotels. 
Even though every one of our hotels, with the exception of one, is on the beach. the value of 
downtown Pensacola is greater than any feasibility study is ever going to garner because they don't 
live here and experience this with us every day.

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Couple that with the fact that we got ranked 
the number one beach in the United States by the reader Kanye Traveler and the fact that one 
of the one of the the things that those readers pointed out was the historic downtown Pensacola 
made our beach experience special leads me to believe that if we make the right decision here, 
all these new hotels that are coming to downtown are going to benefit from this development. Will 
there be a day someday where we may need another 250 hotel rooms? Possibly. When that day comes, 
it probably won't need to be a P3 investment

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because when it pencils, you guys don't have 
to participate financially. Our organizations never ask for a dime. We've built over $500 
million worth of hotels in Escambia County. So, with that, I would like to say that again, we 
truly appreciate y'all coming together on this. We think that the tourism community for Scami 
County is completely ready for this next step. We're excited for it. We have studied it. We've 
talked about it. The fact that everybody's in a

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room ready to make a decision speaks volumes about 
your leadership in our community. We want you to know how much we appreciate that. We want you to 
know how much we appreciate everybody's efforts, including all the people who have done all these 
amazing studies. And I do want to tell you, I've read every page of every study and there 
is a ton of information our community is going to be able to use for years going forward 
that we can pull out of those studies as we make future decisions. Thank you. Thank you. At 
this time, we will open it up for conversation. I will express that I hope that we can come to 
some sort of agreement on how to move forward so

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we can memorialize something that we'll be able 
to vote on at one of our upcoming May meetings because I know everybody's been working on this 
for a very long time. So your goal to come out of this meeting is what I would like to see us 
agree on a path forward. I think we can probably all agree that the Bay Center needs revamping. 
So I would like to express that. And then can we look at building a second or a third facility? 
And if so, what type of facility or what data do we need to know what type of facility? 
That sounds good. You know, for the record,

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Madam Chair, since you uh had a question, I think 
visit is the organization that's tasked that we give millions of dollars to decide who's going 
to put heads in beds, who's going to be here. Uh they should be a part of any conversation 
uh that we have before we make a decision. So unfortunately, Visit Pensacola did not reach 
out, nor did they send any documentation for consideration. They are tasked with spending the 
money, not generating the money. So I thought it was important that we have the hotel years 
that are tasked with generating that money to be here as well. Well, I I I disagree that they 
are tasked with generating the money. It's an

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investment. But nevertheless, I mean, we're not 
going to have that debate. Bas specific debate. Do we all agree that we want to revamp the 
Bay Center? Is that anything that someone has conversation on? Some people are shy to talk, but 
not me. That was agreed upon 20 years ago. I um this building's over 45 years old. Some of us on 
this board weren't even born yet. I was in grade school. It's obviously if we have a vision for the 
county and city that we have to do something here.

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what we do. I agree with the mayor depends on fair 
share and where we get to what we want to do. I think um all the things that sound great. I agree 
with the DMO on the hotels. I think we probably have enough of that right now. I would like to 
see the grand at some point come back to life, but that's a separate separate topic. But 
we've been doing this for a year. All right. Last legislative session, and this is why 
I'm putting this out, there was discussion on using TDT for a variety of variety of things. 
We probably need to do something fairly soon. Um,

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if we're going to do something and decide 
what that looks like. So, in short, I'm in favor for doing something sooner 
than later. And I I I've committed to you, DC, that I'm willing to do something with the 
city, and I hope we can get to yes on something. Mary. Uh, so just to be clear, uh, Commissioner, 
if we wanted to have them elaborate on anything, are we just doing discussion now or can I We can 
ask questions as well. Okay. Yeah. Um, okay. Yeah. If if you have a specific question for anyone 
that presented, I would say let's open it up.

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Um, so, uh, if we could, I I think it's 
important because I think there's these two key conversations of what what buildings, you know, 
what's the second facility and all that. And, um, and so I'd love for WT to elaborate, as they 
did in our previous meeting, on um, what the DMO just mentioned, which is I know there's a lot of 
debate publicly about is it a convention center, is it multi-purpose, but it's also 2026. And I 
think there are examples where maybe that isn't as big of a debate as it might seem publicly. And 
uh so I know that WT can elaborate on that some

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and you touched on some of those examples. And 
then the second thing while you're up, I think that's the big conversation is is financing. Um 
and and I think a big part of this and a lot of success that other cities and counties have had 
is not just opening the wallet and saying, "Okay, if the county commission was willing, here's how 
much bed tax is available and this is what we've got to build. how can we compound that investment 
on the private side? So, I don't look at a hotel participation in any form as a subsidy. I think 
what we're saying is that's more money going into

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the pot to be able to enact a vision. And so I I 
I guess just if you don't mind briefly touching on number one the the multi-purpose aspect of do we 
need to be debating between convention center or sports facility or is there that hybrid approach 
and then secondly maybe a little bit on the toia opportunities those talking about some of those 
things about other dollars coming into play that aren't the county the city CRA or otherwise. Thank 
you. Sure happy to. Uh so like the mayor said

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uh when we say convention center we're actually 
actually what we realized when we were sitting that we were all talking about the same thing. 
We're all talking about a modular facility that can host as many events as possible. Having said 
that there will be some events that you will have to let go of as you decide and you refine your 
structure. So if you do want the facility to perform indoor sports there's a certain capacity 
that you can meet and with that you will let go of certain events. So no, you cannot have everything 
but there is a world in which you can accommodate large amount of requests and what we saw uh in 
the resident survey was people talked a lot about

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the Foley event center. That's apparently where 
Pensacolans's go for some of these things right now. So the existing facility with the square 
footage that we put in our report uh yes we we we anticipate that it should be able to host indoor 
sports uh uh to tour tournaments uh basketball pickle ball uh volleyball some of these and uh 
any person who's going to bring in their private dollars they are going to want to invest in that 
and on that uh on the second note of private dollars uh the the public uh facility whether it's 
a civic center, whatever you decide to do, that is

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an anchor. All cities or counties or public 
investments usually, whether it's a library, they fund the anchor, whereas everything around 
it then is the the private sector can bring. So you guarantee them that here's the facility 
we're going to bring. Here's our programming. So here is the visitor footfall. Now your private 
dollars come in to uplift that hotel or to uplift that mixed juice or retail and whatnot. And uh 
we've heard a lot about connectivity. I think the DMO makes a good point. It's a great idea 
to bring the downtown to the waterfront and the

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waterfront to the downtown. To that end, when 
we looked at scenario four, the whole reason we uh even included that was because we we do feel 
you guys have a historic you guys have a very vibrant downtown. There's a lot to offer. Um it's 
it's a true downtown in in many ways. And the way to do that, the way to bring that in into the Bay 
Center area district or to the beach and all of that is to consider connectivity as a whole. 
So when we look at the the the TIFFIA and TOD, when we look at that TOD option that specifically 
emphasizes are we creating bike lanes, right? Our

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vision when we uh put up that concept was that 
as your visitors come, whether they're conference attendees or indoor sports attendees, they 
come, they get dropped off over there via bus or whatever it is, but then after that it's walkable, 
they can get a bike from there and they don't we don't need to add more cars on the road. So 
really the cars on the road are the Pensacolons. Um and then this unlocks for us uh two uh 
funding tools. One of them is financing. So, TIFFIA is a financing tool that is something 
you have to pay back. Uh, what is good about

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that is the interest rate. So, right now, if I'm 
a private developer and I want to come build here, uh, without a TIFFIA, I'm going to end up paying 
close to seven or eight or 9% interest rate. With TIFFIA, with uh with that area becoming like a 
zone, uh, now the interest rate drops to like 4%. And the whole point of US DOT encouraging these 
is they like the idea of walkable, connected, safe and whatnot. Uh and then the other uh is 
grants. So uh US DOT does a very good job of

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encouraging people to undertake at least grant 
uh planning studies to encourage walkability. We we did hear in uh your resident survey that uh 
people emphasize parking and they just didn't want any new development to come in and cause more 
problems. And we think that's a fair point. And we do think that one of the issues right now, 
as you guys are more aware than than we are, is that your downtown's right there, but it's 
not connected. So if there's a convention center, this is called enabling infrastructure. What 
we're saying is that through a phasing approach,

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you don't have to Rome wasn't built in a day. 
You don't have to build all this in a day. But as you build your facility, as you increase the 
programming, as you start to collect more revenue and whatnot, we do think that there's space 
to build this enabling infrastructure and make this a true destination that encourages people 
to walk and move around and really, you know, because it's it's right there. Your downtown's 
right there, but you really can't get to it right now without a car. So, scenario four looks at 
that. Mr. Mayor, so in in your vision, would it be

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like one facility that would have the multi-ports 
and the convention into one? I I was making the all the point I was making is there's a lot of 
conversation around should it be a convention center and including by I'll be honest walking 
into this process. You know, I always worry at the government level of trying to please too many 
people and then end up having half of a convention center and half of a sports facility. That doesn't 
really function well for anybody, right? That's kind of the natural thing is well that's less less 
confrontational but we end up with something maybe

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the net product the net deliverable isn't as 
good. Uh so I was skeptical about that but you know seeing examples of hey there is the ability 
to maybe have some harmony between bringing in conventions that that are using hotels during the 
week and eating at restaurants and supporting our local small businesses during the week and then 
sports on the weekends. um you know that that capacity might be the net value. So uh again I'm 
no architect. Uh I'm uh you know I would I think that would happen throughout the process. I just 
I think this early in the conversation we may not

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need to dive into a fork in the road yet to say 
are we going to have a sports facility or are we going to have a convention center because it may 
not necessarily one you might be able to do them both and it might just be uh early on that you 
know to to have to make that determination. I just want to get clarity. No makes sense. Thank you 
so much. I think that um I think that if we don't have connectivity, we run a risk of having too 
many separate locations of event like we we want people here to go to Palifox and and go ahead and 
fund the businesses that are our local people and

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such. And I think that the DOT part that third for 
the grant um I I think that we can't move really move forward without that consideration. as much 
as I love walkable and bikable and that's what I everyone's not able to do that right and so I 
mean I think of those periods where my parents always walked and biked and were very active but 
then there's a point where you just can't and so there's got to be some kind of movability even if 
we just did I if we use this as a hub and maybe

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we activate the old train center right there and 
use it as a hub and we even have just trolleys going the east west route and the north south 
route so that people can make it up and down to all those locations that we are putting on 
in play the various hotels etc without having to relocate here. Um so I think that without that 
we're really just continuing to do these a chunk here and a chunk there. I think we have to have 
that kind of connectivity that doesn't rely on a person's ability to walk or bike. It's got to 
be there's got to be some stuff like that. I I

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say this every time, but my mind always goes back 
to um Oldtown Alexandria in in you know outside DC in Virginia and you've always got up and down 
King Street, you've got the trolleys running. So people walk it surely and they park, but the for 
those that get tired or can't do it any longer, there's there's that ability. So I think that 
even you know the ones that we have going now have really enhanced on Saturdays and on those evenings 
and I think that we enhance in that for sure. um and that will continue to not make everything 
have to be here. So the second the the followup to

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this is the fact that I agree completely with with 
um Mr. Enson that I don't think that we have to fund the private sector. I think that if you think 
of even strong towns in the way it goes is is that we do that anchor as you guys have just reiterated 
we we focus on the anchor transportation in this location and we let it naturally flow from there. 
I think if we force too much here at once once again uh we don't know what the economy is going 
to absorb and then we once again risk you know

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running our our friends and family who are on 
Palifox out of business or the new extension on Jefferson and we have too many too many things 
that that we risk that way. So I think that we have to look at the transportation port portion 
and using the federal grants hopefully from DOT to kind of enhance that idea. So that would be my 
Yes, ma'am. I would agree with that. Commissioner Barry, thank you. And that I mean I think that 
would might be a fantastic focus for the city

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would be the transportation and the and the 
parking aspect of it. Um you know we are tasked unfortunately with some degree of capacity of how 
much we can actually do. Um, you know, and I think that we do have to prioritize what's, you know, 
what's most important. We're not gonna end up with a product that makes everyone happy. That's gonna 
that's a that's a fool's errand. So, you know, uh, for my vote, uh, the money going into the 
renovations at the Bay Center and the adjacent facility, that's I mean, we have to set priorities 
as to what it's going to be. And for my vote,

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it's going to be a, you know, youth sports, a 
sports type facility. And you know, much like one of the uh speakers mentioned, OA, that event 
center, um I've spent a lot of time over there the last few years. And um you know, they have they 
host conventions and trade shows during the week. And then they have thousands of families there 
playing basketball and volleyball on the weekends. And I think that type of facility, you know, is 
exactly what we were looking at hypothetically putting at Brazham a couple of years ago. That 
didn't happen. Um but the fact that the facility

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didn't happen at Brozenham wasn't a function of 
there not being the demand and the uh financials not making sense. It was you know some of the 
location and and some other factors but um the the room generation equation that does go into 
the repayment of the debt placement. that's what that's what's going to generate those uh 
those nights uh you know based on you know based on the statistics I think that's a that's 
a fantastic use. So the renovations at the Bay

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Center the adjacent uh the adjacent uh sports 
facility um I think there's some conversations between uh Mr. Harris and our budget folks as 
well as our bond council about their ability to uh uh maybe with some uh you know with some 
adjacent help from the county be able to underwrite another ice uh the ice rink. If we're 
a conduit to that and if all that they need from the public sector in that in that in that scenario 
is uh space that to me that's a reasonable that's

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a reasonable use of space as long as we're not uh 
devoting our debt placement capacity towards those uh towards that repayment or towards the 
debt placement. Um I think we financially we can afford to do the center. We can afford 
to do afford to do everything here that's being proposed that'll take it to the next level and 
we can afford to do a full-on adjacent facility um with the capacity that we have and then it's 
going to be uh you know and then then that's going to basically eat up eat up our capacity and uh 
you know like I said if Mr. Harris can work that

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out with bond council on underwriters. Uh I don't 
have I don't have any issue devoting some space out of this acreage for that facility. It will 
have a benefit. Um but you know and and you know we we can't end up making everybody happy. So I 
would agree with that. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'd like to go back to your question 
just so I can get clarification. So you asked kind of a broad question whether we supported I think 
Bay Center improvements or correct. Okay. Because

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I think there's already been money set aside 
if I'm not mistaken like 75 million. I think you all took 25 million to do artificial turf. 
So clearly county has a strong interest in youth sports. I've seen that. Um but I thought there was 
like 75 million set aside for basin improvements. Is that correct or not? So conversationally I 
mean that was the conversation at our board. Um we didn't really get into the actual debt 
placement debt placement capacity. That's that would have that was at the time assuming a 
debt placement capacity of 100 million which is

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uh even at that time was a conservative number. 
Our our capacity is greater than that. So you know when you when you look at the when you look 
at the numbers I mean we do have the ability to to put probably closer to 150 million in not 
100. Okay. But that and like I said that that if you look at some of the cost projection 
spreadsheets that'll cover everything in the facility that we're in plus everything associated 
with the facility adjacent to it. But that will kind of tap that out. Okay. And that goes with 
the numbers that were shown earlier. 71 million

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01:12:02.800 --> 01:12:37.360
roughly for renovations the base center then 86 
million is what they projected for that facility. to the additional facility. I think that the I 
think the number associated with the convention center was a little bit greater than the one 
associated with the like one more focused on the youth sports might have been more in the 65 
or 70 range but yeah more or less Charles. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Great. That's all I have 
right now. Thank you. Other questions? Yes, ma'am. So, so just so I'm I'm sort of clear 
on um what Commissioner Rari just said. So

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the are you suggesting that all of the um options, 
forgetting about the hotel for a minute, ice rink, event center, and bay center are doable or was it 
the event center and the center improvements? The event center and the and the bay center are what 
I'm saying is financially doable to the county from our side. I mean, Got it. Okay. Um, and like 
I said, I I, you know, um, I don't have any issue, you know, helping, uh, you know, helping as we're 
able with, uh, the conversation with Mr. Harris.

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I I think that conversation is still progressing 
between he and his investors and the bond council and underwriters. Um, and if we're, like I said, 
if we're if we're just a conduit that that's not uh that that's not tapping into our capacity, then 
uh if the only public portion of that second sheet of ice, that structure, is allocating some acreage 
for it, then that's reasonable to me. I mean, that that that you know, that wouldn't require 
probably a formal PPP or anything, but you know,

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01:13:39.280 --> 01:14:10.320
just conversationally, that's that is a good 
public private partnership. They're you know, they're financing the facility. we're providing 
some uh you know some dirt for it and that seems reasonable. So that was one of my questions 
um because I have looked at that model in other cities you know as we look at this overall 
project and um it does seem that there you know is is usually it's usually a public private and 
and typically it's something like land or some kind of facility uh um or subsidy I I should say 
to a facility. So yeah, I I don't you know I don't

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know what that looks like and obviously that's 
that's something that we would have to discuss, but I feel like you know a second sheet of ice 
in our community somewhere is a great idea how we can facilitate that whether it's the Bay Center uh 
property is obviously one option for that and and um the county decided that you know under their 
lease that was something they wanted to pursue. um that would be great but I I worry a little bit 
about if we are work working on parking and other aspects of the support you know that we need for a 
bigger project you know how does this all kind of

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fit and so I guess that that's my question I don't 
know how these things are typically structured in other places but but and in the space for it you 
know that the public side could put in I mean it doesn't have to be adjacent to it could slide 
under you know under 110 or you know a little bit you know a little bit north or a little bit 
west you know, literally where we're sitting, but you know, somewhere in the general vicinity, 
right? Gotcha. Yeah. And there are there are definitely options for sure for that. Um I I very 
much like the the transportation aspect of this and trying to see what we can do to improve, you 
know, our our um ability to reduce congestion.

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01:15:24.000 --> 01:15:54.480
Um, we did ask for $500,000 for a congestion study 
in downtown because what's that's something that I think we're going to be facing and we actually 
need um to look at that more closely. I think this can be part of that discussion and how we can 
utilize this property potentially for financing um and potentially to to help you know address some 
of those future issues I I think is is important. So, for me, I would love to see um the city of 
Pensacola, you know, really dive into what that

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could look like and and sort of um explore those 
options. I know when uh we heard the presentation, it was well, our next uh step there would be to 
talk to FDOT, which is a little scary, but that's fine. Um if that if that is part of it, we can we 
could certainly u make that one of our next steps, but um you know, to to really follow up on that. 
And then I do believe that really narrowing down what we can do. I am a big in this multi-purpose 
space um I believe that sports are important

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but I also believe that creating a business 
environment in our community is going to attract more business activity and that is certainly a 
priority of mine. I want jobs for people that um are are here in our community particularly our 
kids who you know tend to go off somewhere else. I want them to be able to find those opportunities 
here. I think having the right business related space for companies that want to, you know, 
relocate here, headquarters, you know, they typically need some kind of convention space. So, 
I just want to be careful. I think it's all it,

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01:17:01.040 --> 01:17:32.720
you know, we can do it all. I I believe or at 
least we can do a lot of it. I think there may be some limitations but I guess my question is what 
is the next step and really um looking at that particular you know um issue as to what is the 
best fit to be able to do both of these things. Who who does that? How do we do that? Um you know 
it would be great today to to have some idea about how we might move forward on that. Um and then 
obviously the Bay Center uh renovations that's

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01:17:32.720 --> 01:18:09.440
the um county's purview your decision um clearly 
I mean I'm very supportive of it and I think it's part of this overall project. Uh the question I 
guess is you know you have a rendering here what do you is that is that the final rendering you 
know kind of what what is the next step from a county's from the county's perspective. Um I do 
think though it all works together and I think that without really knowing what's happening in 
the you know the second facility um will hinder really maximizing the the renovations of the Bay 
Center. So it would be great if we could move this

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01:18:09.440 --> 01:18:42.640
all forward together. Um the hotel, you know, I 
think from a private from the um private investor standpoint uh or private owner standpoint 
of that hotel, this is the time. I mean, this is the time that that hotel can be part of 
this conversation, and I think it is important because it can have its own meeting space. And 
if that hotel isn't part of this conversation, then we're going to have to figure something else 
out because I think the the both studies were very clear that we need a hotel nearby the and if not 
exactly adjacent and connected, but but nearby

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01:18:42.640 --> 01:19:14.000
uh to make that facility certainly for conventions 
work. So, I would really like to to see that um conversation continue. I'm hopeful that that 
um those who own these properties would want to be part of this conversation. So, uh anyway, those 
are those are sort of my general thoughts on on all of this and uh I've talked enough. Thank you, 
Commissioner May. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam President, and I agree with you. I mean, we have 
to create the business climate. Um and Mr. Mayor, you know, I I agree with my colleague. I mean I 
think we probably have talked about it in which we

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you know probably could figure out the finance in 
doing it but dad he was that he was very right in that across this country USA volleyball USA they 
are part private partnerships that are partnering uh to provide those activities and you you want 
the private dollars you know I've just not heard in the studies from any one of these people 
and I'd love to hear from Michael Caps that anyone has said that you have to have youth 
sports downtown as you said we want to create this business climate we want conventions we want 
people who are spending money in our downtowns. Uh the infrastructure of a downtown is not 
conducive for a youth basketball tournament,

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01:19:47.840 --> 01:20:20.320
a volleyball tournament, playing all night 
and walking downtown. I mean, you know, so if it's deficiencies brings about that it's 
one facility, I think that makes sense. But to look at our prospect of bringing young people down 
and putting them in a downtown, we don't I mean, could you imagine having, you know, thousands of 
young teenagers running downtown because they're leaving uh this facility in our downtown? I mean, 
I think we have to think those things out. And I think also, you know, in the model, um, that 
we should be looking at how do we partner with

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some of these people that are are making it 
work. I mean, um, if you look at Hoover, uh, if you look at Bo Williams, if you look at most 
of these facilities, there's a lot of private dollars that have gone into those facilities. 
And as my colleague, Commissioner Barry said, you know, there is some government, whether it's 
land, whether it's Eates or whether it's something to incentivize those companies to go because we 
do know that the private side is going to be more efficient than the public side on ROI. And so, 
you know, Madam President, I support everything

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01:20:50.400 --> 01:21:20.800
that you said. I I agree with you. We want the 
business climate. I I think we had a conversation. A youth little coach is not going to pay the 
$18 for a beer in a convention center. I mean, he's just trying to get a Subway, a Wendy's 
burger, and a 12-pack, you know, to get his kids to the hotel. And so, that's just the reality 
of it. And so, I've done enough of these to 12, right? You know, well, 16. Um, but but I'm open. I 
mean, I I think I just, Mr. that we would look at

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01:21:20.800 --> 01:21:53.040
it I think you know collaboratively you know even 
if you're looking you know at civic centers and at some university if the school board I think they 
should be a part of the conversation if we don't have the exact funding if we're having graduations 
and we're going to have this if we're going to look at bringing state tournaments here and those 
type of things the school board obviously should be a contributor in being a part of the whole 
conversation so I mean there's not a real guidance but Jennifer I do agree with you I mean there when 
we look at it we got to think about our seniors and my mom and your mom that can't walk. We got 
to think about our children that we don't want

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unsupervised in a bar environment. I mean, there's 
a lot of things that we really should talk about before we make final decisions and have the vision 
and thank you, Madam Chair, the vision of where do we really want to be collectively between, 
my opinion, city council, county commissioner, and our school board. Um, Michael, I did have an 
additional question because I very much agree with Commissioner Barry. I don't know that the value 
of the second sheet of ice is worth $30 million, but you mentioned it would be more of a building 
that can also do ice. What how much of the success

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01:22:24.400 --> 01:22:54.800
of the multi-purpose or event center hinges on 
that second facility that is also housing ICE? So, the event center can operate without the that 
additional space. Okay. Um the the framing of the the context of that facility is just to show 
you that, you know, you're getting you are getting more bang for your buck. It's not just 30 million 
for a piece of ice. So you're it's 30 million for an event building that can do ice as well. It'll 
serve as a training facility for the team. And

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01:22:54.800 --> 01:23:25.440
we're completely correct. Most of those facilities 
are done with a public private partnership. Uh most of them are done with two sheets of ice right 
next to each other and they're not in the downtown area. So indoor sports, they're typically not 
built in a downtown area. They're somewhere else in in an auxiliary location. Um, but you go 
back to the point of trying to please everybody. If we try to please everybody, you built every 
building specific to it. The math doesn't add up. So that's where we're trying to provide an 
economical uh way to do that. But, you know,

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01:23:25.440 --> 01:23:55.520
from a programming standpoint, um, there are a lot 
of events that we currently do in the arena here that we could do in that that uh, ice facility. 
We could also do it in the event center as well. That's why I'm saying if we have the opportunity 
to get a regional convention that comes in with 1500 attendees that needs to do a banquet 
for 1500, a general session for 1500, breakout rooms for 10 rooms for 300 people a 
piece or whatever that breakout might be. We

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01:23:55.520 --> 01:24:31.600
can do that and still do an art of fashion that 
benefits Covenant Care. We can still do a Marty Gro ball that benefits the Sheriff's Foundation. 
We can still do uh Marty Gro uh Krillat Areola that weekend. We can still do those events in that 
facility, but again, we would try it is built to try to primarily the operating model that we gave 
you was the ICE itself. Uh so anything with those other events that we're going to be able to pick 
up, it's going to be on top of it and it's just going to be a value ad. Okay. Noted. Thank you, 
Commissioner Sherburgger. Yeah. So I I don't I'm

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01:24:31.600 --> 01:25:05.920
not like everyone else here. I think I I already 
know what I want and what I like and and I'm I'm in the direction of sports tourism. I think 
that's definitely the re the direction we should be going. We already have an anchor tener tenant 
in at the uh um here at the base center with the uh Pensac flyers. And I think I think a second 
sheet of ice is us taking a step toward more uh uh sports tourism. Um, we already have 
the Northwest Florida Hockey League. Uh,

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and we have also a skating league or I'm the 
Greater Pensacola Figure Skating Club that does programming um, nationally recognized through uh, 
Learn to Skate. So, there are a lot of reasons we should keep pursuing this. We're not going to have 
to create demand. We already have the demand and like you said, uh, we don't have to build it all 
at once. we already have something that we can make money with that I think that can work and I 
I that's just that's my feeling about it. I don't think we have any I guess the only question 
I would have was is if that second sheet of

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ice was also a multi-purpose facility would that 
defeat the purpose of having a second sheet of ice would it? No. I think that's a great question for 
Michael. The the question was if the facility that is housing the second sheet of ice is also the 
main place for the practicing, would that defeat the purpose of it being a multi-use space? 
Is that what you asked? Um I I understand the question and I don't think so. But I do want 
to ask Doug to chime in because with uh Legends,

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we have a division um Edge Sports that does these 
types of facilities that works in these complexes. Um, so Doug, if you're on, can you uh you chime 
in on this one? Yes. Um, thank you, Michael. I've been listening in. Um, I have some observations 
and then I'll answer that question. Uh, first, I think, um, every day we wait, the cost goes 
up. So, the 71 million for the base center, the 84 million for the event center, and the 30 
million for the ice rank are cost projections

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01:26:47.280 --> 01:27:18.560
based upon today's dollars. So the longer we 
wait uh the more expensive it's going to get and I think it was Commissioner Barry who said 
that you have capacity now through the revenue that you would bond out you know to do the 
project. The second thing I would offer is that um if we agree on the site and I think there are a 
number of reasons to agree on the site. One you've got what I call venue convergence. What does that 
mean? That means we have synergies in operations.

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By operating all three or even two of those 
venues under one uh operator is going to save you anywhere from a million to $2 million a year. 
Said differently, if you tried to locate the event center or the ice rink or a combination thereof 
or the base center somewhere else and they were displaced, it's going to cost you more to operate 
over a 20 or 30 year period. That adds up. So, you've got venue convergence there. You've got a 
site that I think everybody seems to agree works.

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01:27:50.880 --> 01:28:27.040
Um, the third thing I would offer is that you 
don't have to decide on the ice facility today. I think everybody agrees that the base center needs 
to be improved. We know that. Number two, we know that there's a need for uh convention and uh youth 
sports, recreational sports space. And I heard the previous consultant talk about the flexibility of 
some of these spaces. We operate these spaces all over the country and the way that we have program 
the design of this and Erin can speak to it from

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01:28:27.040 --> 01:28:57.760
populace. Uh it is meant to be uh usable by trade 
shows during the week. I think someone said that earlier. and on the weekend easily convertible to 
a b multi-use basketball facility where you could put four courts in there, eight or nine volleyball 
courts. There's all kinds of things you can do. Meeting rooms in the in the space, those have been 
programmed in so that the uh the the conferences, the the businesses that would come along with the 
trade shows can have their meetings there. So,

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it would be multifunctional. It wouldn't be 
onedimensional. I think that's important to know. So to me um someone said next steps I think 
even if you don't authorize the funding for the construction provide you know full funding for the 
construction we at least need to get started with the design process because that's going to take 
anywhere from 12 months to 14 months and Erin you could speak up on this but we're going to lose 
that time and we could phase in the design. It

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doesn't mean that you have to go build it, but if 
you started designing um the improvements to the base center and then concurrently with that, maybe 
the improvements to the u uh to the event center, uh at least you would get a head start. You 
wouldn't lose your window of time because right now time is money and we know that construction 
costs are going to go up uh anywhere from two to 5% per year. We saw it after COVID. We had a huge 
spike, 25% increase. And you you have a finite

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source of funding with your revenue bonds, okay, 
that can support this. So the longer we wait, the more difficult it gets. Um, so I'm just 
offering that you don't have to make the decision on the ice. And let me say this about the ice. 
There's a demand for it. We have substantiated that. Bill Krueger through his analysis has 
substantiated there's a demand for ice. You've got a hockey team that's very successful. They 
need a practice facility, which means we need to move them out of the base center to do what? Free 
updates for other shows that make money for you.

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Okay. The second thing is I was over there a few 
weeks ago and I saw it was 9:30 at night and I saw 12 year old kids coming out of the ice rink while 
grown-ups were coming in uh for the for the adult league. So, they're using that ice day and night. 
So, we know there's a demand uh for for a sheet of ice. Uh and we can figure out someone said earlier 
how to finance that. I think there's some ongoing discussions about can that be a public private 
partnership? Is there a way to do it with the

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current hockey team owner? There may be. Um, so I 
think you could at least get started on the design for the base center and the event center and 
then concurrently think about holding that pad, you know, for the ice rink and the hotel which 
could be phased in at a later date. Those are just my observations. Sorry to take so much time, 
but I wanted to express that. Commissioner May, hey Doug, thank you for being being here. 
We certainly appreciate it. And and I heard um council person Patton say how how important 
for the convention center is the hotel like if

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you're saying that we need to get moving. I mean 
what are the critical ingredients that we need to move forward in your opinion? Well I think I think 
Bill can answer that. I would say that um there's a need for a headquarters hotel if you're going 
to be competitive uh to bring trade shows and conventions. The exhibitors want sleeping rooms 
connected to their exhibit space uh in order to be com be competitive. Now, you've got you've got 
hotel inventory um in downtown Pensacola. Um but

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it's best to have that hotel on site. Now, um I 
can tell you, and Bill, you can weigh in on this, the hotels that are being developed in communities 
like yours around the country are probably relying on uh a lot of underwriting from cities and 
states, municipal governments. Uh probably 50% of the cost is going to have to be supported 
uh in that regard. There are ways that you can do that. Um you know, there's tax rebates, there's 
um you know, abalorum rebates, those sorts of

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things. But Bill, speak to the importance of 
the hotel. And Doug and Doug, when Bill speaks, can he address one other thing, and that's just 
parking that we adjust the hotel and the parking? Yes, parking is something that we we studied a 
little bit, but there's going to have to be more discussion about parking. Um, and there were a 
couple of different options, I think, on the site. Erin can probably speak to that more intelligently 
than I can about the uh the conditions there, but parking will have to be addressed long term, 
but Bill, let's talk about the importance of

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having the hotel, the size of the hotel, and what 
you're seeing in other communities like this in terms of underwriting from public sources. Yes. 
Uh thank you, Doug. It's it's very clear. I mean, I I mentioned this u briefly and I I just want 
to underscore this again that through all of our surveys of the convention planners, you know, the 
the state groups that rotate around the state, the regional and some of the smaller niche national 
groups that can go anywhere in the country. I mean, emphatically they told us that they need an 
attached headquarters hotel or one with in close

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walking distance, which really means one to two 
city blocks in your case. And if you remember that statistic in that pie chart I showed you, 90% of 
all the groups that had an interest in bringing an event to Scambia County and and downtown Pensacola 
told us that they prefer or require specifically 60% said they require and then the remaining 
30% said that they would prefer that. And so you've got you've got a very limited group that 
if you don't have that headquarter hotel attached of a quality type or uh immediately adjacent then 
then you're going to lose the ability to compete

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for that business. So there are other events 
that are flat floor events like trade shows that have more of a local component that have 
less emphasis on needing to have that attached headquarters hotel or adjacent headquarters 
hotel. But the the whole point is with the multi-purpose design of an event center, you've 
got the ability to not necessarily rely 100% or the majority of your activity that has to be 
the traditional conventions, conferences, trade,

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this additional capacity and and equipment to be 
able to plug and play for sports and other types of events too. That really makes that model work. 
And so it could be productive and it could be you could be getting the events. Let's just say you 
don't have this headquarter hotel in the near term and you've got that space. You've still got 
the ability to to tap into some groups that don't require that and that that could shuttle or could, 
you know, utilize other types of hotels in the marketplace. Uh but but then you're not left with 
this underutilized building because you've got the

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multi-purpose flexibility and the equipment to be 
able to market it towards all other events while you're trying to get the the headquarter hotel 
figured out. And um you know, as far as a hotel, I agree with what Doug said that that in this day 
and age, unless you're in a marketplace that has a very large metro area that has a precedent of 
rates that can be achieved through full service hotels of 300 bucks a night, markets like 
Pensacola and Escania County, if you build a

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new hotel and those private partners are going to 
require some kind of incentive. The cost to build a full service hotel these days are usually around 
$600,000 per key. That has dramatically increased over the last decade where we were talking more 
about 200 to $250,000 per key to build a full service convention quality type hotel. And so 
that gap uh leads us to a feasibility gap that the public side would have to bridge that by the 
tune of a donation of land, some tax abatements,

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some tax incentives, plus some additional capital 
or an equity that maybe would be 10 to 20 to $30 million to trigger that private sector investment 
of another $70 million to to pull off your $140 million hotel. But the important thing is is 
you're really leveraging private money. So you need to think about the ability to attract 
that type of hotel. It's not just to get a new hotel. It's really to make all these pieces work 
most productively to really enhance the financial

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performance of the Bay Center to make it much more 
profitable than it is today. But importantly then all those work together to be able to generate 
the economic impact, the room nights that will fill up that headquarter hotel and then compress 
throughout the rest of the downtown and then to the beach. And so that that's really kind of like 
the magic sauce of all these pieces together. Um that's why the hotel is important, but if you 
do this multi-purpose event center, it's not necessarily critical for the short term. If you 
don't have that hotel coming in at exactly the

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same time, you can get up and running. it would 
generate more interest. Your feasibility gap, meaning the public side incentive that 
you would have to bring to the table, would likely be lower because you've got all this 
investment that has occurred and is built and is performing well. And so, you're going to get more 
interest by the private side partners at that point in time within a couple years after opening. 
Erin, maybe you can address the parking really quick. I was hoping to make a I was just hoping to 
couple to add maybe a couple of things here. So,

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um I do agree with you, Doug. Uh I do think the 
longer people wait, the the less the 75 million brings or whatever uh the pot of the money is. So, 
I think action is more important than inaction. Um if we we we did provide some examples. I know 
Mayor DC Reeves asked us to uh talk about them, but if you are able to somehow pull up the 
Willmington Convention Center, which is actually operated by by Legends in downtown Wilmington, 
um you will see it's a column free really a large room uh that can be modified in any way 
possible and those are the types of examples that

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we provided in our report. Uh so we all agree that 
the the the facility is multi-purpose. It needs to be able to accommodate many things. It's a modern 
facility and uh it's it's modular. It's column free. It's very flexible. Uh and I'm sure Legends 
actually more than anyone is fully aware of all these types of facilities throughout. Uh regarding 
I think the hotel, there are three current RFPs in the market and I know we talked about this one um 
in our last meeting that um the Fargo Convention Center um their RFP was unable to really get 
off twice. That was because it lacked a hotel.

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So we really uh would emphasize that we do think 
that uh it's not just a nice to have. In fact uh and we would need to do further studies before we 
say this but u you know that's that's a question that which procurement lends itself to better 
development. Should you package it with the hotel? Should you package it without a hotel? I 
personally think just a gut feeling package with the hotel the convention center will attract 
different type of developers. I think it it'll it'll it'll do good for the whole area throughout. 
Uh so those are just some thoughts I I had as we

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were having the conversation. Was there an update 
on parking? I know Commissioner May also asked about parking. So I can provide we did look at 
uh the the conceptual site plan we provided does provide on-site parking. Uh I think we've listed 
exactly the amount of spaces in our report if you would like to refer to that. We also provided 
another model. Uh so there's one model where it's the convention center and the parking and then 
there's another model we provided that looks at a convention center, a mixuse, a parking garage. So 
there's there's a couple of different ways that we

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can do this. Uh again, you're actually in a very 
unique spot where you have uh you're near downtown but somehow have uh these sites around you that 
are not developed. So as long as you agree on what you need, there's various configurations for where 
to put the hotel, how should we connect it, and what should happen. And I do think the the hotel 
will be great for the Pensacola Bay Center as well because the whole idea is for all these facilities 
to be symbiotic to not cannibalize each other, perform as one place in generating foot traffic, 
generating you know revenues, bringing in more

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visitors. And the great thing about visitors is is 
you know they leave at the end. So you don't need to build a lot of infrastructure such as multif 
family and whatnot to go with it. They'll come, they'll spend their time, spend hopefully their 
money and you know that's it that they're gone. So uh we we have looked at parking. Uh you just need 
to un figure out which type of facility you want, where you want, and then we can go ahead and put 
them in different configurations. Perfect. Thank you. Uh yes, ma'am. Thank you. Um I I want to 
reiterate the fact that when you bring in that transportation factor, you're bringing in money 
that can leverage that parking could potentially

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leverage. And so that was not something 
I mean that is the point to their fourth um in that column is that that money actually does 
leverage grant funding to come in and help with that. So I think that that's critical to know. And 
I'm just another just a point here. I think five years ago we're on a rotation for brownfield 
convention like this whole southeast, right? And so Escambia County, it was their turn to host 
in the city and there was no space. I mean I just

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And when we bring those people in and we bring 
in these kinds of conventions, we are bringing in um professionals, academics, you know, people 
that then look at our location and want to come back with their families. I mean, I just think 
that we are missing the boat on this one a little bit if we overlook the importance at least of a 
midsize or uh convention. I know that I spend I don't know, I've got probably five this year that 
I go elsewhere for and so I go to all these other

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01:42:42.400 --> 01:43:12.960
places in Florida. I go to I've got a one in, you 
know, DC, one in Colorado, one in um you know, I mean, I'm going to these and I don't always 
stay at that adjacent hotel at all, but it is an adjacent hotel that will have the meetings 
coordinated with. It is a headquarters. So, I do think that that is I think that these 
are symbiotic and do go hand in hand. Um, but I do think we have to consider opening 
those doors on leveraging the transportation

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money that would be available to help us actually 
hit that. I think that every one of us knows how frustrated our constituents are over parking 
downtown. Like, we can't just bring in more and not address this and not enable people to 
get around that kind of thing. So, I think that um I think it's shortsighted if we don't couple 
all these things together. Jennifer, I would ask how many do you know how many conventions that we 
deny a year because we don't have the facilities since you brought that up that the Brownsfield. 
I mean, I the the Brownfields one was pretty

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interesting to me because that was a you know, 
we've got what five super fun sites. This is like where they want to be to be able to evaluate this 
kind of stuff and we've not been able to host. We we don't host any of the education conventions. 
We don't host I mean we don't we don't host things. So um I think that it's critical. I 
go I spend a lot of money going elsewhere to these conventions. And I I can tell you we we do 
tours. We you know we eat good. We I mean we're definitely bringing in money into where we're 
going. And I think that it's also important when

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they they pointed out who's purchasing what hotel 
rooms when they come. And I think that to that, you know, all all my kids play sports. All of them 
always have. They play all the way through, right, of anything they can. But when you're traveling 
with a handful of little ones to sport events, you're getting the cheapest thing you can 
to handle everybody. Exactly. You know, and when you're traveling for conventions, 
that's absolutely not what you're doing. I mean, you're I mean, we're always insistent 
that we have, you know, very nice rooms and

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01:44:51.440 --> 01:45:25.120
very nice places and um I think that it is a 
different clientele and I think it's it it is a professional clientele that brings more look 
on Pensacola for the future. I agree. Thank you, Councilman Wiggins. Thank you, Madam Chair. Have 
we looked at what would be the cost to uh maintain any of these convention centers or anything like 
that? It was listed on the report from CSL. Um, I think they had an annual breakdown of revenue 
and then also of maintenance in there as well. I don't specifically know which page see it. I 
have to go back and look again. Councilman Mayor,

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thank you, Madam Chair. And I think parking is 
a big issue. You know, I didn't really see any identification parking in the Legends um study and 
it was mentioned in our study the trolleys, but trolleys we we pay a private company to do that. 
I think you'd have to have massive expansion to have more trolleys and I'm just not sure if that's 
a solution. Um, I will say expansion of seating, um, and upgrades at the base center, I think are 
essential. So, I definitely agree with that. I think beyond that, it's it's a challenge. Um, even 
though our airport, as you saw from the study,

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is rated well against other regionals, it's 
still pretty expensive to fly in and out of here, and we're limited. Um, you know, often I have 
to fly down to Fort Lauderdale to fly back up to Pensacola, and we have to do crazy things 
like go through Atlanta when you don't have to. And so I think there's still challenges with 
conventions and bringing conventions here. I like the idea of regional um or statewide conventions 
even so you know most of the conventions I go to things with League of Cities there's a hotel and 
that's where the convention space is. So, I really think and as was identified on the slide, there's 
a large proportion of the people that want either,

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you know, either strongly favor or require a hotel 
to be nearby when it comes to a convention. So, I think it makes sense to have a hotel with 
convention space in it. Um, you know, was mentioned hockey. You know, we were the I'm I run 
Keep Pensacola Beautiful and we were the nonprofit of the month in March. There were four home games. 
So for an anchor tenant that only has four home games in in a month, that's doesn't seem like a 
big anchor to me. So I'm not convinced that hockey is an anchor tenant that generates a huge amount 
of income or revenue for the Bay Center at this

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01:47:06.720 --> 01:47:38.960
point. Not denying the fact that there's a demand 
for ICE. Um but you know, I I I kind of feel like spending $30 million on that extra facility at 
this point might not be feasible with the the funds that Commissioner Barry was talking about 
earlier, but I think it's definitely something there's an interest in. Um, I think we need to 
if we're going to do anything with that property where the where we're talking about putting the 
additional facility, we need to vacate, abandon, whatever that loop around the Bay Center because 
I just think that's an impediment to getting back

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01:47:38.960 --> 01:48:14.320
and forth. You're not going to want to walk up 
that ramp every time you have to get back and forth. So, I think that's a thing we need to look 
at as well. And I know that's something that's possibly on the table, but I think my biggest 
concern is just parking and where are we going to put all the cars. Thank you. Mayor Reeves, did 
you want to go? He was before me. Sorry. Thank you. Well, I just I'll start with one probably 
silly question and I don't know who to ask of the consult, but I keep hearing about this flex space. 
Sounds like they're similar in size, can handle lots of uses. What is the difference between a 
convention center and one of these event center,

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01:48:14.320 --> 01:48:50.560
you know, slash flex space? Is there an easy way 
to describe that or delineate the difference? I'll start I'll start and if she has anything 
else. She's she's the expert in this as well. We're talking about finishes. So, you know, 
a flex space. Um it's not going to have your chandeliers in the ballrooms, that kind of stuff. 
You're not going to have the fully carpeted floor space. You're going to roll out carpet uh on a 
temporary basis on an event by event needs. So, you're looking at um a Volkswagen Bug versus a 
Mercedes. Okay, that's kind of a layman's way

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01:48:50.560 --> 01:49:24.880
of of putting it. Is that kind of Michael? Can 
I uh can I interrupt you? I'd like either Bill or Aaron to address that. They Erin designs 
convention centers and flex spaces like this around the world. So maybe Erin, you start 
and then Bill can uh build from what you what you comment on. I think I think that's a good 
place to start because there is a difference. Uh but we this can be designed to where you can 
accommodate both and I think that was the idea. Yeah, that is u correct um Doug and you know 
the the the flat floor um event space that

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we've designed 55,000 square feet is great for 
all the uses we've kind of outlined here sports um convention center booths um uh multi-purpose 
expo hall type of space um Michael's correct you know the terms of the finishes that you 
would expect in some of those spaces would be a little bit different in an event or in 
the convention center um the other aspect ect is kind of a programming one which is where the 
the hotel ties in a bit is the access to a large uh you know 18,000 foot ballroom type space 
which has those upgraded finishes and is usually

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01:50:00.000 --> 01:50:30.560
complimentary to that expo hall floor um and your 
your breakout meeting room spaces. So, I think when we look at the event center, we're designing 
all the key aspects you need for the most um diversity of uses that can happen on that flat 
floor space um supplemented with the the breakout meeting room spaces all in one one package there 
and then relying a bit on a hotel or adjacent um uh program space for that ballroom function. 
Those other large meeting type spaces that would

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have a higher level finish uh uh associated 
with them. I also just want to make a point, you know, these when we're looking at this and we 
studied the ice, uh, the arena and, um, the event center. We're really looking at complimentary 
compatible uses. So Doug used the term, you know, venue convergence, and that's really important 
here because one aspect that the ice does, and again, it doesn't have to happen on day one, 
but could happen later, is it frees up the arena for a a multitude of other uses um and including 
um events like tournaments where you could have

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01:51:05.680 --> 01:51:38.800
uses happening on both of those spaces from an 
ice stand. So really complimentary uh uses and thinking of the whole site as a campus together 
um is kind of the the foundation of what we were looking at. Um I also just to touch on the parking 
real quick and then I'll turn it over to Bill. Um you know we we looked at the parking and the 
capacity around the site. There's both available um capacity that the arena uses currently to 
the east. Um I love this conversation about transportation and connectivity. um enhancing 
that to downtown to Palifax would be great in

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01:51:38.800 --> 01:52:10.800
any way that could happen. Um that's a current 
issue I think that exists today just with the arena. Um and obviously there is a displacement of 
some parking on the east side of site when we go to look at these future developments um happening 
there for the event center and hotel. So I think it's a critical thing. I think it does deserve 
more study. Um certainly traffic analysis and and more detailed parking inventory analysis 
um can happen as the project goes forward. And I'll just add one thing getting back to the 
fundamental first question which is what's the

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01:52:10.800 --> 01:52:41.440
difference between a convention center and the 
event center model. The primary space is virtually the same size between the the this you know the 
the other uh uh convention center kind of model versus the event center model. About 50,000 55,000 
square feet of space. There will be two airw walls at a minimum that could separate that into equal 
three equal-sized halls. The biggest difference with the event center is the fact that as a part 
of the construction budget, you're purchasing

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all the athletic equipment and you have storage 
facilities that are appropriate like a climate control storage place for the hardwood, portable 
hardwood that you could pull out. So when you're trying to maximize your interest in attracting 
sports and recreation type activities, it's very important that you have that equipment because 
otherwise you can have a convention space that's big enough to accommodate them, but somebody's got 
to pay to bring in all the courts and rent them or purchase them. And and so what what this kind 
of model really maximizes is both the amount of

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01:53:14.240 --> 01:53:44.640
different diversity of events that you can attract 
and really compete for and it also maximizes your operating performance within that space in terms 
of financial performance because you're able to attract more events, retain more net revenue 
at the end of the day because you already have all these this equipment ready for them to plug 
and play. You've got many tournaments out there that won't consider a place unless it's got the 
dedicated equipment for them if they're expected to bring it in with them. They're just not going 
to do that many of them. So, so that's why this

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01:53:44.640 --> 01:54:18.800
model is very much an enhanced flexible hybrid 
multi-purpose event hall which is differentiated from the convention center. And importantly, when 
you look at traditional convention centers, nine out of 10 of them throughout the entire country 
have to be operationally subsidized by the public sector owner of that facility. And that's the 
reason for that is because these conventions can choose anywhere to go through events. If they're 
small enough, they can fit into a a hotel's in-house meeting space where they're not being 
charged rental rate for the actual event space.

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01:54:18.800 --> 01:54:53.360
instead they're just being secured and locked in 
with the room block that they're going to provide by the hotel. So you're competing with those 
kinds of activities which your ability to draw revenue in the building by conventions is lowered 
because of a lot of this comp space and the fact that so many communities are vying for that hotel 
room business that that the the financial aspects of a convention center normally always place you 
into a situation where you need to have operations subsidized. when you got the ability to draw 
in other events that are willing to pay higher

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01:54:53.360 --> 01:55:27.520
rent for the for their space like like the sports 
tournaments and amateur sports and trade shows and consumer shows and festivals and things like that 
by having a hybrid type building that can allow the overall picture the financial picture of that 
building to be much more self- sustainable. you could break even or do better is what we projected 
by wrapping that into the operations of the Bay Center and also maximize the amount of economic 
impact that you could generate there from. So by adding the headquarter hotel to that mix, it just 
allows you to be more competitive not really for

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01:55:27.520 --> 01:56:01.040
the the amateur sports necessarily, but really 
for the convention and conference trade show activity to really maximize the opportunity at the 
site with respect to that. Okay, we do have a few more questions. Uh, Councilman Moore. Yeah, I'll 
I'll land my plane and not ask so many open-ended questions, but uh um yeah, well, thanks. 
Obviously, I'm I'm encouraged to hear. It sounds like there's a lot more consensus. I was afraid we 
were all kind of pushing and pulling in different directions, but it sounds like uh there's there's 
a lot more consensus uh once understand kind of the nuance between the different details. So, 
that's encouraging. Uh do agree. Let's let's get

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01:56:01.040 --> 01:56:31.120
to work. We've talked about it and and postulate 
and theorize long enough. Let's let's go and get to work and make something happen. Bay Center 
past time, past due. Um I guess I do have one little nuance there that that it's dissonant 
still in the logic. Some of that's explained uh there as far as the second sheet of ice. 
Um you know what kind of thinking about what is our objective here? Some of our objective is 
is solving the you know roughly million dollar

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01:56:31.120 --> 01:57:06.320
subsidy every year. That's obviously not the whole 
objective. uh spending $200 million to solve a million dollar subsidy doesn't make a whole 
lot of sense. So there's obviously a lot more uh on the objective uh there. But expanding or 
replicating the model that we've got that we're really trying to solve and expand and diversify 
uh in the form of just putting a second sheet of ice to me there's still some dissonance there that 
doesn't make sense even if it if it uh uh opens up space for the you know the base center. um kind of 
pivoting off one of the principles there that Mr.

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01:57:06.320 --> 01:57:38.960
Ant mentioned um you know as we've heard that this 
potent the second sheet of ice could potentially be a revenue generator and understanding that 
there is some constraint as far as our capital stack that would be required to to get all the 
deliverables. It does, if I heard Commissioner Barry correctly, it does make a lot of sense to 
me to to maybe allow the the expert in the world of ice uh in the hockey team to, you know, let's 
give them a favorable lease on some land that that works and uh and let them shield the taxpayer 
from the risk that goes with constructing and

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01:57:38.960 --> 01:58:12.560
and operating and maintaining a second sheet 
of ice. It makes a lot of sense to me. So, I'd love to see the the Bay Center renovated. Love 
to see a second one of these flex facilities. Um, and not sure what our next steps would look like. 
Does sound like we got a lot of conversation to have as far as parking. Um, but um, thank you 
very much. Appreciate it, Madam Chair. Yes, sir. I I just had one question. So, would the 
second facility also serve as a convention site too or it just the convention would be here 
at the Bay Center? So, looking at the models

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that uh CSL gave us through Michael Caps, we're 
looking at $71 million investment into the Bay Center for upgrades, an additional $84.4 million 
for an event center. It sounds like the type of event center that we want would support Monday 
through Friday business conventions. We would bring in business v business business companies 
and then on the weekends we would be able to flip that for sporting events, which I agree with. 
I think that's a great model. And then the next thing that we have is the second sheet of ice. 
Listening to everyone where I believe that the

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most amount of consensus is we would like to 
move forward with the base center upgrades, a second facility, an event spent at center that 
is flex space. Continue to negotiate uh with Greg for that second sheet of ice or a public private 
partnership. And we need to address parking. It sounds like the city is willing to jump in 
to help with the parking, their transportation, and then possibly the hotel issue with the 
grand working on some things there. Yeah. Well, I I'll give a a couple u updates and answer some 
questions. Um first, I think from the WT slide to

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try to answer the question before we get out of 
here of what are the next steps. Um I I always like to kind of reverse engineer like how do we 
end up where a shovel's in the ground, right? Um I think there was a very strong generally unanimous 
uh suggestion that this ends in an RFI or an RFP in totality. Meaning I I'm not sure the strategy 
of designing something ahead of knowing what the private market wants to invest, for example, uh 
would be prudent. And I'm not I may have misheard that, but in in my mind per the WT slide is we 
should probably decide collectively as a community

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what we want in general. And there can be alts 
to that. There could it could say this or this uh and here's how much money is going to go in and 
here's X dollars. Tell us what you can do for us. and that those that a bid would come back with 
design, construction, management, all of those things, and biders would put a team together, 
you know, to say, "Here's here's what we'd be interested in." That seems to be the consensus 
way that these things, especially when you're trying to leverage private dollars, um, uh, come 
to fruition. I know it's in that next steps slide.

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So, that just wanted to mention that. Second, I 
think it's it is important for us to identify if we want to do a second facility or not because 
to even do a renovation independent of knowing that you're going to do the second facility would 
cost taxpayers money. Meaning, you're going to do synergistic things and and there's people on 
this call that that do this for a living. Um, you might do a different renovation to the Bay 
Center if you know you've got a facility coming in next door, right? Is there anyone here that 
doesn't want a second facility? Is there anyone that's opposed to a second facility? So, I I think 
that's an important decision to make because you

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you can't in you can't fully understand 
what the renovation of the Bay Center is going to look like if it's still a mystery that 
you're going to put a facility in next door. So, I I do think that synergy of construction matters 
uh from day one. Uh and and so I think that's important. I it's been mentioned uh you know, city 
participation and what that looks like. You know, you guys vote on funding here and you guys vote on 
funding at the city. But um you know I think it is appropriate that the the when you see that ROI 
slide that Michael showed uh talking about that

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money that comes back in that comes back in the 
form of bed tax and that comes back in the form of sales tax. So I think facilities itself going 
the direction of bonding those revenue streams to get the return on investment makes sense but 
certainly conversations around parking where there's a revenue stream and a potential ROI for 
the city. Uh, I think the CRA and as it pertains to the Grand Hotel or other or surrounding area, 
there's a fair conversation um to be had there. Uh, I'd even say just as the administration 
advocating for the elimination of that off-ramp. I think the last price was two and a half or $3 
million. I've had initial conversations with US

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DOT. We do know that we have the clearance to 
do that already. It's been tested. There's that there's not enough activity on that offramp 
uh to merit that its existence. So, you know, we're happy to get a grants team together and see 
if we can go find federal, state dollars to just go ahead and get that eliminated because if we 
know there's a second facility, it's going to have to happen. So, there's other peripheral things 
that certainly I think this this body, the CRA board could entertain that make more more are more 
relevant to the expense and revenue exchange the same way that the bed tax uh and sales tax is. um 
placemaking lumen. You you had mentioned hey you

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know you fast food restaurants and having these 
things um you know available understand I mean the reason people go to Foley is because they they 
did place making around Foley you know it's not because they want to do a convention center out in 
the farmland it's because OA went and built hotels and built restaurants for people to so I I don't 
want to act like it's got to be one or the other I think you can build place uh and and I think it 
was mentioned retail the desire for retail could help facilitate some of those events you know 
I think that's important I think it's important to point out that ice time would actually increase 
organically if there was a second facility for

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for no charge. Meaning this ice will be open more 
often. I just want to point that out. I don't know by what percentage Michael could probably figure 
out because now those conventions and those Marty Gro balls and and Pensacons are all going to be 
happening next door. Um so there is an organic increase in ice time that's going to happen no 
matter what. And I just have some questions on financials. I tried to email back and forth uh 
with with Michael on this and I think the ball was in my court, but um if you were looking at this 
business-wise, the ice facility says it's a third

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of the cost, but it's going to create 79.2% of the 
revenue. I find that a little off. And you know, I see insurance expense is $57,000. I was I 
need to find out who that insurance broker is um for a facility of that size. Um and and so 
again, not saying the numbers are wrong. I just mean there's I I'd love to dig deep not here on on 
that ice facility, but it may be a moot point if if the general consensus, which I would totally 
agree with Commissioner Barry and what's been mentioned over here, if if there's an underwriting 
of of private dollars that helps make that happen,

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I wouldn't be against it, but that's a um but 
I would want to ask those questions if there was going to be public dollars. Um the loss 
convention data, Visit Pensacola, I do know, has some some inventory on that to to that can 
answer your question directly. um that they they keep a log of people who call and we have to 
tell them sorry uh I believe so they they have some um information and and so bottom line is 
how do we get this to market I I think that's really the question es especially if we get some 
consensus what are the next steps to get this to market is it an RFI in totality management design 
construction you know who's interest and private

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dollars that that come into play so uh I I I 
think that's kind of the next step from here is to say how do we actually kind of move this 
ball forward so anyways Been a great conversation. Thank you guys. Wes and Allison, what do you 
guys need from us to put something on the agenda that we can vote on to get this ball rolling? I 
would say just direction as to center building.

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Okay. We all wanted flex space that we can use 
for conventions during the week and sporting events and concerts on the weekends, right? And 
Mr. Mayor, so in having that conversation, I think there's a real consensus from our board, it seems 
like, to move forward with these facilities. Um, but how do we engage, you know, the u parking and 
other things that the city would be required for? So, we'll all be singing from the same sheet of 
music when we go out. It's a great question. Thank you. Yeah. Well, that probably has to all happen 
concurrently. Meaning, because is there a second

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facility or is there a third facility that's going 
to determine where it goes? I've been a proponent publicly of of putting uh the parking garage 
on the tech park. It's a tech park that's been empty for 20 years. I don't And again, it's not 
all or nothing. Uh but I imagine if we're going to attract a business, they're going to probably 
need to park employees somewhere. So that could be a whole another conversation of another revenue 
stream with partnership with Florida West or PEDC uh to say it would we probably have a little bit 
better thing to sell at the tech park if we say hey we got a parking structure for you you know 
ready to go at $40,000 a space. So I I guess what

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I'm saying is it's hard to say how many spaces 
is it and how much acreage is getting taken up by you know how many facilities. So, I think this 
all would have to kind of come together based on, you know, how big is the facility, what dirt is 
left, and how many parking spaces are needed. But I think I I can't speak for for the the voting 
body on the budget. I I can say administratively, I certainly think the argument makes sense 
for there to be a city investment into parking because we can generate revenue 
and return on that parking. So, I think that's a certainly a fair philos, you know, 
philosophy moving forward that that the city,

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right? And I just wanted to I think the chair was 
trying to get staffed to see how we incorporated it. But we know infrastructure is critical, 
transportation is critical, parking is critical um before we even start the building. So I mean 
I think it it has I mean I don't know if that's Mr. Stafford and Mr. Marino kind of talking 
together, talk that out and us have a meeting, but I mean we need someone to, you know, guide 
the ship and bring us something back that we can all have a consensus to vote on. So, in 
your experience, is that something we would do like a memorandum of understanding with like, 
hey, we're going to pursue this and this city's

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going to pursue parking. Is that something that 
we need to move forward? I'm sorry, Mike. I mean, either one or Allison. Yeah. No, I mean in my 
thought pattern, you know, you would get the administrator and the city manager together to 
kind of put something that at least, you know, there's one more meeting where we can talk and 
have that consensus because we have to have that, you know, we have to have a a roadmap to where 
we're going. And I I think that we're having our consensus as a county. He he's having his 
a city. I think quite frankly, Mr. Mayor, we move forward today more than we move forward 
in a in a long time in having these discussions.

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But we do need to give it to the administrators 
who get paid to kind of put things together to bring it back to the policy people uh and to get 
an agreement. That would be my thought. We do have topics available for our May committee meeting 
of the whole which would have been May 7th. Is that something that you feel like you could have 
prepared by then between county administrator and city administrators? M Madam Chair, I'm not I'm 
all for this. I'm not sure that's I think that's a little further down the road. I think what we need 
to agree to, which I think we have conceptually,

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is the base center and a second center. And 
like Doug said, our board probably needs to start moving forward with design. That's I think 
the first step. Mike, I agree, but you can't do any of that without parking. Well, but I think 
that will decide where we do the parking. We know that will be part of the design concept 
where I see that is an issue the hotel with DMO put out. We believe something will happen. 
Those are the unknowns. But I do think we need to go to design sooner than later because time 
is the time is just so the board here, our group

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has already decided we all agree on two things at 
minimum. There's two things we haven't agreed on, right? We don't know. Um I'm not opposed to the 
ICE either if it's if it's if it fits. But I want to add as a to your point as a third thing that 
we agree on, we continue negotiating maybe a three uh public private partnership for the ICE. I 
like what Commissioner Barry said on that. And I think after you get the design back, you're 
at a place to go back to the city and say, "Here's what we got. Here's what we need from you 
or other entities." But I think at the right now,

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the more time we we conceptualize this and don't 
start moving forward with design, we're just we're we're in a tail spin. So, I think that's 
where I I think we need to start moving forward. Commissioner Barry, I mean, that that conversation 
is going on without our board doing anything. So I just let it continue. The conversation between 
the the bond council and underwriters and you know Mr. Harris and and I I believe uh Legacy's 
also involved or Legends is also involved in that conversation. I mean that that that's ongoing. 
So I don't think our board has to do anything until they figure out what they can do. Noted. 
Thank you. Just to respond to that, I my only

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02:10:22.960 --> 02:10:56.640
disagreement is if you start designing a facility 
and then you're going to go to the private market and say which of you would like to incorporate 
dollars or uh you know into this project, they're going to say well man I wish we would have 
done a different room or that that's why I think the WT discussion of of saying the new wave of 
doing this is let's bundle everything together and then test the market with it because ASM may say 
hey for management we want to put in X and some other company may say they want to put in more 
or a private develop one developer will say well we'll invest this in the hotel or we need this 
subsidy and another one won't and so I just would

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02:10:56.640 --> 02:11:30.080
hate to get halfbaked on one aspect of this that 
then limits our ability to be able to leverage well you want to have another meeting to kind of 
finalize what we want before we move forward or what were you thinking so I I feel like we're on 
the same page as what we want the question is next steps and I agree because I whether we're putting 
in almost 200 million or 87 million I want more than 10 million from whoever is helping us with 
this. So if we do put it out to bid as a package, I think we have the opportunity to capture more 
of those dollars. But with your point, I think we

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02:11:30.080 --> 02:12:06.960
need to move forward as quickly as possible. So 
Commissioner Cole, I agree with you, but I agree with the mayor. And I mean, design is going to 
be determined by the amount of money we have. You know, we can't design it and then figure it out. 
We got to figure it out before. So we could do an RFP or an RFI for design, build, and management. 
And then that would wrap all three. And I think that would you guys pull up that slide? Sorry, 
I'm sorry. Commissioner, will you just pull up that next step slide one more time for the WT? No, 
there's a kind of a next steps of like regardless of what you decide. Yes. Yeah. If you'll just pull 
that up. Sorry. Thank you. That might be helpful.

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I apologize, Commissioner. I didn't mean to. No, I appreciate it. If there's a visual to 
go, let's throw it up. Perfect. Thank you. Will you kind of walk through that 
again one more time? Yes, of course. So, um depending on what the project objectives 
and what we agree the success metrics are, um is it, you know, does what what what does 
success look like to you? The maximum amount of private funding that comes into this? Uh is it 
that we want transportation to be addressed? Is is it that we want the tech part to generate dollars 
or you know, we need the hotel develop? So,

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02:12:37.680 --> 02:13:11.440
that's that's something that we should agree to. 
Uh determining site control and zoning clarity. Um you you would need to do this regardless. I think 
this is kind of where this conversation is going anyway. Uh I think the critical piece here is when 
we presented four scenarios um I think uh some of you have already made this point. It's probably 
charting out that okay if we decide to go with scenario three right scenario two will lead you 
to scenario three. I think everybody agrees that scenario one standalone convention center is not 
desirable. So if you go to scenario two with like uh the idea that maybe in seven years or 5 years 
we're going to be at scenario three and then we'll

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02:13:11.440 --> 02:13:46.080
see if it's even worth exploring scenario four at 
in another five years. Right? So having that clear vision that is your project the convention center 
plus hotel, is it your convention center plus hotel plus parking garage, is it the mixeduse? Um 
that will really help us do the next part which is transaction structuring because that allows us to 
make those assumptions on how much value capture there is uh what what each source funds and what 
it cannot how many grants are coming in if if at all. Right? uh then we say that here are some 
revenue considerations also worth exploring. So

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02:13:46.080 --> 02:14:20.320
this goes in with your transaction structuring uh 
that we would offset basically your cost with your revenues and then we would test the market with 
the concept. So we would give tell the market here scenario two this is what we want to do and the 
market in in our experience developers do a really good job of telling you I don't want to do this 
because there's not enough foot traffic give me a mixed use and now I might do it. So that's what 
happened in Fargo Convention Center and that's an active RFP that is I think under selection right 
now. I there there are three current RFPs that we highlighted in our report because we think even 
if you're not doing that that is the market giving

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02:14:20.320 --> 02:14:52.240
you live feedback on what they are preferring 
right now on um their on on their methods on the type of square footage. So, um, we would test 
out that concept and we would tell the market, okay, what what do you think we should do? And 
then they'll they'll come back and and they'll help you refine it. Then you would probably 
go into an, uh, RFP. Yes, sir. Ma'am, I have one question for you. I wanted to ask you, you had 
given some examples on the US DOT grants or do you have any examples of what the federal government 
has contributed in dollars in any communities? I

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02:14:52.240 --> 02:15:25.440
know this is coming. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so 
I we we have a handout that maybe I can ask the city to send to you that we prepared for our 
last meeting. We normally see what we call like a layer cake. Nobody uses this all or one sort of 
approach. People try to offset any type of revenue that's coming in value capture naming rights uh 
you know they and and then you add in your your grants or whatever tifa that you've unlocked 
or any tod enhancement uh enhancements that you were able to do. So it depends also on the size of 
your project. We can tell you that these are very

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02:15:25.440 --> 02:16:00.560
competitive grants. Uh you are opposite, this site 
is opposite an area of persistent poverty. That does usually make it lend itself to a little bit 
more sort of grant funding. Not as much as if you were in the area of a uh but uh so we we would 
need to look at that a little bit further. You have a few different things going for you. You 
have a freight trail. You have a trolley stop. Uh so you know you uh how are people going to move 
around which how how do any of these pieces tie into the connectivity that would also determine 
how many grant funds are unlocked for you. I'm

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02:16:00.560 --> 02:16:32.800
not sure if I made it more confusing by saying all 
that. Uh we did have a handout prepared that has this in a table a little bit more concisely so I 
can ask the city to share that with you. I I want to say that's a public document. There is nothing. 
It is I I think we were saying the bottom line is if we're going to go to market for $200 million of 
taxpayer money potentially. I I think listing this is what we want. This is how much you know want to 
certainly respect your it's your vote on on bonds and what you want what that number is, but you can 
put an RFI out that says here are the buildings we

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02:16:32.800 --> 02:17:07.439
want. Here's an alternate here's which how much 
parking do we need and we have up to X dollars. I mean that can be and then you roll that out to 
market before we make a a decision on design or on management or something like that that ends 
up actually hindering the ability to maximize taxpayer revenue taxpayer dollars. So u that's 
what the deliverable is that they're describing is balling it all up and running it out there. I 
agree with you. But when we're looking at finding dollars testing the market is that caps or is that 
your group or they're in tandem together? How do

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02:17:07.439 --> 02:17:41.040
we kind of put that together Mike? I mean can you 
help? I mean, how would they I think that would be whoever we go with for the RFI, correct? Well, we 
got to construct the instrument to go out. I mean, well, right. It would be us, but we're not taking 
it to the developers and asking them to develop. Mayor, I would see that the dollars that would 
be used DT would be under the request of the city. Don't you see that from you guys? Since 
it would be on the outlay of the base center, I think that part of the request with what what 
I'm hearing from the US DOT and TIFF would come

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02:17:41.040 --> 02:18:13.200
through a city request, right? Yeah. But there 
there would be funding Yeah. Yeah. But there would be funding sources that we could go after, 
too. Federal dollar. I mean, I don't think the RFI has got to identify every funding source because 
I think who's going to respond to that RFI is also going to be very attuned to those. For example, 
the the TIFIA thing that was mentioned that that now you can borrow at three and a half or 4 
percent. Well, priv the private market's going to come and say, "Hey, we'll do this pending this 
money contingent upon us getting this." You know,

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02:18:13.200 --> 02:18:46.879
I mean, the private whoever's going to be the 
applicant is going to, I think, help guide some of that that capital stack conversation, too, right? 
They're going to say, "Here's our conditions based on these things." So, we can be working on those 
the offramp. We can be working on getting rid of the offramp right now, right? uh if we know 
that this is the direction we're going to go, that doesn't need to be part of the RFI. But I 
think I think just getting something out there where we're looking at this thing in totality 
gives us the best chance to use dollars that aren't our taxpayers dollars. Absolutely. Those 
are the best dollars. Sorry, Mike. I didn't mean to be No, absolutely. I just wanted since you 
you asked the question and I do want to kick it

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02:18:46.880 --> 02:19:17.359
to Doug because he lives in this space now. Um, 
I think you have two great teams here that can collaborate and work together, but there is going 
to be a point where you're going to have to say, "Okay, here's the lead. Who's who's taking it? Is 
it the county and who what source they want to go through or is it the city? What source they want 
to go through?" Uh, it could be where, you know, from a legend standpoint, and Doug will chime 
in on this, is that we can handle it from start to finish. You know, we have everything in every 
division, every area that can go from procurement

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02:19:17.359 --> 02:19:50.799
to operating. Um, but it could also be where 
the county uh puts together the RFP, the scope, everything that they want. They handle all that 
and then we respond just like they would respond. The city could do the same thing on their end with 
the with the parking side of it. I I think though it is it it's kind of convoluted because it is 
separate projects almost, but it is being brought under one umbrella. So, I did want to say you you 
do have the advantage of having two great teams here that are already boots on the ground with a 
lot of work in the market that can really get you

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02:19:50.800 --> 02:20:21.759
to that finish line uh fairly quickly. Uh Doug, 
did you want to chime in uh for minutes? Well, I would like to ask Bill I'd like to ask Bill 
Krueger to maybe address this uh question of the RFI RFP. I guess um my uh my immediate reaction 
is that uh the hotel itself can be we could do that with the hotel and we could do an RFI RFP for 
development of the hotel. I think we know what is

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02:20:21.760 --> 02:20:56.719
needed in the Bay Center. That's pretty clear. U 
I think we have a consensus on the event center. That's probably not going to change. And I don't 
think that you're going to get a hotel. You have a hotel developer that's going to come in and 
and say, "This is what I want to see in an event center. It might be it might be something that 
is not compatible with what you want that event center to be." I would think that you could move 
forward with the base center renovation. We could address the parking issue during the during the 
period of the design. start designing the event

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02:20:56.720 --> 02:21:32.800
center and then you could solicit proposals for 
the hotels separately. We do that as Michael said. We do that as a company. We can handle that for 
you. That's what Bill does. Bill has done many of these, you know, RFIs, RFPs for hotel developers. 
So, Bill, I'd like you to comment on what I just said and what you're hearing from the group. Yeah, 
Doug, I would agree with you that Normally the interest is maximized by a potential private hotel 
partner if there are commitments to proceed with

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02:21:32.800 --> 02:22:08.960
some additional facility investment. Um they don't 
necessarily what you know what the hotel partner is looking for is does their return on investment 
on that hotel asset um does it pencil out? And in this day and age for this type of a hotel project, 
it's extremely likely that you're going to need to have some kind of a public subsidy by virtue of 
a P3 to get to the level of return on investment that the private partner and their dollars that 
they're bringing to the table would would achieve for them. So, um, part of this gets complicated 
under the scenario that we're proposing in that

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02:22:08.960 --> 02:22:44.960
you've got an event center which would largely 
be the concrete floor space uh, portion for a convention that may utilize the carpeted 
space that's built as a part of this hotel. But largely what you'd want to do is just get 
everything else um designed or committed to at least with the other project and then that's the 
best opportunity for a hotel RFP. So, you know, we I do that all the time and kind of advising 
on these kind of transactions, writing the RFP documents, getting them out to market, um uh 
having interviews, maybe even starting with the

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02:22:44.960 --> 02:23:18.960
request. So, I think we were sorry to interrupt. 
I think we were referring more to the RFP and the RFI for the project as a whole, not necessarily 
the just the hotel portion. Uh, Councilman Moore, I think you had another question. Oh, no. Okay. 
Yes, ma'am. So on this topic of moving forward, um I do feel like there's some tension still in my 
mind about having something somewhat designed to go out and then or just you know going out and 
saying what what do you think is the best from

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02:23:18.960 --> 02:23:52.160
your perspective private developer or somebody 
who will come in and and manage and run this thing. Um, I, you know, with all due respect to 
Legends, who has done a fantastic job and helping with this whole process, um, I personally would, 
if you're going to RFP it, and Legends is going to actually put in a, you know, a their proposal on 
it, it would seem like that RFP should be done by somebody who's independent of that process. That 
would be my my thought on it. So the question is

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02:23:52.160 --> 02:24:25.920
given we have consultants that are working with 
Legends and has have provided the information to the Bay Center or on the Bay Center to the 
county. We've got the the consultants that the city hired. I mean, I would really like the idea 
of the consultants, not necessarily, you know, um, legends working together to come up with what that 
RFP should look like for and and I think we could commit as a city to funding whatever that would 
take on our end to be able to to help, you know, with that process with the county and city working 
together. I just want to say from my perspective,

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02:24:25.920 --> 02:24:56.959
um, I, you know, I'm one vote on the council, but 
I definitely, um, see the city supporting this project. I think if the county is willing to bond 
the TDT tax and just, you know, sort of look at at those um facilities and and help get those across 
the finish line, it's our job to help support it um both through hopefully parking and I do 
like the idea of the TOD district and or um you know CRA funds for the surrounding areas. 
You know, we do need the connectivity to downtown.

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How do we how do we do that? What infrastructure 
needs to be put in? So really working together um you know to try to put the whole package 
together to move it across the finish line. So um those are just my thoughts. Thanks. Yes sir. 
And I think to land this going the direction of let's get you know myself and Wes or David and 
let's try to jot down what has been let let's take the the guard rails that are that came into 
this meeting really wide. And again, I appreciate

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u really better than expected of trying to get 
that narrowed. Let's do the best we can to jot all that down. Come back exactly to you guys 
and then and I agree with that as well. I mean, ASM I I assume is going to be bidding on this and 
if they're going to have a financial commitment, I I'm I would fully expect that they're expecting 
a long-term contract. So, uh, those dominoes would need to, you know, be thought through first and 
and, uh, I certainly would support you your votes, uh, on city council, but support, uh, some 
additional consulting on our side that maybe in

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tandem with that to-do list that we put together, 
city and county, uh, that that make sure it makes sense and and maybe come bring that back to both 
bodies to to consider as, hey, is did we get this right? Is this the general scope of what everybody 
would want to see in some potential RFP or RFI? And I I I'm sorry. I'd agree with that, Mr. Mayor. 
Because I mean, our procurement specialists, our administrators, our legal team, they need to 
be able to work together to bring it back. So, Alison, I agree with you. I mean, we need to get 
our people to put it back and then get it to our

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experts. I do I do respect having subject matter 
experts because none of us and none of our staff have ever done this before. Wes, do you feel like 
that's something that could be presented at the cow on May 7th? We may need a little bit more 
time than that. Okay. To get everybody together, get all of our thoughts and processes ironed 
out. So, I don't think May May 7th might be a little bit too aggressive. June. Okay, perfect. 
Thank you. Anything else from anybody? This

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was extremely collaborative. Thank you all for 
being here. We appreciate it. Meeting adjourned.