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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTourism Board - Grant Feedback 12-14 - Julie RuleGrant Name  Amount Requested Amount Julie recommends to fund  Scottish Highland Games Has been a good partner in the past Like the statistics that are collected and included; event seems to be continuing to draw a good crowd $17,500 ($4.64 per person) $17,500  Northland Ethnic Festival At Park Hill South and open to anyone. $2000 ($2 per person) $2000  Midwest All Truck Nationals Seems to have been a good overall partner in the past Would have liked more information on demographics and number of attendees. I thought I recalled someone saying that they brought in 3000-4000 people for this in the past. I would like to do same funding as last year since any proposed expansion/new ideas are not defined and they need work with the city to identify them. Maybe next year they can have the ideas defined and request more money. $10,000 ($3.33-$4.00 per person?) $5,000 (same as last year)  Riverside Chamber of Commerce Staff Member I love the concept of supporting this since I think that expanding on things that our current businesses do well is a great way to boost tourism and I think the Chamber is a natural promoter of business tourism. My key wish on this grant is for more detail. $50,000 is almost 30% of our budget and it would be nice to have perspective on how much of that is salary/benefits versus how much of that is admin expenses versus events. My ideal scenario for the future would be to have this grant cover the staff position and have the other items submitted as separate event grants but probably not reasonable given that the staff person is not in place to create a grant this year. Probably Hope will provide perspective on this one and maybe even a better budget breakdown. If not, might be good to request it as part of the condition of the grant. For example, we probably would want our portion of salary to go toward tourism activities and not necessarily as much about membership drives. Funding this means that we either defund 5-7 other smaller items or that we take a large amount of money from Musicfest. For me, I felt that there was enough potential there that I’d be willing to divert funds from Musicfest, while still preserving the variety of these smaller events. However, I’d feel much better about it if we had some additional specifics on where the money is going. (See my overall comments at the bottom of the individual grants). $50,000 $50,000   Platte Purchase Bridge Historical Marker Sign Good opportunity to obtain and preserve the sign My key question is whether the proposed sign location is in levee district/corps of engineers jurisdiction? If so, has the city received initial feedback from the levee district indicating they will support the sign location? My experience is that all signage on/near the levee has to be reviewed by levee district/army corps to keep tabs on anything that could possibly compromise integrity of the levee by itself or combined with other things. Application would have been even more helpful to me if it included: Vendor quote on the sign so that I know that the estimate is reasonable. I’m assuming that this particular one is based on other similar signs but I was recalling that the other signs were around $6000 each (maybe that’s wrong). Copy of the existing sign that was readable in the grant for perspective on what information the sign would include. Is there an option to include a picture of the current bridge on the sign so that it could be compared when the visitor is looking at the new bridge? Overall trail signage plan (maybe this is still in progress). Application could have included trail counts from Platte County/events? In general I think signage makes a community visitor friendly and I am supportive of it as long as the levee district continues to be supportive of signage. $3000 ($___ per person not included) $3000  Attache International – Dust Bowl Jamboree Well written, detailed proposal. Seems like an appealing event that’s in line with our community values. No estimated attendance included, though. Feedback on Platte County 175th anniversary Bonnie and Clyde event which they also coordinated was good. Has a local business, Premium Waters, providing courtesy water. I’d like someone to verify that the city is ok with their requests for parking, fire, etc. $19,850 ($___ per person not included) $19,850 (as long as we think they could draw about 1000 people)  Park Hill South Bell Tower Run Like this one better than the Park Hill state convention because participants are seeing a much larger portion of our community, and they indicate the food will be from local restaurants Would like to see a proposed route, however, it sounds like it’s mostly through Riverside. Still is quite a bit of cost per participant but I’m assuming it may be a little lower due to family and supporters that come to see the run at various points. $9,000 ($18 per runner) $9,000  Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Foundation I like the concept and the fact that they are staying at Argosy Casino for a week. My major question is whether this is an event that is open to the public –Can anyone go see the speakers and re-enactors, etc.? For the money that we are spending, I would really like for them to promote some events along with it (e.g. advertise for the re-enactments so those have potential for tourism also). I’d also like to make sure that we are able to use the expert information they bring about Lewis & Clark and capitalize on it for tourism in the future. For example, a report that tells us all the important sites on the Lewis & Clark trail that we could eventually sign and details to educate others so that we could maximize the tourism potential for the future. Given that this is a week long event, the money could be justified if we’re able to get some additional present and future tourism from it. $16,982.30 ($106.14 per person) $16,982.30 if activities open to the public $0 if not open to the public   Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Foundation I like the concept and the fact that they are staying at Argosy Casino for a week. My major question is whether this is an event that is open to the public –Can anyone go see the speakers and re-enactors, etc.? For the money that we are spending, I would really like for them to promote some events along with it (e.g. advertise for the re-enactments so those have potential for tourism also). I’d also like to make sure that we are able to use the expert information they bring about Lewis & Clark and capitalize on it for tourism in the future. For example, a report that tells us all the important sites on the Lewis & Clark trail that we could eventually sign and details to educate others so that we could maximize the tourism potential for the future. Given that this is a week long event, the money could be justified if we’re able to get some additional present and future tourism from it. $16,982.30 ($106.14 per person) $16,982.30 if activities open to the public $0 if not open to the public  Shakespeare Festival I like the fact that they are practicing in Riverside and therefore coming on multiple visits over time (kids + parents) I would love more information on time of day since for the play itself, I question whether the attendees will just come for the event and leave because it’s later in the evening or if they will stay and experience more in Riverside because it’s in the afternoon. I could be convinced that this event isn’t as good for tourism as some of the others that have submitted applications. $10,000 ($6.66-12.50 per person) $10,000  Musicfest Following our discussion at the last meeting, I was expecting to see a little different approach of breaking into 2 events (music focused evening event that maybe had an admission charged, kid focused free day event) I’m ok funding at some level but not at the $100,000 level (see discussion at the end). $100,000 ($20 per person) $41,667.70 (remaining funds)  Park Hill South Student Council State Convention One concern of mine is that we have a requirement that events be open to the public and this doesn’t appear to be. Sponsoring the balloon drop, meals for adults and décor items isn’t totally in line with tourism in my opinion, although if I felt like more money would be specific to Riverside (e.g. hotels, meals, gas, etc) I could maybe be more supportive of these amenities within the context of the bigger event. However, there’s really no information to say that they will be staying in Riverside. (Would be nice if they included Riverside hotel information in the information that is sent out at least but that’s not mentioned). Overall there are some parts of this that I think are in line tourism, like having our logo on the T-shirt. There are other parts I would like to have more information on to understand the relationship to tourism board objectives. Given other good projects to fund, I do not think this as good of a funding candidate as other projects. $18,000 ($18 per person) $0   Park Hill South Student Council State Convention One concern of mine is that we have a requirement that events be open to the public and this doesn’t appear to be. Sponsoring the balloon drop, meals for adults and décor items isn’t totally in line with tourism in my opinion, although if I felt like more money would be specific to Riverside (e.g. hotels, meals, gas, etc) I could maybe be more supportive of these amenities within the context of the bigger event. However, there’s really no information to say that they will be staying in Riverside. (Would be nice if they included Riverside hotel information in the information that is sent out at least but that’s not mentioned). Overall there are some parts of this that I think are in line tourism, like having our logo on the T-shirt. There are other parts I would like to have more information on to understand the relationship to tourism board objectives. Given other good projects to fund, I do not think this as good of a funding candidate as other projects. $18,000 ($18 per person) $0   General comments: I struggled with the MusicFest proposal to do the same thing as this year at the same cost when we could fund a wider range of diverse events and even a coordinator of events through the Chamber of Commerce. I ultimately decided to support the more diverse lineup across the entire year instead of spending the large sum of money on MusicFest for one event. One question that I had was whether the Chamber position could take on a lot of the MusicFest coordination responsibilities to eliminate the management company/fee out of the event. It probably wouldn’t be quite as polished as it was this year because of all the food/radio/billboard contacts the event team had, but maybe it could get us to a better balance of value. If the rest of the group thought that we should fund MusicFest at a higher level than $41,667, I tried to generally arrange the grants in order of how strong I felt supporting them so for example, I could be convinced to divert the Shakespeare grant money into MusicFest. Or, if we learned that the Lewis & Clark event wasn’t open to the public and therefore we couldn’t fund it, then I could see us diverting that money into MusicFest. I would like to see future applicants include budgets and for some items quotes from a vendor where applicable so that we know that the amount requested is reasonable to do the work. As part of this, we may want to discuss the types of items we fund within events as part of the grant requirements in future years. I have been in other groups where we limit the funding of admin expenses or even individual types of expenses if they are not promoting our goals (e.g. tourism) even when the overall event is generally in support of our goals. I would like to see event coordinators gathering data similar to what was provided by the Highland Games to understand the tourism component.