Washington Pavilion

The Pavilion, lost money, again, imagine that

l3wis April 21, 2009 7Comments

One tool you WILL NOT see in the Pavilion’s accounting office

It still puzzles me that a place that charges admission (except for Visual arts center) that after ten years, almost $40 million in building fees spent and over $10 million in operating subsidies from the entertainment tax, they can’t AT LEAST breakeven?

The Pavilion lost $216,000 in 2008. Wood gave preliminary figures to the city council Monday and told members the economy drastically affected the Pavilion’s operating budget.

“Starting in September we noticed, as I think we all did in our own budgets, we witnessed a pretty dramatic downturn in activity in business contributions, individual contributions and in patronage,” Wood said.

I would think with a new director and all, you wouldn’t use the same excuse every year (the only thing the Pavilion has been consistent on. And Councilor Jamison thinks we are ‘leaking money’ because we don’t have a new Event Center?! Wait until we build it! We will see lots of leaking.

As a director of another non-profit said to me anonymously a few years ago, “The Pavilion obviously has a budgeting and personnel  expenditure issue.”

Yah Think?!

And why did it take almost 10 years to figure this out?

l3wis February 10, 2009 7Comments

During the informational meeting yesterday, Councilor Brown bragged that the (reissue) of First Fridays at the Pavilion was wildly successful, and over 700 people showed up.

Ah, well, Duh.

Anytime you open a entertainment and arts facility during a time when working families can attend it, it’s gonna be successful. What I cannot figure out is why it took so long to figure this out. Just think of the amount of money we have lost and missed revenue opportunities. Talk about ‘leaking money’. When the city requested a review of the Pavilion about 5 years ago, one of the main recommendations was to open the facility at night. So what do they do, wait 5 years.

I’m glad they are ‘finally’ doing it. But what took so damn long?! Geez!

Pavilion windows an investment? Sure . . .

l3wis January 26, 2009 5Comments

Of course the Gargoyle Leader has gotten on their hands and knees praying to the Pavilion Gods and praising the City for bending the taxpayer’s over the barrel for another unneeded expense.

The best part of the whole drawn-out scenario is that the winning bid on the project came in last week under the estimated $791,000 price tag. A total of 10 firms bid on the project – a higher number than anticipated. Sunkota Construction, the bid winner, will get started on installing the windows later this year.

Why did so many bids come in? Because the Argus ACTUALLY covered the controversy for once and didn’t do just one tiny story on page 5. When the media actually makes an attempt to cover the news and hold beauracrats accountable, people take notice. I’m sure when construction companies saw that the project was budgeted for almost a cool million, a lot of companies probably said, “We can do it for cheaper than that.” The city makes no effort though to save us money. First they blow money on hiring a consultant to tell them what to do, than they take that consultant for their word.

The price tag on this project is not small. But, in addition to saving some money on energy costs, the windows should be considered an investment in one of the city’s most visible properties.

I agree with the Argus that the windows are an investment, no doubt. But I have long argued that we should ONLY replace the windows that are in need of replacing and weatherize the rest of them. That could have not only saved us a lot of money, we would still be saving on energy costs. I find it ironic that the Pavilion is laying people off and our school system has to feed half of it’s students because they live in poverty, but somehow a city and newspaper think we NEED historically correct windows?

Talk about priorities.