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HomeMy WebLinkAbout7.22.25 LEPFA Board of Commissioners Meeting Minutes LANSING ENTERTAINMENT & PUBLIC FACILITIES AUTHORITY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS MEETING MINUTES July 22, 2025 At 8:05 a.m. Chairwoman Maureen McNulty-Saxton called the monthly meeting of the LEPFA Board of Commissioners to order in the Governor’s Room located at the Lansing Center; 333 East Michigan Avenue; Lansing, Michigan 48933. COMMISSIONERS PRESENT: Paul Collins, Kenric Hall, Larry Leatherwood, Daielle Lenz, Charles Mickens, Maureen McNulty-Saxton, Crystal Thomas EO, Rawley Van Fossen EO COMMISSIONERS ABSENT: Dustin Howard, Lolo Robison OTHERS PRESENT: Mindy Biladeau, Kirby Doidge, Paul Ntoko, Ryan Tess; Sherrie Boak- City of Lansing (City Council) Julie Pingston- Choose Lansing; Jake Brower – City of Lansing and Greg Venker (City Attorney); Bryan Crowe – ASM Global; Aaron Matthews – AOM Legal and Jack Alexander- Public. I. CALL TO ORDER: Chair Saxton called the LEPFA Board meeting to start at 8:05AM. ll. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE AGENDA: Is there a motion to approve the agenda? MOTION: Paul Collins SECOND: Danielle Lenz. Motion carries. Ill. PUBLIC COMMENT: Julie Pingston, Choose Lansing – President & CEO report on behalf of the Director of Sales for the Lansing Center, shared information regarding the industry through June. Where we have our numbers for the industries performance through June now. So wanted to mention that like the rest of the nation, we're all struggling as people making other choices with their economics. Choices related to spending. So things are down a little bit across the nation, our hotels as occupancy is our best measurement and we are right now up 1.8%. So, we're up. Much higher last year, but we'll take that in this timing right now and the average daily rate that the hotels are receiving is down about 1%. So, we feel a flat market right now for us but a lot coming into the fall because. A lot of good events take place in May and June, so keeping that but there is obviously that inflation threat of all the different things in the world, especially related to national visitation, which this market does not have a lot of but we have enough that that it does make an impact, especially when students at Michigan State University may not. Zac Clark, Lansing Lugnut’s General Manager, Lugnuts are through our meat of our schedule now we will have 18 home games left, but things have gone very well this year. Lugnuts are up in attendance. Which is good to see after last year was one of the slower years we've had in a long time. So, kind of bounced back. I am really excited to see that the comments that Ryan (Director of Operations) made about the HVAC and the concrete are probably the two most pressing things right now that we have on our radar, everything with Major League Baseball and the PDL went very, very well. I mentioned that the last board meeting that I was at, but we're still waiting on the final report back, but we expect to be as far as the PDL is concerned, we expect to be around four or five points, and we're allowed up to 10 so, it's good to have that off of our back with them. Now we really have to focus on some of these other things. And that was kind of the detriment of the PDL was everything was player development. And now we have to really get creative and spend time figuring out some of these larger projects that need to be done that are fan facing and you know, as Ryan(Director of Operations) mentioned the concrete. There are some safety concerns LEPFA Board of Commissioners Meeting June 24, 2025 P a g e | 2 to the public with that, so we really have to figure that out. The HVAC as you know, they're doing all they can and signing off on a lot of these service contract agreements fixing up something that was really well past its life cycle, it's been really challenging and tough, but it's something that we have to have because of the Major League Baseball Players Association and the minor league players being in that Union. We can't be without AC. So that's been a challenge, but again, they have done absolutely everything they can some of these parts take forever to come in and different things. So, we have stepped in and added portable units to some of these rooms for the players like the. Weight room and. Places like that, dehumidifiers because without the HVAC it gets very humid, so It’s been a challenge, so I really appreciate his board support on helping us face that project, though the price tag is probably well over $2. Million at this point I would say since that last quote that we had was pre pandemic. Other than that, we're kind of rolling towards the end of the season here, getting into the offseason where we're looking to continue to build our special events profile and do some fun things. We are reviving a chili cook off this year. I think that's been announced for October. We have had a lot of conversations with diamond baseball about some holiday themed events like haunt event at the stadium, using the stadium as a haunted house, they have some cool ideas around that they're testing in some markets, holiday lights. That was something that we did in the past at the stadium that went away on. DBH is focused on bringing that back and doing that in some test markets. We did something really cool in July with golf, our Grand River Country Club event that's kind of a top-golf style event. If you are not familiar with it. But we added a glow golf feature. That went very, very well. So, we'll bring that back in the fall and ramp that back up again. Unfortunately, Olive Burger Fest was cancelled this season or this year. That's not our event, we partnered on that so we were disappointed about that, but understand why it was cancelled, but that would been a fun event to have on the calendar. So other than that we're a lot of business meetings that we're looking to bring in and different things like that utilizing the view we've been working hard to upgrade all the technology and the view as far as IT audio, visual and stuff like that, so. hopefully we'll get that project off the ground here in the next four or five weeks. We'll just keep focusing on 26 and building off of the success that we've had here in 25. lV. APPROVAL OF THE June 24, 2025, MINUTES: Motion was made to approve the meeting minutes for June 24, 2025, meeting as presented. MOTION: Commissioner Hall SECOND: Commissioner Mickens MOTIONED CARRIED V. REPORTS: A. CHAIRMAN’S REPORT: Chairwoman Saxton noted items for today’s meeting. 1. Update on financials 2. ASM Update 3. ASM Global Transition Update and Interim General Manager, Tony Waston report 4. Approval of concessions Management Agreement B. FINANCE COMMITTEE- Commissioner Collins deferred to Kirby Doidge to report on the June 2025 Financials as follows: 1. Financial Review: i. All properties are still in draft until the audit is complete, but the general overview is: a. Lansing Center - Revenue- Year to Date revenue was behind anticipated by $156,000. Year to date expenses were under $87,000. With the change in the Choose Lansing contract after the beginning of the fiscal year, we knew it would be a feat to make budget. LEPFA Board of Commissioners Meeting June 24, 2025 P a g e | 3 b. Groesbeck Golf Course- Revenue: Groesbeck Golf Course beat our anticipated revenue by $128,000. This is without having the few weeks of 18 holes due to the storm that is a great finish to the year. We were at a planned deficit due to the irrigation system we put in this year. c. Jackson Field- Does have a lot of HVAC work to be completed and with the $1 million grant from the State of Michigan that was put on hold could cause financial issues moving forward. We have opened PO’s that will be completed with a shortage of funding due to the pause of the grant as the City of Lansing advised us to move forward with projects. C. PERSONNEL COMMITTEE- Chair Saxton: did not meet in June. D. STRATEGIC COMMITTEE - Chair Saxton: did not meet in June. E. VICE PRESIDENT/STAFF REPORTS 1. Mindy Biladeau: Sales & Services- Mindy noted that May was a sold month. Noted the positive rental revenue for FY 26. Mindy noted bringing back Grand Concerts Series, it starts on July 17, 2025 and will run through September 4, 2025, there are various artist that will be performing in the gazebo area. Good morning. Just to add to what Kirby said, as we're looking at for the fiscal. Year June rental was good to 1117. As you all know, the summer months are slower here at the Lansing Center but for a busy fall starting in September and then we get the ground running just like with the. Unfortunately, we didn't hit the budget. However, we did exceed on rental from the previous year, which is a good thing as well and we are on track for FY26 and right now, we're on pace to hit around 1.2 million or 96% there and that's a 20% increase from fiscal year 25. Grand Concert series returned. Our first one was last Thursday, July 17th, so it was nice to see activity back along the riverfront. One will be July. 31st and then we'll wrap. Up on September 4th. It is Christmas in July, so all things Silverbells, The Silver Bells 5. K registration is open, and people are already signing up. Just a reminder. For the board. It's been in my report a couple of months about your LEPFA.com website is on an old, outdated platform content management system that will be supported any longer so you will need to decide on what to do with it as it is done January 1st. To redo approximate cost to build a new site is about $15,000. Cisa built our we worked with Visa to build our landing center.com website. The board portal is currently on the Lansing Center website as the LEPFA site can’t host it anymore due to being out of date. The board and staff will be looking at solutions to host the board portal and new configuration of the websites. 2. Tony Watson: So right now it looks like everything is moving right along with the transition. Right now, all the staff have received their first paycheck already, so we're good on that. The majority, if not all, have received all of their healthcare benefits and all that's in line in order. I believe there's they still may be dealing with some of the retirement stuff, but I think that's all on their end on, you know, just the transition and all that kind of stuff. We are in the process of working on a updated organization chart for the organization. With the new positions, we are in the process of getting 10 new LEPFA Board of Commissioners Meeting June 24, 2025 P a g e | 4 positions posted, getting job descriptions ready and all that. So just to kind of go over some of the positions that we're looking at hiring, we're looking at hiring an accounting manager, an event service manager, two event coordinators, administrative assistant/receptionist, two sales positions, Sous chef, a food service coordinator and an HR designee. So those are some of the positions that we want to look into immediately get posted so we can get those in place to help with the daily responsibilities of what needs to be done. With that, that's where we are right now. 3. Paul Ntoko: Foodservice- June was down compared to last year. However Fast forward into July, it has been very strong all three weeks so far, a lot of traffic right now seeing trends about 30% compared to last year. Last week was what I think might be a record week. We still got to confirm. Good feedback from the golfers. Customers, anyone that's coming by, all the leagues, the leagues are all on track right now. We lost a league that was not able to sustain members. So, other than that, golf is going strong. As far as the Lansing said of. Those working on some off- peak projects right now. So far for the year we've given 2700 lbs of food to local community partners. We're also working with some others right now to take the old China. 4. Ryan Tess: Operations- Everything is in my report on your portal if you have any questions. As Kirby alluded to earlier that the HVAC issues at the stadium are persisting. We just approved a bunch of PO’s to correct some other smaller items. So, we're pushing through that. We're starting to get close to floors and concrete repairs at the stadium, you guys to review. That should be expensive. Those quotes and improve review for everybody. Learning about how we can spend this transition, we're still trying to. Figure that out. Here at the Lansing Center, doing minor improvements to your busy season from here. Maureen: We talked about this at the last meeting, what's the timetable again for replacing over at the stadium for replacing the oldest units to? The less old units. The quoted it back in 21, it was about $2,000,000. We would have to find funding for large expenses like that. We will maintain what we have and keep them running, but they are well past their life expectancy. 5. Kirby Doidge: Finance-. No report. Vl. COMMISSIONERS AND STAFF COMMENTS: Introduction of Crystal Thomas City of Lansing Treasurer and Finance Director and LEPFA Board EO Member. Update on the General Manager search: About a week or two behind schedule in hopes to have someone in that position the first of October. Currently, there are 12 applicants and 4 or 5 qualified candidates. ASM is taking the job opening to IAVM in hopes to gain more interest in the position. VIl. OLD BUSINESS: Vote on is the concessions management agreement LEPFA contract attorney Aaron Mathews: Thank you. So as part of the transition. ASM had reached out and said that they would like to engage an affiliate of theirs, it's an entity under their same umbrella called SMG Food and beverage to manage the food and beverage sales and LEPFA Board of Commissioners Meeting June 24, 2025 P a g e | 5 concessions at the facilities. This only applies to Lansing Center and Groesbeck golf course. This is an entity that utilizes most of their facilities and for the food and beverage component of the operations. So they could, they requested that they wanted to engage that affiliate to provide that service, essentially A subcontract type of relationship given that left was agreement is with ASM and that's obviously a component of ASM's agreement, they want to then engage SMG to handle that. So, what we have for consideration, the concessions management agreement that sets forth the terms of that at a high level, from the board's perspective, after today, you shouldn't notice. The intent is for everything to still flow through ASM and both directions. So from a financial reporting it will all be included in the financial reports that SMG provides and so on the. The. There are employees within that realm will be technically employees of this SMG food and beverage we have included in this agreement the same protections that we negotiated into the primary ASM agreement in terms of preferential hiring for existing LEPFA employees and seniority within the fringe benefits structure etcetera forward also will have. So that agreement is in there and also that there's an explicit provision in here that says that ASM is recognizing that they're still ultimately responsible to the board for everything in the primary management agreement. So those are the terms of it, the importance of it is, is that SMG will be the entity that is then applying to the to the Liquor Control Commission to get a participation permit. That's important here, because as you will recall, under the primary ASM agreement, there's a 3% food and beverage fee that that is paid to ASM that will now be paid to SMG. But for them to be eligible for that under Michigan law, they have to get that approval from the Liquor Control Commission, so as with the primary agreement, the burden is on them to go and get that. Motion was made to accept the Concessions management Agreement. MOTION: Commissioner Collins SECOND: Commissioner Hall MOTION CARRIED. VIIl. NEW BUSINESS: No new business. IX. AJOURNMENT: Motion was made to adjourn the meeting MOTION: Commissioner Saxton SECOND: None MOTION CARRIED At 9:08 a.m. the regular monthly meeting was adjourned. THE NEXT MONTHLY MEETING IS SCHEDULED FOR: TUESDAY, August 26, 2025 8:00 a.m. LOCATION: Lansing Center- Room 201 Respectfully submitted, Kirby Doidge, Recording Secretary