Today at the Audit Committee meeting of the SF City Council they will have an item in it about ticket/parking fees at the entertainment complex (EC, CC, Arena, Canaries Stadium) DOC (TicketParking)
While the city does raise quite a bit, I think the fee should be higher to help cover maintenance more. Dare I suggest $2 a ticket? When you have people pay hundreds of dollars per ticket to the artist/promoter or scalper, I think $2 per ticket is nothing;
INTRODUCTION
Approximately $300,000 in Public Facility Ticket Fees were collected in 2014. The Public Facility Ticket Fee is charged on all paid admissions to events at the Events Center, Sioux Falls Arena and Sioux Falls Convention Center and all other sports or entertainment facilities having a fixed seating capacity in excess of 2,500 people. The ticket fee is not charged on events held at facilities owned by any school district, county or non-profit educational or religious institutions. The City currently has agreements with SMG to operate the Events Center, Arena, and Convention Center and with the Sioux Falls Canaries Professional Baseball Club (the Club) to operate the Stadium.
CONCLUSION
The Public Facility Ticket Fees serve as a way for the City and facility operators to mitigate the cost of maintaining the City’s entertainment and sports venues. Updating the current ordinance and agreements will help simplify the collection and remittance of fees and allow operators the flexibility they need for day to day operations. City management appears to have a good working relationship with both operators and on March 17, 2015 City Council approved a resolution approving the change of control of the Sioux Falls Baseball Stadium Agreement from the Sioux Falls Canaries Professional Baseball Club, LLC to Mankato Baseball, LLC. We would like to thank SMG, the Sioux Falls Canaries, and City management and staff for their cooperation and assistance during the audit.
i don’t read the argus much, did the canaries get sold? and is the city going to start charging for parking at canary games?
It is included in the price of the ticket, so you don’t know you are paying for the parking.
Question: If 4 people with tickets go to the event in 1 car, they each pay the parking fee?
I encourage everyone to watch the meeting. It is interesting how the different venues have ‘chosen’ to apply the ordinance how they see fit. Props to councilor Erickson for questioning whether promoters can violate our ordinances and SMG just lets it slide.
The first presentation about the city’s external audit is interesting to, but it’s not complete 😉
TT – the charge is applied to EVERY ticket, whether you park there or not. Pretty common across the country at other venues. It is basically a city surcharge, but they say it is for ‘parking’ to give it meaning. I think they should just call it a ‘maintenance’ fee, and up it to $2 a ticket. A lot of visitors are using our facility, while we are stuck with the mortgage payments, I think it is only fair to have them help pay for upkeep.
They want transparency. Eight pages about how to add on parking fees to ticket prices. What about the $10 s car the city was charging all around the event center during the world renowned summit league tournament? You know, the tourney where the summit champ goes on to become a 15 seed and immediately trounced a real basketball team.
It’s beginning to look like tear down Howard Wood Field and build a parking garage. If you’re not a concert or an Olympic swim team, you shouldn’t live here. Howard Wood is home to high school football and track. Spellerburg was where parents took their kids because other pools were overcrowded.
l3wis: Thanks for clarifying.
I agree with Dan. How many high school games will have to held different places to allow for parking for the Event center? Myself I think the events at the world known event center should be scheduled around when Howard Wood is free. This is just more of the poor planning that the city does. For the indoor swimming pool the people that wanted it should pay for it and it definitely shouldn’t be at Spellerberg Park.
I went to the Summit League Tourney. Nobody charged me $10 to park on the lot. There was VIP parking right next to the Events Center on the north and south sides, but that is there for every event and I believe is part of the sponsorship for the boxes on the loge level.
You make it sound like just a few parking spots for the loge seating. More than just a few. Have been to your shiny new aluminum can just once. Was my first and last trip to the can. Got free tickets to a hockey game. So did the other 4 I went with. Turns out all the people sitting around us were also there free, courtesy of sponsors who had handfuls of tickets giving them to anybody and everybody. Paid attendance for that pRticular game was announced at over 5500, but there is no way in hell 5500 were in that building…..unless 3000 were lined up to use the can. HUGE difference between what they say attendance is, and how many souls actually are in the seats. Here’s your VIP, or $10 a spot parking, the shaded in grey area of the map. Oh and OSF, hell of a marketing job this town does at selling the summit league as a real college powerhouse. What seed are they again. Oh yeah. 15. One and done.
http://www.dennysanfordpremiercenter.com/plan-your-visit/directions-parking/