By Jim Dietz, Columbus Indiana Visitors Center
We, like everyone else, have faced some challenging times. Our Parks & Rec department has faced budgetary cutbacks each of the last three years and we feared the budget cuts would begin affecting the maintenance of the tournament-quality facilities they have been providing and their possible staffing cuts would affect the number of weekends available for outside events.
In order to avert future problems, we sat down with the parks staff a year and a half ago and talked about their budget and what could be done with event income to help them through this crisis. The result was a cooperative rewriting of their field rental agreements to compensate for additional staffing costs and a restructuring of the work schedules of their staff to reduce overtime costs. They are now in their second season of successfully utilizing the new contract.
Our CVB researched possible contract options by utilizing our networking through NASC and other associations, rewrote the contracts, provided a cost-analysis based on the previous year’s tournament schedule, then presented it to the parks director and his staff. Because of our long history of cooperation, we were already in a position of trust with the department so their acceptance of our helping rewrite the contract was made much easier.
This achieved several things for us: 1) it reinforced the level of partnership we had with them, 2) it showed them our interests were not self-serving but were with them in trying to solve their problems, and 3) it took us to the next level of trust and cooperation-it’s what we are now calling “Visionary Collaboration”. For our Parks & Rec department, it has resulted in increased revenue from venue rental and has helped balance their work loads during the busy summer season.
Recently we have embarked on the next phase of growing our sports tourism initiative, the establishment of an area-wide Sports Advisory Council. The primary objectives of establishing this council are to help identify future sporting opportunities, to act as a sounding board for newly planned or proposed facilities, and to provide a broader base within the community that will help champion the growth of sports tourism in the community. This was the result of a recommendation of Jack Hughes, Gainesville, Florida Sports Commission Executive Director.
This is an organization that will also serve as an advocate for parks and recreation, the school corporation, and privately-operated facility owners. It brought together 12-14 community business leaders who had virtually no prior experience with the sports tourism industry. Having a group of business leaders with no pre-conceived ideas evaluating all aspects of sports tourism has provided a new dynamic for sports within the community. These are people who have brought a new can-do attitude to our sports tourism, have managed to make all of us broaden our approach to problem-solving, and have become a potential funding source for future sporting events.
Three important things can be learned from our recent actions: 1) to effectively solve many of your problems, look for solutions through the eyes of your partners, 2) use your NASC networking resources to help you find answers to challenging problems, and 3) become as inclusive as possible within your communities; frequently the more diversity you can bring to the problem-solving table, the greater your chances of developing solutions that work.
About the Guest Contributor: Jim served on the Board of Directors of the Columbus Area Visitors Center for seven years and as an officer for 3 of those years. Jim currently serves as Director of Sports Tourism for the CAVC and oversees over 50 annual athletic events in Columbus. Jim has been involved in the hospitality industry for over 30 years having owned and operated his own restaurants in Indiana and Illinois. A former high school teacher and coach, he has also held management positions in a Fortune 500 company and has served on numerous boards including the Western Illinois University Foundation Board and the Western Illinois University Athletic Board.
