Megan Burch Jackson, the Chairman of the Manchester Public Building Authority, the body that oversees the operation of the Manchester Coffee County Conference Center responded to statements made by city leaders who propose the city take over operations of that facility.

Jackson said the main wish of the PBA is to have it remain open, be that under the city or her board, yet she cautioned that the operational expense to the city would likely swell way beyond the $350,000 that the city currently contributes to the conference center.

“We have a high interest in just making sure to continue business – keeping the conference center open,” Jackson said.

MCCCC General Manager Rebecca French said the center has current contracts through 2028. She said that in the event that the center is closed in the coming months, the easiest scenario is that the center would refund deposits that it has received. 

But a simple refund does not show the full scope of how it would impact the clients the center serves.  French said clients like state of Tennessee that has booked for their conventions two and three years out cannot just reschedule these events   

“It gets hard (to find new venues) the closer it gets to your date,” French said. “Is it doable, yes, but people would definitely be unhappy.”

Jackson called the impact that the conference center has on the area economy a ripple effect. She said there is the indirect impact of having the facility: the center’s annual guests’ purchases, gas hotel rooms, knickknacks. Plus there is direct impact, she said, that involves the jobs created by the center, an in-house  mentoring program that partners with state and local agencies and schools to provide career development opportunities, the revenues generated by the hotel/motel tax that goes to the county and city coffers and support of small businesses such as one that provides alcohol sales that the center.

Each year the center has on average 400 events and welcomes an estimated 22,000 people. Planning for those events, French said, is more than simply renting a room. 

French said the city does not pay for operations. She said the city’s contribution of $350,000 goes to “departmental costs,” three salaried employees, their benefits and retirement.

“We are not taking a loss on events,” French said. “We’re recording all of our numbers together. I maintain the building. I’m recording that in our operations. I pay a salaried employee’s salary that’s in operations.”

“If we were in a department, they would put maintenance and utilities in one bucket, employees that are fixed in one bucket and operational cost in to run the actual building. But our budget is lumped all together.”      

She said that number looks really large, but that the center is not allowed to turn the budget in any other way.

Uncertainty for the future

French said that aside from somewhat fluid discussions during city meetings, the conference center has had little direction on how the city would operate the center.

“We haven’t been given a business model,” she said. “We don’t have a lot to go off of. We have just been asked for a lease agreement. We’ve heard a lot of opinions in the meetings… There’s been no communication that this is going to be a smooth transition.”

One path proposed is to close the kitchen and partner with local caterers to provide food. That direction, while boosting local business, would need some additional thought.

French said that shuttering the kitchen would close the state-recognized, accredited apprenticeship program. Additionally, she said that a bare-bones operation would cost the center clients.

“People want to go to a venue where they can work with a planner, and they don’t have to do the extra work. A lot of our clients are repeats…they some in looking (for one of our event planners) because she had done (their event).”

French said her employees were told that no one would directly lose their jobs, and that recovered revenue would come from thinning staff through attrition. 

“I do not have any confirmation that any employee and their wages as they are here will transfer to the city,” French said. “So I don’t know what that looks like.”

When asked directly what the turnover rate has been since the pandemic, French said that was a very low number. 

She questioned too if the city could hire “10-99” self-contracted employees for special events.

French defended her payroll numbers from those who say it is payroll heavy, saying that it looks high because of vacation hours for salary employees.

“That is not actually a labor hour… that’s banked time that they had,” she said.

You have to understand the business

Jackson cautioned that looking at profit and loss reports is not the same as having a firsthand understanding of what it takes to run an event venue.

“People come to an event, and they see it on the surface,” she said. “You’re doing your job correctly if you make it look easy. But the amount of work that you put in before or after is your bulk. It’s not the actual event.”

“People don’t see the amount of work that goes before or after,” Jackson said. “You have to understand the model as a whole. Taking a piece out that also a revenue builder… how many tentacles do you want to cut without understanding the model that’s built the impact that the community sees.”

Catering an event, French said, involves bringing cooked food to the facility. Those businesses often lack the manpower to serve the guests. 

She said outsourcing catering services for luncheons would be doable but would be problematic for black tie events.

She warned that bringing food in or preparing it in an unfamiliar kitchen leads to variables that could cause event disasters.

Jackson said there are ways that the city taking over operation of the conference center can work but cautioned against abandoning the model that in place.

“If you took the model that’s here and built on it… morphed some things together, you might get some synergy. If you can get the collaboration with what they’re talking about doing, there is a way forward.”

“But you have to be careful not to destroy what has been built and been successful,” Jackson said.

She and French agreed that the conference center is successful.

“To run this center on a $350,000 donation is amazing,” she said. “Other centers are getting a lot more funding.”       

French called for an end to personal and political agendas.

“It can’t be run any better by anyone else if we don’t put the work into studying what we don’t like and communicate better about how we want to change it. We can hand this off five times to people who make all kinds of promises and it will continue to be a failure to the eyes of those who are elected because they don’t understand the model.”

French said the ink on the 2020 agreement between the city and the county giving full financial responsibility to the city is only five years old.