City Council - Regular Meeting

uh November 18th, 2025 205. Uh first on agenda today is a presentation from all the firms that submitted proposals for the city council's review of number 25-51520-23 multisports facility management and operations services. Erin. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Uh today what we have is uh uh presentations from firms. As you know, we went out for RFQ. Three people returned uh responses to those RFQS. Uh since then, two have dropped out. One remains uh and that is from sports the sports facilities companies and they are here to give a presentation to the city council uh for your consideration for the operation of the sports complex.

Fantastic. Very good. Gentlemen, ladies, everyone come on up. Pick a spokesman or more than one. It cost you for extra ones though. Oh, you got See this jar right here? It's not just for cursing. It's for extra speakers. Oh man. Just so this some of these other councilmen tend to have bad words and never me. That's why it's not in front of me. But just in case I say something, we have it present. So welcome. What a home. My jar runth over. Welcome. Glad to have you. Y'all begin. Awesome. Wonderful. Mayor, council, thank you for the opportunity to be here. We're excited presentation. I wanted to just do a quick round of introductions. My name is Jim Arnold. I'm a partner with sports facilities companies.

Go ahead. I'm Ashley Wer. I'm also a partner with sports facilities companies. I oversee our marketing and partnerships department. Good to be with you today. Hi guys. I'm Dave Pritchette and I'm a partner in our firm. I'm on the operations side. So daily on the ground operations. J Wood. I'm the regional VP of strategic development here in the state of Texas. So happy to be here today. Great to see you guys. and John Wolf, a project executive serving in our uh development services.

And Eric Sullivan, I'm a founding partner with Sports Facilities Companies. So, really what we want to talk about today is a little bit about who we are, but most importantly, how we propose to serve you all with this development. We'll talk about um the project, where it's at in the process, our role throughout that process. We'll talk about what we do during the pre-opening to bring these online successfully. We'll go through some good conversation led by Asher on marketing and branding. We'll talk about programming, tools, talent, technology. We'll wrap with your goals and then certainly open this up for questions and and conversation. Where we always like to start, and I think it really is the heartbeat of everything that we do, is with our mission. And that's to improve the health and economic vitality of the communities that we serve. And for Odessa, that's exactly what we want to do. We want to align with your goals. And we want to help to improve the overall community well-being through this development. We say this with no ego. Um, but for you, what it means is we won't be learning on the job. We've served over 3,000 communities um in various capacities with these types of development. We have over 4,000 team members. You'll hear from a breath of them today. And uh in our current venues that we operate, we have over 30 million guest visits a year. So the SF network is the collection of facilities that we operate on a full-time basis exactly like what we're proposing here in Odessa. And the reason why we think this is is relevant and impactful as we start to talk about serving community. We'll be working with programming across the country to understand best-in-class and how we can bring that here locally. We'll also be working with our tournament trail and national uh content providers to bring best-in-class events here to Odessa. And specifically for us, Texas is uh no question a huge focus for us. Uh sports and Texas are synonymous and and we've done a lot of work in this great state. Um so much so that even a few years ago strategically Dave Pritchette who you hear from in a little bit uh our chief operations officer we moved to Texas to help oversee uh growth in the state and serving uh projects in the state. And I

think one of the big uh differentiators for us um uh from from anyone else um that throws their hat in the ring or not is that this is exactly what we are built to do. We are built to operate indoor, outdoor, multisport, community and sports tourism destinations. And as you see from a collection that we currently operate, um this is right center of the bat and what we're focused on day in and day out. Uh as as far as being purpose built, what that also means is we oversee projects, as we like to say, from concept to concrete. So from early stage ideation all the way through design and construction into project implementation. We're going to spend the majority of today talking about operations. That's the the topic at hand, but I want to turn it over to John to talk a little bit about where we're at in the process right now.

Okay. Yes. Uh thank you, Eric. Uh want to first thank everybody in the room. Uh what we've been serving in the role of owners advisors is to bring that spirit of collaboration and bring that sports expertise for both the indoor and the outdoor. We've been working with a lot of the different departments here in the room uh for not only just the success of the project but here for the uh aspect of Adessa. We bring that expertise from that sports and operations voice. Obviously we're here to talk more about that and I'll step back from the mic now before we get to the square jar.

Yes. The uh well that's kind of a little update on who we are, why we do what we do, why we get out of bed in the morning, where we're at in terms of this project. For the rest of presentation, we're going to start a little bit focused on where we're going, uh, how we serve, what the expectations are, and and how we're ultimately going to hopefully partner together on this project. And we always like to start everything we do making sure that our goals are aligned. Uh, so during this process, we spent some time and obviously with John and the team who've been here a number of times, as well as looking through the RFP and a lot of background. And what we kind of looked at in terms of an overall mission was to develop and operate an innovative and sustainable force and community facility that would maximize local engagement and drive economic impact across the city. And before we get into the rest of the presentation, we want to pause there and make sure we're on the right track. Is there anything that you guys feel that we've left out? Anything that you feel is more important than others, but would love to kind of open that up to a little bit of discussion before we dive in? From my perspective, I think we have two issues. One, um, everyone in this room probably has either a son or daughter, grandson, granddaughter, whatever that plays, whether it's volleyball, basketball, seven on seven, baseball, softball. And we spend, depending on when your season is, the offseason, 12 to 14 weeks in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, love, and I've been almost play my daughter play volleyball. Uh, El Paso, we want those parents here. We want other parents here. So, it's a two-part process. One, for training, facilities for they can practice that during the week because quite frankly, you'll also find that's a a it's a problem for this area. It's a problem. Have enough sports fields to play on quality sports field. Number two, all those tournaments will drive obviously sales tax for whether it be hotels, restaurants, gas, cabelas,

whatever the stores are at. So we part of this is it should show up in our proformas what the sports center can do but secondarily sales tax drivers are going to be. So that economic uh driver indicator right there is critical to for us because we built the thing with the intention of serving our citizens at the same time providing a driver of economic force. And so I think you've got it from my perspective you've got it. I don't know let anybody else chime in but that's that's the two critical keys in my opinion is helping our local parents and players and two economic drivers. Here here's what may be different with what we're doing than maybe what y'all see in the past. We've we've structured this and this has been going on for four years and unfortunately I was tabbed with it a long time ago but uh so we tabbed this as a public private partnership. Uh Larry Bell who owns the the property out at Parks Bell where the complex is going to be is uh very gracious. This family is very gracious to the city of Odessa and giving us a 100 acres and that's worth a lot of money in this environment. Uh but we have people we have oil companies and other people who are are making we we have a foundation for the private money that people want to give. We've got accidentals in uh Kquick which is a very large uh convenience store chain is has committed to and a lot of others and we're starting to collect money. So all that money is going into the uh foundation uh for repairs and maintenance down the road. Uh and so if somebody you know wants to donate a million dollars or somebody we don't have anybody with name and rights on the whole complex yet, but

that money will go into the foundation and they'll manage that money and uh and of course they answer back to the council. But by the same token, uh, we don't have to to mess with that part of it while they're negotiating contracts, which y'all would be involved in. I read that in your proposal, which is because I don't know what a baseball field's worth or what the name of rights on the whole place are. You know, if we can get Exxon to give us 10 million to put their name on it, kick me to death. But accidental is the only one that stepped up so far. So, we've got that piece of it that lays over there. And then the other piece which I'm sure you're aware of is the Amyville Memorial Park which is Larry's daughter that died several years back. And so that's a whole another component. Uh and that's being funded by our parks department uh for some of the equipment. So, so there's lots of moving pieces and I just want to make sure y'all are clear uh because our foundation has committed uh $300,000 and that's going to go towards the equipment on the park for Vale Park and then of course the other donations to do the maintenance on the rest of the operation. So, it's kind of complex, but I kind of like the way it we've got it set up because I'm a big believer in public private partnerships and and uh oil companies are and service companies, you know, make up a big part of our community out here. So anyway, that's kind of the background and and quite frankly, you know, I'm anxious for you to explain some of your numbers because in the last four years, how many sets of numbers since you've been in a year, you and I have been through another 10 sets of numbers and anyway numbers before that. So I'm not really sure what the right numbers look like

on the proformas because it's hard to get your arms around it. And we, you know, we use data from the, you know, the Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber has requests all the time for events and so forth. And so we've been trying, they've been involved in helping us try to nail down some numbers, but uh so far I I don't have anything. I'm pretty comfortable, but with what y'all are showing and what I've seen before, there's a lot of differences. So I've got I need to get comfortable with those and how you arrived at them. So anyway, that's my take on it. That's a that is a perfect segue uh into the kind of the first part of what we what we look at. And you know,

if you want another softball, we'll cost you.

Yeah, I about to do I almost something in the jaw here shortly. Uh you know, we ask this question and and we take a stab at and then we want to get this answer from you guys. Not just to to lead to a presentation, but it's really at the crux of everything we do. When we come into a market, you know, the way we're structured, the way we manage facilities, we're managed this managing this facility on behalf of our so we want to understand what the goals are and the way we're structured is from the very beginning including how we start to work on those financials and user groups and stakeholders you have full control this is your vision the decision we help we help you with them we help you understand the ramifications of them we help once the decision is made actually take it on but you guys remain in full control of the venue and you have full transparency of the venue at all times and that's something that's just critical and core to the way we've set up our business and really kind of this question and talking about the finances. That's really the first step. And I'm going to let Dave talk a little bit about preoping and the process that we take to get started and answer some of those questions.

Can you make that a little smaller? Well, you don't need to read that one. I have to go to my book. Just sign 420. Yeah. Well, good.

Good afternoon, everyone. Mayor, thank you for your time. Appreciate it. Um, so I'm Dave Pritchette again. We have spent a lot of time working on opening different types of venues across the country. And as Eric mentioned, we are not hitting the ground. We're not, you know, we're not learning on the ground. We have a depth of broad deep experience base in understanding what it takes to open one of these venues. And it's complicated and it's not easy. And there's a lengthy runway that need that we believe needs to occur along the path to opening. So, we'd like to talk just a little bit about just what that path looks like. There's a timeline in the folder that that you have in front of you. It's several pages as you can tell. There's 200 plus lines of of activities that we check off along the way. It is a lengthy it is a 12 plus month effort to open one of these complexes. So um you know what as Jim mentioned one of the first things we do is we bring more team members into the conversation to learn and we use the word inquiry to understand you know what what goals what your goals are what your vision is and mission is for the complexes. We want to meet um local players and and stakeholders on the ground and um we set that we set that up right away. I mean, we we will bring a team in right away, and we want to hit the ground running and understand what the timeline looks like and and certainly have those conversations. Staffing is a big piece of that. Recruiting and hiring team, we we like to get the general manager on just as quick as we can. That's a key person in the in the in our operation on the ground, local. So, we want to get a get a general manager. It takes us quite a bit of time to set up the operations, systems, software, policies, negotiate vendors, contracts, use agreements with with various folks. So, we like to do

that. Um, you know, the IT team comes in, other areas of the business come in and participate in in a number of those corners of the operation and setup. Um, branding, marketing, sales, and promotion. Ashley's going to talk a little bit about branding and marketing and promotion. It it takes time to do that. and we'll set up a website and you know set up you know a number of things that that um build an identity for the for the complex and then programming and development. Programming and development believe it or not these rights holders the folks that come in and run tournaments they work way out months six months plus out sometimes 12 months out in booking their calendar. So we want to get we want to get ahead of that to get the best programming and we want to build programming off of what's already here. Right. So, as Jim mentioned, your goals are our goals. That's true. If your goals are to have community play, we want community play. We'll we'll do our best to drive that and uh and deliver that as well. So,

and that's uh during, you know, during reopening, Councilman Thompson, kind of answer our question of the financials is there's really not one set that's the right answer. And during this pre-opening, that's part of that process, too. understanding who the stakeholders are locally, how we're serving residents, how are they accessing the park, what amount of time is wanting to give to the community versus what amount of time is going to event programs and those type of things. So during this process, what you're going to see is a back and forth as we develop a proform until we get that perform right and then that proform turns into a budget which we can talk a little bit later about that budget is then what you hold us accountable to. And so I I interjected there a little bit but now to the exciting stuff we're going to branding marketing.

Yeah, I appreciate that because that's exactly what needs to needs to happen. I I appreciate that.

So, if you build it, they will come is not a good strategy, right? We want to build it and know they're coming. We want to trust the numbers and that means we need to create demand in the market marketplace and we need to tell the story of how great this facility is going to be. And so one of the first things my team gets to do is get to know you because we know and understand the national landscapes of youth and amateur sport and entertainment. Um, and we know how to develop great brands, but we want to develop your brand for you that speaks to your community that represents you. And that also of course plays at the local, regional, and national level. And so what I want you to take away from this slide is that that is an iterative process. It's creative. I have a team of graphic designers and content writers that come to the table. We get to know you or your constituents. Uh we can do community input, however you guys want to do that, and we're going to come out with the logo. Um but of course, a brand is not just a logo. It's how people feel when they arrive. It's the shirts we're wearing. It's the website. Um and it's on-site branding. And so we're going to bring that all together with our operations friends and our development friends. We're going to push that so that the guest experience is top-notch. We want people to come not just once. We want them to come back um and be really excited to do so. Oh, clicker. Here we go. Um so some of the things that we get to do for you. So, uh one is that proforma is the basis of our budget and it's also our goals. So we think of marketing not just in awareness and eyeballs and that storytelling, but we need to drive results and revenue back to you. So we're going to use that as the basis of our marketing strategy. Uh, we're going to do things like develop a great local database so that we can email your constituents and our future customers and tell them what's going on at the park. We want them to think on a Wednesday night, what is happening? How can my kids get involved? Um, and we want to let the local businesses know, hey, these weekends are going to be really busy. Stock up, be ready. Your

restaurants, your hotels are going to be really excited. Um, so we do a ton of support like that from our our corporate office. Um, and again, we we develop that plan off your goals and vision from your financial goals. We create a strategic plan and we're aligned on that before we ever get to work. You guys are in the control. You sign off. Uh, we will have a local marketer here in Odessa. So, we we will support them with our national support team, but we like to hire local for that position because again, it's your community. We need to match these skill sets together. Um, and then we're going to execute against that plan and we're going to report. So, we're going to know every week, every month, how are we doing against our marketing goals to drive that revenue or participation. Uh, we're not flying blind. We've got lots of technology and systems to do that. We want to be as sophisticated as we can to reach as many people as we can with the right message. And ultimately, I think if we're in if we're successful in that, uh, we create a hub of activity. So, for the local community, for sports tourism, we create demand. We tell a great story. And again, people come and come back. They play stay and spend in Odessa.

Perfect. And as we start looking at programming and how we fill uh you're going to hear this a lot. It starts local that lines up with your goals. We want to understand who the stakeholders are, who the priority is, how we create those relationships. We want to understand the relationship they have with the city as well as the relationship they want to have with the park. So we fill that we create those relationships right away. That's our goal. And then from there, we look at how do we fill from our regional relationships. You saw the slide with our presidents in Texas. And then we go out and we leverage our national network. And so what you're seeing here is kind of the progression and just a a small portion of the logos of the different groups that we work with, some of which we represent uh where they go. But when we talk about hub, it's a local hub, it's a regional hub, and ideally it becomes a national hub. And that's what we think there's an opportunity to do here with the scope and the program that you're putting in place is as we look across our network with almost 100 venues under management. As you can imagine, there's different goals, uh, different visions around each park, there's different performance around each part, financially, local use, etc. But what we find is, and what you're seeing on kind of those big circles, is those are other facilities we've kind of identified as hub facilities that are large scale, indoor, outdoor, have assets that can bring on year-round programming at a regional and national level. and some of the results and we believe we're confident that Odessa with what you're promoting here can be just like that one of our central and west coast hubs for all of our facilities to start feed into. So we're confident there and we're we're excited about the success that we can have and we've talked a lot about getting people here. Getting people here is not easy, but it is easy in comparison to keeping people here. And I want to let Dave talk a little bit about actually I skipped you.

I skipped JD. Sorry guys. and council mayor, great to see you guys. Thank you all for the opportunity again for the to speak with y'all. So, u something that um Jim mentioned too with the groups that we're talking about bringing in, you should have 10 letters of intent in your folder of events that are interested in coming right now once this facility is built. So, you kind of have from a regional national perspective, people that are interested in being here. Um but everyone was talking about that where we're going to play during the week, what are we going to do for our citizens as well. So at the end of the day, we have a great track record of creating what we would say, you know, it's not and or if it's how we're going to be seven days a week of a local usage and seven days a week of of sports tourism or events as well. So when we look at that approach, we're going to look at we break it down a little bit from a seasonality perspective. So please don't think that volleyball is only being hosted in the spring, right? But that's just expectation kind of our thoughts of when the major events are happening. uh looking from that perspective then finding that tiein were you having the local graduations where taking events that maybe used to have happened to be around or events that are currently here and letting them expand and then have larger venues to utilize. So looking at soccer expansion and from those perspectives in the spring summer you know firework fandgo how do we support events that are existing? How do we expand those? How do we have the the boots and bling uh at three daughters right from that perspective? How do we tie that in and have that community feel and bring everyone together? Movies in the park, again, parks and recreation and John and his team do a fantastic job. So, how do we support uh that perspective? How do we work with Discover Odessa to continue to add and expand the existing events? How can we support in different ways? The uh when we're looking at the fall, again, it's it's Friday night lights, it's Texas. We look from that perspective. We have football, we have flag football, continue expansion, but we also have the Day of the Dead parade and festival in downtown. How do we contribute to that? How do we assist? We have fall festival. Uh those kind of

items. How do we continue to expand and contribute and and be a part of the community every day, not just during the week? And then close out in winter. Again, you can't be in Odessa without talking about the Starbrite Village and and the Parade of Lights. Again, there's locations for that, but how do we expand? How do we enhance? How do we continue to showcase that for the community? You know, looking at different sports, wrestling, um wrestling and lacrosse. How do we expand that with the the rectangle fields that you're going to have? And then of course with the that time of year with basketball, volleyball, continuing to bring those events in, finding that happy median and happy sport, we're having local usage as I said earlier, seven days a week as well as the tourism perspective and finding that balance. And not to repeat something that Jim said, uh, but I do I think it's important is looking at it from a way to tie um I lost my train of thought. um making sure that oh we bringing the events in uh from that perspective but uh it's hard to keep them coming back every time and so we have a great track record of that doing using our talent tools and technology to achieve that. So, as the people that in operations that kind of take a hand for that, I'm gonna pass over for Dave so he can handle it as well. No pressure there on our people, right? Um, so this slide, this is what this is probably my favorite slide for for me personally. And it's an opportunity to talk about our team. And just if you look in the middle of the page in between the red, um we assign a uh regional vice president to every account. And they're like the quarterback for our organization to each and every one of our venues. and they work crossf functionally with our support center staff which I'll talk about in just a moment into the field organization on the ground the general manager the department managers the full-time the part-time staff members so there'll be a a vice president account manager and they'll we'll have a general manager on the ground I mentioned that

earlier it's a very important position kind of the key cog um on the ground in operations of course then off-site our on-site staff so an infrastructure of managers infrastructure full-time, part-time personnel. And they are all supported through and by our support center team. And on the far right side of the screen here is I mean there couldn't be something that I'm I'm personally more proud of the support that our field operation team receives from the the the support center. And you can see there that every discipline in business is taking is addressed. I we have about 250 people in our uh support center office and they're in all of the departments. So when the vice president or general manager has a question or needs help or building infrastructure, building systems, building process, standard operating practice, those sorts of things, we we have a full team, a full suite of support people to to uh to help with that. And I know we've got a few minutes left here before we open a Q&A. So I'll try to kind of land the plane quickly here with with tools and technology. And you know, one of the things we really pride ourselves on is Dave said it was great. You know, first and foremost, we win with people. But over the past 20 years, what we've done as a company is we've reinvested every dollar that we've made into people, resources, tools, and technology. And we've done that so that we can serve the network that we have and we can expand for projects like this. And I think that's one thing to to hit home. Again, not knowing the total background, but one of the reasons we may be standing here while others aren't. This is a big project and this project's going to need a lot of resources and a lot of tools to support it to be successful. And so, as you kind of look at the screen, I'm going to hit these things really, really quickly because we can get in the weeds and happy to answer questions, but just some of the technology I want to talk about that we're developing. We have internally we have the hub and in the hub every single venue we have every piece of data every contract every uh every goal every KPI everything that we track is in one central place for each

project. So anybody at any time can get in there and pull it. Uh what that hub allows us to do it allows us to real time track performance. So when we we run an event we can track how many people are coming through that gate, how much are people spending on food and beverage. If we have the 12 baseball or diamond fields split up into softball and baseball and have multiple concession locations, we can track what age groups are spending best. We can track softball spending versus baseball spending. Who's buying what we're running an event for the first time? This is the really cool part. We can go across our staff here on the ground in Adessa can go to the hub and look at every similar venue in our network and get an idea of what sells best for an event that they haven't run yet. And so we have proper planning, we have that information technology at our fingertips. And for the city, what this means is at the end of every event, we're able to reconcile. Every single event comes out with an event tracker sheet that tells us not only what we made, what we spent, uh what the processes were, but it also spits out on a on a event-by-event basis the economic impact, the room nights, the amount of money spent. So this is the area that we can look and we say, "Hey, this per cap looks low from what we were expecting." So now let's go into the hub and figure out what facilities are similar to ours that are doing better in per caps and try to figure out what they're doing differently. And so it allows us to again gain from that knowledge that we have in the field across all platforms and bring it right here to Odessa. Uh another one I always like to highlight quickly is you're about to invest a massive amount massive amount of money in this facility. We talked about capital repairs and improvement plans and one of the very first things we do as we're building this we'll work with John and the SFD team and your construction team make sure we're categorizing every asset we're putting it into the system. We track it through maintenance cares which means not only are we tracking every bit of preventative maintenance needs to happen. But this system also lines up task orders and work orders. So it can be not only the equipment that we're making sure we maintain. So if there's ever a warranty question we haven't answered, but there's also things on the ground. We walk through, we see something that's not in place, maybe there's a little bit of graffiti or there's something broken on the side of

a building. Soon as a staff person sees it, we enter a maintenance cares. It gives a task order to our staff with an expected completion date. That staff's able to do it, click it, it's done, and we know it's taken care of. And so this is a tool we use to make sure we're taking care of your asset so it lasts for years to come. And then the last one I'll hit on before we kind of close out is and I think this is an important one especially with the economic impact side. Uh we have a number of things but we built an in-house logic platform that services our venues in a way that allows not only allows revenue from hotels to stay within the market of the operations instead of leaving all with event right holders but most importantly allows us to protect your local hotels. We know how important this venue is to bring in weekend traffic to your hotels. And by running the lodging software and partnering in our contracts with with event holders, we can ensure that hotels stay local first before they expand out if necessary because of the room nights needed. Uh we can also protect the hotels in a way that we can go out and make a singular point of contact for them as well as a single deal structure. And so if you're not familiar with this, a lot of times an event comes into town, they will go to any hotel within 30 to 45 minutes and they will see who will give them the largest rebate and the largest commission. And those are the hotels they'll fill first. And if you guys have traveled for sports, you've probably clicked on those buttons and like what we're able to do is we're able to now go to your hotels, actually bring them into the conversation and say, "Hey, we do we do need to have rebates for our event right holders and we do need to have commissions to support the operations, but let's do it in one solid way and one model and one method so you're not surprised, right?" And everyone gets to participate in the events that we have here in a descent. And then on the left, you're seeing just some of the technology we use to track that. And you guys have real time, we get real time access and data to and a dashboard where you can see exactly where they're staying, who's coming in, etc. So we can track and report on that. And so we'll uh we'll I just got kind of far down into the weeds a little bit. Um and we'll pull it back out to end the presentation just from an understanding of what we want to do and what our goals here. First and foremost, we want to

engage as many residents as possible. Uh JD said seven days a week local use, you know, you know, as much economic impact as we can do. the successful facilities are figuring out how to merge that at the same time. Successful venues are also trying figuring out ways to get your residents here who don't care about sports. We want every resident in the city to have something and some reason to visit. Uh one of my favorite things we put up on this slide is the poker night. Uh that poker night we did at Paradise Coast Complex in Naples, Florida. I went to the very first one. There was about 20 people there. I'd say about 17 to 18 of them had never been in the park before. They had no interest in sports. So now all of a sudden their tax dollars went into it. So they got to come do it. It wasn't a big money maker for us, but it also got us two to three more shifts for the waiters and waitresses who were serving. And so those are the type of events we want to constantly look at to make sure this is a complex for everyone. Uh we want to create impact. We want to do that through traditional events, non-traditional events, creative programming, festivals, concerts. Uh we do everything from MMA fights. We've hosted mini monster trucks and real monster trucks inside our indoor venues. Uh so finding every which way we can to utilize this venue on every minute possible. Every square foot outdoor space, every square foot of indoor space. And then ultimately if we do those two things really well, we have the opportunity to drive revenue responsibly. And this is not about trying to get somebody to take their wallet out as many times as they can while they're on site. This is about how do we create opportunities for people to spend money at the complex in an experiential way to where they feel like they get their value worth and it comes back to them. So whether it's retail or food and beverage or family entertainment and opportunities, those are things we want people to be happy to spend money because they're getting something they don't see at other venues. And so with that said, uh you know, I know we probably went a little bit over, so I apologize. Uh but the punchline here is we're excited. Uh we're ready to serve the city of Adessa. We've been fortunate enough, John, and the team on the development side's already had the opportunity to serve to a degree on the design. uh want to congratulate you on your vision uh not only in the park but also the planning that goes into making

sure you have capital repairs and replacements thought of. A lot of cities do not have that. So you're a step ahead. Uh so would love to answer any questions that you have. Uh make sure we answer any concerns you might have or answer anything maybe we didn't hit on in the presentation.

Gentlemen, I do I do. Yes, definitely. um not trying to get into the weeds, but I'm I see the importance of having the um SFC boots on the ground and you have quite a network that's available just as well off the phones and that type of thing. But help paint a picture for me how this would start, how because you you have done this for many cities. So give give me a taste of how you would start. How do you put the boots on the ground? What boots from your company may stay? and then the hiring process from an ODES population. But just give me a taste of how that would start with boots on the ground.

Kate, do you want to talk a little bit to Sure. I'll start. You got clean up. Yeah, I'll bet.

So, the way that we engage the team on the ground is we'll mobilize the uh the account executive or the the leadership support that's going to be the quarterback that Dave mentioned earlier. They're going to be the point person on the ground. Then we're going to hire local as far as um the director manager level staff. When we look at a general manager, that's typically a nationwide search. We also look within a network and we do that because we want to make sure that we have a certain skill set. If we can find that in the market, great. If not, we can certainly recruit it from our network. Everything else, as Ashley mentioned, we want to hire local and then we support and plug in from that team. So, through development, uh John's team will largely be in making sure that the facility is set up for operational preparedness and then we really do it by division, who comes in and how we mobilize. So what I mean by that is when we do big hiring sprees, we'll bring in our people services, our human resources department. They'll help to host job fairs and do some of the different recruiting, do mass interviews. Um when we're look at the programming and uh the marketing, branding, sponsorship, naming rights that came up, Ashley's team will come and have uh training on the ground, hire, support staff, and train. And so that smart sheet project timeline, what I refer to that is the the sleep at night list. It starts at like 400 tasks. It'll grow to 4,000 tasks. But everything that comes up from who needs to do what by when so that we can open prepared happens in that smart sheet program. It's a living online tool. And then as far as the boots on the ground that will stay,

we're here with you for monthly uh budget versus actual meetings. So in the forecast that we produce, as Jim shared, we want to be accountable to that. We'll do a budget versus actually. And then we'll also do quarterly strategic meetings and annual strategic meetings here on site. And we'll also have subject matter experts that are flying in for specific things. So if we're hosting one of the events that JD talked about and we want to make sure that our first volleyball tournament goes off without a hitch, we can even leverage team members that are already in the network in the state of Texas from Fort Bend or from Brian that can come over and help so that that first event the staff isn't on their own trying to figure it out. They have the support of people who have done it, lived it, and uh experienced it.

Okay. Thank you. So a couple questions. We So your staff will they have offices in the facility or they will the boots on the ground. So typically the general manager and director level staff have offices on site in the building and then others will have shared workspace for when they're um you know recruiting events for a certain time period or hosting triyouts for a league.

Yeah. One of the things that's really important that y'all may or may not know is that we have a terrible shortage of fields for our local clubs. And so that's part of the reason for this. We were, you know, for 25 years we had a contract with UTD on their massive campus, uh, which covers a whole section. uh and that ran out and anyway there's a lot of problems but anyway that's not the hair there but just want to make sure that the public knows and we've told them and told them that you know this facility is going to be managed by an outside group a b that the local sports teams will be able to access the venue. So that's really important you know for the quality of life of the people that live here. Next, uh, I almost wanted you to know that part of our vision is, and the reason we ended up starting out at $70 million and ended up at 140 million is because we we're going to only have one chance to build it. And so part of the idea was, you know, we are, if you look at the map that you showed up, you know, we're 400 miles from Austin, we're 300 miles from Dallas, and we're 300 miles from El Paso, and 300 miles from Amarillo. And so we're out here kind of on our own. So we believe that, you know, people will gravitate to us uh to play perhaps uh a D1 or a D2 school uh playoff game here, baseball, volleyball, whatever. Uh for sure junior college as well. We have a very competitive junior college uh here as well as UTPB, but they've got mostly got all their own facilities. But by the same token, uh those kind of regional tournaments, Abalene, St. An, you know what I'm

saying? West Texas is a massive area. Uh and uh so we we see the opportunity there for those kinds of those kinds of things. So that's just part of our vision

that we're trying trying to do. We think the source complex is the ticket for that. Well, I think Odessa is perfectly cited for that. When you talk about that 300, 400 mile radius of influence, a lot of what we see in the industry is you'll go around events in DFW or Houston Metro and you end up recycling teams and you end up seeing a lot of the same teams, multiple events, multiple tournaments. If we can take that circumference and we can pull different teams, different clubs from surrounding markets, all the better because we're giving them different competition that they see just when they stay in their home market. Yeah. So, who's who's your financial guy? I forget who I was picking on finance guy. Yeah. I mean, I'm just looking at your proformance for example.

Um, how many employees are y'all going to have, you think, on a at the facility? I would say in a facility of this size, if you look at other venues, we have a full-time staff of probably 10 to 14 and then we have full-time equivalents probably pushing 40, but that's hundreds of people with part-time hours. Okay, that's what I was wondering because I'm just looking at the proformas. It appears that the first year uh maybe there'll be a $335,000 loss, but starting in year two, three, four, etc. There's a you're projecting revenue stream, correct? Yes.

All right. Uh I think it's important to understand I think we what we tried to get through to some of the people that might have been less than enthusiastic about the project is that not only is there it's going to make money based on your numbers and others we've seen but I think I'm looking on the economic impact on the on page 60 um projected 23 million in economic impact to the city of Odessa annually and in year one and up to 50 plus in year five.

That's right. So, not only will the facility itself pay for itself, but the city itself will receive through various vendors and obviously through hotels, well, you know, gas and retail, restaurants, 25 to$50 million of the first five years per year. That's correct. Okay. And how solid do you think these number That's what I'm all that to say this. How solid do you think these numbers are?

Yeah. So I'll start J back up on this one. So from the standpoint of how solid the numbers are, we do anywhere from 100 to 200 feasibility studies a year for different communities who are looking for us to come in as an outside third party to validate their numbers or forecast their numbers. So we keep a vast database. It's over 700 facilities where we're looking at their real time performance and with some of that hub metric tracking that Jim mentioned, we're monitoring all the time. So what we look at and how how solid are we in the numbers? We're very solid. We tend to be conservative. If you on a scale of one to 10, the numbers we showed you, I'd say, are probably a six and a half, seven. So, there's room to go up and there's some safety net below us as well. But what we want to make sure is that when we look at things like the per caps for different events and how much are we making on food and beverage for volleyball versus basketball, there are going to be different riskreward opportunities. And that's why it's so important that we work with you to say, "Here's the schedule. we can do more of this and here's the ROI of that or here's the community impact and we can make a wider impact but it does have a little bit less ROI at the venue level which direction would you like us to go and operate that's why the service model partnership is so important and then just to land the plan with the numbers we'll be coming back and it's not like we're going to put a proform out there and we're never going to look at it again we're going to do a budget versus action with you every month and tell you where we're on and if we're on and above what we're doing to do more of that and if we're behind anywhere what we're doing to to rev that.

Okay. Thank you very much. Bunty Financials. Okay. Absolutely. So, I'm a founding partner. Uh there was three gentlemen in the beginning that started this company. I was employee number three. We've now got over 4,000. What happened to the other two? Where are the other two? One is in Detroit, Michigan, and one is in Tampa, Florida. Is he still are they still with the company? Yes, they are. One is not active in the day-to-day but still sits on our board as chairperson and then the other is our CEO. Is that where your headquarters is in Detroit? Tampa, Florida.

So what makes you think and impress me that you going to come way out here to West Texas open land cuz we said our city in Tampa boy I mean in the state. Sure. Well, impress me that you gonna come out here and help us blow it away.

Yeah, absolutely. So first and foremost the destination as far as the type and size of venue that you are are building as I mentioned before that is that is the sweet spot for us center of the back. So for us as Jim mentioned this would be a west Texas hub for us and really when you look at the central corridor of the country a major hub from that standpoint. Texas for us a really important landscape this uh this uh cluster that you brought up you mentioned we don't have a great um offering here in West Texas and when you talk about the demand the 300 400 mile radius right

that's the geographic demand that makes us such a great opportunity and I'll just say this um and Jim back clean up anywhere else we've been decentralized from our beginning we were an advisory consulting firm until 2008 2008 banking industry changed forever and we got called by a number of failing facilities and we accepted jobs in New York, Philadelphia, Houston, uh Chicago and San Francisco and we're still based out of Tampa and we were able to successfully make every one of those venues work. Yeah, that just bothers me because we know our football teams and stuff have to travel so far,

you know, to get get into the the thick of the sports. So, I'm hoping you can bring people this far to help us blow it out the water. Right. Absolutely. That's really the strength of the network. And and and let me just share one more thing at the risk of layering in. There are regional events that want to move around. They're not going to be in in Odessa every single year. But what we want to make sure is we're putting them on the map so we get them back every second year, every third year. And that way by putting on a great guest experience and leveraging our reach, we can let them go over to Houston. We can let them go to DFW market, but we know we're going to get them back. And that's really key as well.

Yeah. My question or comment would be that in your other locations that you have gone into those communities and established I'll call it a new business in that community. Do you uh work with the local chamber of commerce or anyone? Um because we have a very solid chamber of commerce in our community that I think would be a great resource for you guys overall. I didn't know if that was part of the plan or not on your part. Absolutely.

Yeah. And I think Ashley, I I'll invite you to kind of talk to us a little bit too because the relationship we have with the business community is important for a number of reasons. Uh one is they're part of the community and they've got kids who play and they're entertained and they want to use this. Uh there's an opportunity to grow the relationship with not only the chamber, but the members of the chamber out at the park. Okay, that also comes into play when we talk about sponsorships and when we talk about the relationships we have with that business community and how they utilize that facility to grow their business.

I'll I'll say that collaboration is our strategy in marketing and community partnerships. And so, not just with the chamber, which I'll say in, you know, in every community we can is a great partnership. It's so key. Again, you guys know the city and the businesses better than anyone else. Uh we're going to be after meetings. We're going to be afters. We host chamber events in a lot of our facilities. Um same with Discover Odessa. They're they're putting out efforts and marketing and positioning. We want to add to what they're doing. We want to see where we can collaborate. We don't want to uh duplicate efforts in that. Um it should be a collaboration every step of the way. And when we think about community partnerships, um how can we create opportunities for businesses to engage in a way that's additive? So most communities say, "Don't make me look like We don't want to have everybody's clothes everywhere. If you want that, that's okay. We sell that, too. But we really try to create meaningful partnerships uh with um healthare and uh local restaurants and retail um finance, all of your major sectors of industry. Um and figure out ways that we can partner with them, not just to put up a banner, but to create an experience that's additive to them and that meets their marketing goals. That's how we're going to renewals, bigger price tags, things like that. So, it's not a sponsorship, but a sticker on the wall. It's a true partnership so that we can go out and make something special.

Ashley, I'm so glad to hear you say that. That's the reason I brought up that uh comment is because you mentioned Discover Odessa. That's part of the chamber in our community. And so, you already you're already there with it then. Okay. Thank you. And they are they are a stakeholder. They've made a contribution to the foundation.

Yeah. which is really a big deal, but it's going to help them a lot for what they're doing. The the other thing that I think is really important in this conversation is that is that we are able to uh reach out to uh uh a a number of different communities that are really pretty close to us that are smaller towns and and uh there's only so much time in a day and I don't know how much we can help them but uh it looks like to me that perhaps with proper scheduling and and I know y'all take care of all that that we could probably expand a little bit outside to some of these smaller towns around Odessa uh to help them out. Uh that being said, it I think it's really important uh that we work with uh the chamber. They they get calls all the time and I'm with I'm with Councilman Vasquez on this. they they're working every day and they're doing a great job with what limited facilities that we have. Uh and so you I'd love nothing better than have to expand this thing in a few years. But the reason we went to the $140 million we just decided early on that if we're going to build this, we finally learned after three years, we learned that there's two types of facilities. Our sister city to the east is building a lot of facilities, but the way it's been described to me is that they are

local venues and not regional venues. Does that make sense? Yes. And we, as I understand it, will be a regional venue because of the way we can restructure the baseball fields, the softball fields, the fence links, and that was that is all part of what we tried to get designed into it. Uh so we're not just a doing local and that's all. Yes. So that just so you know some of the background of what we're trying to do at least what my part of my vision is. Okay.

Correct. Question. So since you all have a vast amount of experience. Talk to me about some of the challenges that other communities have faced to get these things up and running and going and you know maybe some of the pitfalls or traps that we could avoid. um upfront, not have to learn a lesson twice. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. I think the one I always leave with, and I I I don't want to harp on it too much. We've talked a lot about it. A lot of times we see communities wait to start the pre-opening process. They they you know, they start three months before, four months before, or they'll they'll push a general manager higher because, you know, in reality, if we bring a GM on 12, 15 months early, most people don't don't see like, oh, there's no revenue tied to that. And so they're like, "Well, let's not pay that salary until three months before." And if you don't have that, if you don't have that, you're you're you're building culture there. You're building culture with your staff. You're you're want to have somebody who knows where everything's buried and everything is, but you're also building relationships in the community. You're starting to have the sponsorship and business partner pieces. And so that's why, you know, when we talk about reopening, it's such an important part because if that's not done right, or it's the build it and they will come approach, hey, we're going to build this great thing, people are just going to line up to use this park. This is a very competitive landscape right now. Um if you look around the country there's these complexes are going up in a lot of locations and so it's about proper planning. It's about building the relationships and locking in the relationships early so you get the cadence not only locally but regionally. So I'd say that's the one biggest learning curve I think for most communities. They don't I don't think people think about how much goes into what happens before you open the doors.

Yeah. The other thing that I would say is a lot of people underestimate what that first year of operations is really like. And what I mean by that, if you think about sports and the cyclical nature that JD referenced, every five to six weeks, we're reinventing ourselves for the next season of programming, for the next crop of events. So when we think about how are we going to keep this venue full and know that they're coming for years to come, we're going to look at those big regional, national events first. So we're going to see where can we go out and where can we start to plug those in. Then we're going to start to look at the local factors like things like the holidays that JD mentioned, big events that are important for the community. What are the local school schedules? what are the different needs that they have for local community user groups who need uh space and time to play as well. And then what we're going to look to do is how do we start to then fill in the programming matrix and the event matrix and being really thoughtful and methodical about that pre-planning so that we can host the big events. We don't displace the local user groups and how we pull that whole recipe together to make it fit the budget and the proform that you're going to hold us accountable to is absolutely um mission critical. And that's why we so much focus on transparency about communication about monthly budget versus action uh but versus actual is this isn't like you turn over the keys to SFC and we just run the facility this is a very iterative process where we're working together to understand okay there's shifting goals there shifting needs in the community how do we adopt and adjust those so that we've got planned programs that we know are out there and coming but we're also nimble enough that we can be flexible and host things as they come up that would be the other big lesson learned is not that future improving a facility with with events. And the last thing I'd say is um under um valuing the asset that you've developed. A lot of times communities will um invest all this money. They'll turn the keys over to um a soccer group, a baseball group, a football group, and it really becomes uh kind of sole

purpose for their needs. And they're not looking at maximizing that calendar and maximizing these to get the full potential. not just from a P&L standpoint, but from an economic impact standpoint. And if you um if you're not proactive about that, once you started that precedent, it's really tough to get it back. Okay. I'm going to uh ask if anyone in the audience has any questions. We have a lot of directors out there, a lot of smart people. John's Parks, anybody that that has thought of something or knows something or has a question or concern, uh I'd invite you to come up and ask. Absolutely.

Uh please feel free to make sure y'all's questions are answered or if we have missed anything, make sure we've covered it. Uh so quit trying to hide behind the seat. What up, John? John, we're going to blame you, John, if it doesn't work. Maybe you all met John, our parks director.

Okay, good. I fig I do not have any questions. Um we've we've worked in uh with SFC and the uh the uh owner's advisory role and uh it it's been relationship uh the the knowledge um has been tremendous uh leading us in that you know just to make sure that our vision is coming to fruition. Okay. Thanks John. Appreciate it. Thanks John. So, some of the So, I'm sorry. You get No, no. I saw you getting up. I was gonna see if she No, I saw Yeah, I saw her back there. I didn't know she was going to speak. I can sit down so you can

Well, and I don't know if I look at you guys or if I look at you guys. Uh, but I'm Laura Mars, the director of Discover Adessa. Uh, and I've met I got to meet JD. Uh, Teresa had a a great thought. Teresa is our sports sales specialist back there as well. How do we work together? Like if Teresa ends up at a trade show or an event where she's trying to sell the city and you guys are trying to sell the venue, are we together? Are we against each other? What does that look like? Not against each other, of course.

A couple different ways. Um, so it it really depends on how we want to go about it. So I'll say that a lot of times it's together. So for instance, in Myrtle Beach, uh, a lot of times the city there, the CBB books it and our team sits with them. at teams conference for instance, we had a massive booth with all of our properties because it's a much better deal and we host all the the appointments for event owners there. So, it's a little bit choose your own adventure. It kind of depends on do you want to headline with sports then maybe we headline and you support if you want to headline with the destination we come and support but definitely in collaboration that makes sense. That's great. Okay.

It's definitely a differentiating fact when we go together and you see there's a lot of time there's a disconnect And the piece that's so important is we want this experience to be authentically Odessa, right? There are things to do here outside the sports complex. When they come here, we want to be able to work with you to say, "Okay, what are the things that we're promoting? What are the different activities, the different destinations, different restaurants, retailers, hotels that we can work with so that we can be um getting the word to people before they get here to have a better guest experience. That's great. Want to bring them back. Yeah, absolutely. Great. Thank you guys. Yes. Thanks. Thanks, Laura.

Gentlemen, any other questions? We cut them loose. The only other question I have is Oh, come up here, Liz. Just issue permits and be quiet. It's not about permits. Um, it's actually about trends. We have seen like let's take for example uh pickle ball. you know, it became such a big thing and obviously we don't have our facilities usually to adapt to those. So, how can you guys assist in those new trends that are coming to make the facil facility adjustable or flexible for those new sports?

That's my job. So in terms of the both the outdoor and the indoor and John and I have had these conversations about the flexibility for the different types of use. So we want to be mindful of what is coming up and what's a new trend but we also can be very mindful of the ROI what that investment will be in terms of the equipment or how it impacts the fields or to the buildings itself. We talked about portable field goals, you know, for the football aspects of, you know, the the rollover for the sports. Uh how the indoor lays out for both the pickle ball, uh basketball, volleyball and then we can host, you know, a boat show or wrestling tournament or anything along those lines. So the flexibility of that and uh as we get to know what the local programming and speaking to trade shows how we can even that's another different aspect completely sports unrelated but that has a regional impact uh for bringing that into this area. The only thing on there is things like floor coverings, storage requirements, um how are we going to adapt these? That's stuff that across the network we're constantly keeping tabs on it. When we saw pickle ball blowing up and becoming what it did, we we jumped in with two feet, so to speak, and we operate the largest indoor pickle ball complex in the country in Georgia. And um it's been a huge success. We've also got a number of facilities that aren't pickle ball specific, but they run a lot of pickle ball, right? And so it's really just identifying what those uses we want to have are and making sure that we've got differentiated uses of density of uses and as many everyday uses as possible. The things that John mentioned even some of the nonport uses I would say is where our team gets challenged the most. How do we bring a speaker in and have good acoustics? How do we make sure that we're protecting investment on the flooring? Those types of things we're constantly learning and innovating to make sure that we're the asset and adren

and I was going to finish with our medical partners. We also utilize our gym for physical therapy and those different aspects as well.

I was going to say so much of it is also part of the event owners. So we host a natural national archery tournament in Myrtle Beach in a gym. I mean and so it's about working with them. We host cheer and dance and um wrestling and knowing what they need and being able to work with sport sales and understand what those requirements are and being a good partner to them. We don't just turn on the lights and you know say all right come in. It is an operational partnership with those guys as well that helps them come and find the best match and national brings a lot of people in. So those are kind of things that we look for

and looking for D2 and D3 looking at that expansion on the east coast women. and talking about that in the future. We're trying to be forward thinking as well in that process. Speaking of medical facilities, now we did include a training facility on one end of the I don't know if you saw that or not. Yes sir.

Yeah. So that was something we felt very strongly about because you know people get hurt and so they got to have they got to have they need those facilities. So uh so at this point tell me how you're We haven't had a lot of success bringing in a lot of huge donors there. Have we just haven't talked to that many people? We've talked to quite a few. But do y'all have a a plan for solicitation? Are you still going to rely on us or because I quite frankly would like to get rid of it. But I mean from my perspective, I spend a lot of time on the phone. But and we've got some good partners already in and one of them you'll see is Kquick which is local convenience store chain. It's huge and uh they've already going to do take care of the concessions and they're going to give us their product at their pro at their wholesale cost. So we've already got that built in and they're also giving a cash donation. So uh that's that's already done. But besides that one, we just don't have a we don't have a lead sponsor, a naming right sponsor for the project. And I think that's very important. I just don't know I don't know where to go to get one of those.

One of the things that I think would be um important to to sit down with you and really understand is what's going into the the capital budget for the development and then what is going into the revenue budget from a marketing partnership activation. And there's no wrong answers, but there's different answers depending on how those gifts, how those donations, how those pledges come in. So, one of the things we'd want to sit down with you and understand, okay, if there's a funding gap that we need to close, let's address that right up front. And then if we want to look at this from the standpoint of multi-year gifts or multi-year partners, we're going to go out and we're going to prioritize with a rate card and inventory sheet to say, okay, here's how we're going to establish those partnerships. But but it's it's not the case where it's like we'll just go out and say okay here's a you know gold, silver, bronze, which do you want? It's a very facilitative process based on what are the the economic goals. One, the ground that we need to cover for the facility and then two, how can we create good valuable partnerships in the community? Ashley, anything you want to layer in?

Yeah, I think we've got a a good track record of understanding that facilitated sales and understanding what those companies families or donors are looking for and helping them find a solution. Um, and starting with the big value first, your naming rights, your presenting rights. You don't want to sign sell the sign first. You want to go for the big deal, the big partnerships, and help them prioritize that inventory and then work your way down. And so, again, it'll be a partnership between someone here on the ground and then we also have a national sponsorship sales team that uh has been successful in this. Our most recent one, uh, we sold $2 and half million dollars in total contract value for just an outdoor complex. So, don't take that as a promise, but we're very confident that when you have a great facility that's going to do something like it's going to do here, that a lot of people want to be part of that in some way, shape, or form.

I appreciate that. That that makes me feel a lot better because, you know, at this point there's nothing to touch and feel and it's hard to sell an a lot of times an idea. So, uh, that that's very helpful and I and I'll have to get with you and tell you what you know I've got a list but anyway u I'm glad to hear that you got team we have another meeting coming up so first of all on behalf of the Civo desk I want to spank thank the sports facilities companies for coming for presenting for laying out this program uh u very pleased with it so uh thanks guys for making the trip and making the time to spend with us today u we appreciate all answering all the questions and all material. So, thank you very much. Okay.

Our pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Before we go, if we can leave a few things with you. Sure. Um, basically, what we wanted to do was kind of get the juices flowing in terms of we wanted to look at what are some of the things we can accomplish together over the next this is this is over the next five years, but we're thinking long term. And, you know, this is uh get you Oh, yeah. You open those, they all keep them shut till after the meeting. Thank you very much. All right, guys. Thank you all very much. Thank you. That's cool. Thank you, guys. Mr. Mayor, if there's no further business, I move we adjourn. Motion to journ. Is there a second? Second by Council Stoker. All in favor say I.

I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you.