HomeMy WebLinkAbout2023-10-23 - Minutes -Fayetteville Advertising and Promotion Commission Minutes October 23, 2023 Fayetteville Town Center Commissioners Present: Commissioners Absent: Staff: Todd Martin, Chair Tourism & Hospitality Representative Andrew Prysby, Commissioner at-large Mike Wiederkehr, City Council Representative Chrissy Sanderson, Tourism & Hospitality Representative Katherine Kinney, Tourism & Hospitality Representative *Via Online Sarah Bunch, City Council Representative Elvis Moya, Tourism & Hospitality Representative n/a Molly Rawn, CEO; Jennifer Walker, VP of Finance; Sarah King, VP of Marketing and Communications I. Chair Martin called the meeting to order at 2:00 pm and declared a quorum and thanked Commissioner Sanderson for chairing the September meeting. II. Old Business A. Chair Martin presented the September minutes and hearing no additions or corrections, he stated that the minutes stood approved as presented. III. New Business A. CEO Report. Rawn opened by stating we have two full-time positions available at the A&P, one being the Tourism Sales Manager position at Experience Fayetteville and the other being an Event Coordinator 1 position. These positions are both on our website. She also stated that she is very pleased with the Downtown Fayetteville Coalition – in addition to a great Falltoberfest event, Kelly Rich also announced a generous gift from the Tyson Family Foundation to the Downtown Fayetteville Coalition in order for the coalition to begin a strategic planning process and governance update. A committee met to review Agency of Record proposals and we’ll have an update for you later in the meeting. In November, we’ll have our first meeting with Coraggio Group to begin our Tourism Master Planning process and we’ll bring an update to you on that. We invested $16,000 through incentives for events in the month of September and combined those events brought in an estimated economic impact of $2.7 million dollars. We submitted a bid to host the 2024 NICA (National youth interscholastic cycling association) conference. The Visitors Center welcomed over 1,500 visitors in September, and we welcomed a new spotlight artist, Roxy Erickson. Brannon Pack is currently at UCI’s annual mobility and bike city forum which is taking place in Belgium. He will be presenting at the forum with city officials on the CycleRAP project. We are the only city in the US to participate in this cycling safety project. We wrapped up a great First Thursday season earlier this month. The First Thursday events averaged 4,500 attendees per event, raised more than $24,000 in sponsorship and more than 100 vendors and nonprofit organizations participated. The 30th annual Lights of the Ozarks planning is underway, and we hope you can join us for Light Night on Friday, November 17th. Since our last meeting, the town center has hosted 20 events with Suits and Sneakers being a great success. There is very little availability to book an event at the town center throughout the rest of the year. We are hosting the quarterly NWA Meeting Planners in November at the town center with a focus on sustainability. Looking ahead, we’ll have three football home games in November as we only had one home football game in October, and we expect that to be reflected when we review both October and November HMR activity and collections. Rawn shared some upcoming cycling and running events and ended with sharing HMR tax collection information which showed that that September collections were down slightly, almost half a percent. This is not any cause for concern for her as we are still up 9.7% compared to last year. B. Financial Report. Jennifer Walker, VP of Finance VP Walker stated that the financial report is in the packet with a P&L through September and a Balance Sheet. The target revenue and expense percentage is 75% and our revenue is at 73% with expenditures at 70%. Our seasonally adjusted budget shows we are .04% above budget and leaves us with net operating income of $462,212. Our balance sheet, including our cash and investments are approximately $4.7 million dollars. Town Center unearned revenue for the rest of 2023 is $200,000. Commissioner Wiederkehr asked how often we made the town center an in-kind donation versus having them pay the amount? Tyler said that he didn’t have the number of donations at hand but many of the nonprofits either received an in-kind sponsorship or in-kind space in exchange for sponsorship. Rawn stated that we also acknowledged that nonprofits are a large portion of our business and that we had all sizes of nonprofits, some of whom didn’t necessarily have affordability as an important a factor as some smaller nonprofits. Chair Martin asked VP Walker if she could share more in depth at our November meeting about cash and investments listed on the balance sheet so we could better understand our priorities and needs. C. Marketing Report. Sarah King, VP of Marketing and Communications VP King began by reviewing the slides and shared our first project utilizing NIL agreements with student athletes at the University of Arkansas to promote the ArtCourt. She also shared photos from the latest photo shoot held and also our updated authentic branding for social media. We also visited City Park, PinPoint and several places on Dickson Street to update our photo library. Commissioner Moya thanked King and her team for including diverse audiences for the photo shoot. King then showed a couple videos about cycling options that begin and end in Fayetteville. Mike Sells with Sells Agency said they are working on a 30-45 second cycling video more geared towards recreational cycling. He also stated that the longer video is getting really high video completion – close to 50%. He then shared data on Arrivalist with points of interest insights. He shared that the Razorback stadium was by far the most visited attraction for both day and overnight visitors. You can see that Bud Walton is noted as #6. He also shared some visitation observations such as local day trip visitors are significantly less likely to visit Dickson Street, Mill District and downtown than overnight visitors. Another interesting item for day trip visitors are high number of visits to Northwest Arkansas Mall and Malco Cinema. Chair Martin recognized the over 21 years of service Mike and Sells Agency has served as the A&P’s agency of record. D. Agency of Record Update Commissioner Prysby gave an update on the Agency of Record review and stated that they received 4 qualified proposals, and the committee has selected one and we are working to finalize a contract and plan to bring it to the commission in November. E. Vote. Contract with Music Cities Events Unlimited. Rawn stated that Experience Fayetteville submitted a bid to host the 2025 Music Cities Festival. She gave some background on this festival, sharing that she first visited a festival as a guest of Folk School Fayetteville in 2018. She stated that by hosting a festival like this, we are not only look at ROI but we also realize that this conference is mission driven as it helps strengthen the music economy, which is important to our mission. She shared that there’s not a budgetary impact for 2023 but there is a $50,000 impact for 2024 and $50,000 for 2025. It is hard to know the net impact as we will also be seeking sponsorships such as asking Arkansas Tourism for support. Commissioner Moya asked about the attendance numbers at both Tulsa and Huntsville AL events and Rawn stated approximately 300 each. Rawn stated that this festival brings people who are deeply engaged in the music industry and this festival will highlight Fayetteville on a global music stage. Commissioner Moya asked questions about sponsorship costs and options. He also asked about those in NWA in the music industry and what their thoughts are and Rawn stated that she has talked with Brian Crowne with George’s and also the Hembrees with the Folk School of Fayetteville. Rawn also talked about the work that happens at the conference such as conversations about music economy and the music infrastructure including policy and practices. Commissioner Bunch stated that what was appealing to her is that the work on crafting policies and procedures around music is very important. Commissioner Kinney asked if we would be able to participate in the conference and Rawn said that yes, we would be able to attend and also involve our music industry partners and share programming recommendations with the organizers. Commissioner Moya clarified if the commitment was $100,000 without knowing if or what the commitment from Arkansas Tourism might be. Rawn stated that we have been invited by the state to apply for sponsorship and she would like to do that once she knows if we are the host. Rawn stated that she looked at this similar to an advertising buy. She stated that this could be a catalyst to help music become a tourism pillar. With no other questions or comments, Chair Martin asked for a motion made by Commissioner Sanderson to permit the CEO to authorize an agreement with Music Cities Events Unlimited with the cited budgetary impacts. Commissioner Wiederkehr seconded the motion and it passed unanimously. F. Folk School of Fayetteville Presentation. Bernice Hembree presented an update on Folk School of Fayetteville since it’s move to Walker Stone House just five months ago. Since opening, it has held 41 jams, 15 varying workshops and 4 teachers using the space regularly with 3 new teachers who have signed up. Some of the regular Jams held include Irish Sessions, Soldier Songs and Voices, Dad’s Night Out and more. Some of the workshops presented are beginner guitar, Harmony Singing, Low Waste Events. She shared that those who want to do concerts in the space also have to host a workshop on whatever topic they choose. She then shared some of the music lessons that were being offered. She gave the budget timeline which included a matching grant. She shared the fund distribution which included workshops which are paid directly to artists and other expenses such as payroll. Her presentation also stated that any program generating income will be split 75% with the artist and 25% with the school. She also shared the amount of savings that artists have realized by not having to rent space to do their craft. Hembree talked about the instrument donation program that has been growing. She ended with a short video that was created to highlight all that the school is offering out of its new home at Walker Stone House. Chair Martin thanked both Bernice and Bryan Hembree for the presentation and said he is very proud that the commission has utilized the house in this way. Commissioner Bunch stated that she felt so positive about the interactions the school has had with the community. Commissioner Moya asked if there are some touch ups to the exterior paint we can do, and Rawn stated that we could consider some of those esthetics along with the safety items we must take care. G. Vote. Distribution of the final budgeted installation of $15,000 to Folk School of Fayetteville. Commission Bunch made a motion to release the additional $15,000 of funding to Folk School of Fayetteville per their lease agreement. This was seconded by Commissioner Sanderson and passed unanimously. H. Budget Preview. VP of Finance Jennifer Walker shared the budget timeline with the budget to be distributed November 13th to each of the commissioners. November 27th will be the commission meeting where we’ll present the budget and we will either vote on it or finalize it on December 11th if needed. Rawn presented some of the budget big pictures items such as: • Revenue is projected to be 5% over 2023 at $5.2 million. • Town Center revenue will show 5% growth over 2023. • Big projects will be EF Office Renovation and Coraggio Group Master Tourism Plan. • Year 2 Downtown Fayetteville Coalition support • TheatreSquared funding. • Increase retirement match to 5%. • No projected changes to headcount. • Plan to have a new marketing agency contract. Commissioner Moya asked for a staff organizational chart and Rawn stated we would be sending one to the commission. I. Announcements Chair Martin had two announcements. One was to recognize Kelly Rich, Executive Director of Downtown Fayetteville Coalition who did a great job with Falltoberfest. Chair Martin also wanted us to talk about the two Southern Living online articles on Fayetteville. VP of Marketing and Communications Sarah King showed us the online story and said there would be a print article in 2024. She stated we could send out the link to both articles to the commissioners. IV. Adjourn With no further business, Chair Martin called for a motion to adjourn the meeting. Commissioner Sanderson made the motion which Commissioner Prysby seconded and the meeting was adjourned at 3:35pm. Minutes submitted by Amy Stockton, Director of Operations, Experience Fayetteville