In “ShoWare’s lofty losses,” there are numbers thrown out in an attempt to justify positions on both sides.
In answering the question for myself, I spent 30 minutes looking at the event schedule. Between the Thunderbirds, FC Impact and other events, I estimate 80 events per year. Assume nothing gets more than 50-percent attendance and 50 percent of the 50 percent spends $5, that is $700,000 in revenue dollars in Kent.
Of course, in addition to businesses benefitting from attendance, those businesses pay B&O, sales and property taxes to Kent.
These numbers are conservative.
The annual average ShoWare Center stand-alone net loss over the past six years is $529,040. The net loss does not take into account revenue that goes back into Kent or the fact that businesses employ more people, with further tax dollars going to Kent.
While profitability is preferred, this is to point out that there is a deficit number that justifies ownership. It should not be too difficult to determine. To have the ShoWare Center be left to go vacant is much worse than running an annual deficit of $529,040 for area businesses and reputation of the city.
If Kent cannot come to a best practice solution, then call Anshutz Entertainment or Live Nation and see if selling it and running it privately is a solution.
Kent would still get the benefit of attendance and not the burden of running an entertainment business. It is simply not productive to have rhetoric that creates doubt about ShoWare’s future.
– Bryon Madsen
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