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Posted Oct 1, 2008, 9:18 PM
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Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Montgomery (Old Cloverdale)
Posts: 586
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City Loses Convention
From The Huntsville Times...
http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/local.ssf?/base/news/122285253255170.xml&coll=1
Quote:
City Loses Convention
Wednesday, October 01, 2008 By LEE ROOPand KAY CAMPBELLTimes Staff Writers [email protected]@htimes.com
Parking dispute spurs Jehovah's Witnesses to move
Jehovah's Witnesses will move their three summer meetings from Huntsville to Birmingham next year, ending for now a 12-year string of meetings that brought nearly $9 million a year in business to local hotels and restaurants.
A dispute over parking has ended the annual meetings, at least for 2009, as the city's largest single convention booking, bringing 6,000 people to town each of the three weekends. Bill Scott, the manager of the Sheraton Four Points hotel, emerged from a 90-minute meeting of hotel executives on the issue Tuesday to call it, "from my standpoint, a major loss. I don't have anything to replace it."
Local convention bookers, however, say the sessions, although the largest single convention, represent only a 3 percent loss in total delegates visiting the city.
"We host more than 1,000 meetings a year," said Judy Ryals, president and CEO of the Huntsville-Madison County Convention and Visitors Bureau. She said the city is still poised for a "banner year" next year.
The decision is "beyond recall for 2009," Gerald Grizzle said Monday from the convention office at the Jehovah's Witness world headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y. "We will absorb it into the other conventions."
Jehovah's Witnesses have 340 conventions in 80 U.S. cities. Planning for the 2009 conventions began this spring, said local denomination coordinator Don Diekman. Conventions here are usually three weekends in June and July.
"They increased the price on us too much, and they also had the parking charges going up, and it's getting out of line with what we typically deal with," Grizzle said. "We're not wealthy people, and it's been a very expensive site.
"We rent the building and pay for the parking so our people and our visitors can afford to come," Grizzle said.
"We just couldn't come to an agreement on city parking at the Von Braun" Center, Huntsville-based Diekman said Tuesday. Mayor Loretta Spencer said Tuesday night the parking offer was the same deal as in other years. "We gave them $2 a car. It's $5 for everybody else," she said.
Grizzle estimated that some conventions attract as many visitors as members. No offerings are collected during the conventions, which include lectures and Bible dramas.
Different version
Local officials had a different version of events.
The city's negotiations with the Witnesses were handled by a three-organization team representing the Von Braun Center, the Convention Bureau and the city parking division.
It did come down to parking, agreed Ryals and Tommy Brown, director of parking and public transportation for the city. But it was the Witnesses who wanted a new deal, he said.
Grizzle said the Witnesses believed the three-year discussions as a proposal, not an agreement.
The city's deal for 2009 would have charged $7,400 each weekend next year for 1,200 spaces for three days, Brown said. That's about $2 per space for spaces usually rented for $5, he said.
The 500 Von Braun Center spaces were free, Ryals said. Ryals said the city's proposal, including the 500 free VBC parking spaces, meant the Witnesses were getting the Von Braun Center and the parking at a "71.5 percent discount."
Ryals also said her bureau gave the Witnesses $6,000 in cash per weekend for the two largest weekends and $4,000 for a less-attended Hispanic weekend.
That kind of direct payment isn't unheard of in the highly competitive convention-booking business. It came from the Convention Bureau's own independent budget funded largely by a local hotel occupancy tax, Ryals said.
Economic impact
Using conventional ways of measuring economic impact, the conventions have brought in an average of $8.7 million each year for 10 years in revenue, $717,000 each year in sales tax revenue and $5,515 each year in hotel tax revenue.
Grizzle and Diekman said the Witnesses repeatedly called the mayor's office over the last few months to find someone to help broker a deal for 2009, but those calls went unreturned. Spencer recalled the event organizers asked for a meeting on a day the mayor was out of town. "They talked to my secretary. We were booked solid that day," she said. Brown said the message to the city was, if they have to pay for parking at all, they wouldn't come.
Negotiating team
Spencer's office referred the calls to the city negotiating team, which would not change the price. Spencer said Tuesday night it's regrettable the convention chose another city. "We want everybody to come, but we can only be so much of a partner," she said.
"They're tough negotiators," Ryals said of the Witnesses.
Ryals said the city team knew this summer that the Witnesses were moving the Hispanic weekend next year, but had reason to believe the other two weekends were still scheduled.
The denomination informed city hotels last week that it was not coming, Ryals and Diekman said.
Ryals said Huntsville won the Jehovah's Witnesses business from Birmingham and "we're going to continue to pursue it" for 2010.
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Interesting read. Not being in that industry, I had no idea the different types of negotiations that go into securing (and retaining) a convention...
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Have fun with that second bolded part during this economy.
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