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CASE Committee Meeting Minutes 3-16-23 FINALCASE COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 2023 HYBRID FORMAT IN PERSON AT AVON TOWN HALL AND VIRTUALLY ON ZOOM CASE COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES, 16 MARCH 2023 PAGE 1 | 4 1. ROLL CALL Present: Committee Member Pedro Campos, Danielle McNair, Doug Jimenez (virtual), Thomas Walsh (virtual), Justin Chesney (virtual), and Committee Chair Lisa Mattis Town Council: Town Council Member Ruth Stanley Staff: Culture, Arts & Special Events Manager Danita Dempsey, Town Manager Eric Heil, and Special Events Coordinator Chelsea Van Winkle Absent: Town Council Member Lindsay Hardy and Committee Member Calyn Rieger The meeting was called to order at 12:33 p.m. 2. PUBLIC COMMENT No public comments were made. 3. MINUTES Committee Member Pedro Campos motioned to approve the minutes from February 16, 2023. Committee Chair Lisa Mattis seconded the motion and it passed unanimously. 4. STAFF UPDATE Peer Community Research CASE Manager Dempsey provided background into the Peer Community Survey project that was started in late 2021. She explained that the Town of Avon Intern began collecting information through Survey Monkey, but it did provide enough clarity, so the Special Events team has done follow up interviews with several peer communities to get more in-depth details. One of the main questions posed was “what is your 2022 special events budget” and our research shows Special Event Budgets across neighboring resort communities and where we are in comparison. What stood out the most is Beaver Creek Resort Company and Town of Vail are leaps above us in budget. The challenge with this data is it is not apples to apples across the different communities due to how they fund events and their venues. CASE Manager Dempsey then went into the marketing budget comparisons. She stated that this is also not apples to apples and for example, Town of Frisco did not break out marketing specifically for events and that marketing for events at Beaver Creek Resort Company grew significantly from previous years. When looking at the compared event budgets, the budgets under $100K and that are near a “destination” resort area are more in line with Avon. She also explained that Town of Avon marketing budget was flat 2022 to 2023. Town Manager Heil stated what is challenging with the research is it is not linear and there is a mix of topics. He explained that the Town of Frisco shifted from being visitor oriented to community first, but when visitors do show up to their events, it provides a great experience and gives them a “local vibe”. He believes that Avon is more community minded and is shifting towards the mindset of Town of Frisco. He continued that there is consideration for events that we need to fill the Town and fill the rooms, but he feels we have moved away from that as a sole objective. Council wants repeat visitors and natural progression of people visiting and living here. Beaver Creek and Vail need to fill beds through their events. The question is CASE COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 2023 HYBRID FORMAT IN PERSON AT AVON TOWN HALL AND VIRTUALLY ON ZOOM CASE COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES, 16 MARCH 2023 PAGE 2 | 4 which one do we model after? There is a lot I like about the Town of Frisco, but there isn’t one peer community that he could choose from that directly mirrors Avon. The Town of Avon desires to add more signature events and there is interest in adding a few larger 5,000-10,000 person events that Avon has become well known for. CASE Manager Dempsey acknowledged that Salida has a lot of culture and arts programs that we should research further but not a robust events program. Town Manager Heil explained that the disconnect is with the 10-year vision, growing our successes, winter activations and book ending summer. What he would suggest to the council is we take time to figure out what works in the winter. We have done very little with culture and over the next two years we will work on bringing that to the forefront. He continued that where he thinks council is hesitant and not quite ready for us to add events is due to the fact that we would also need to add staff. That being said, one new staff person could help add to our art program and enhance the culture aspect while assisting with the events program. They have been reluctant about what we spend so the peer community research is to show what we are up against in our peer communities. He said going on a weekend trip to another mountain community, he expects to almost always have events happening and he believes Avon needs to offer something similar. There is only a small window where we can grow into. The Committee commented/inquired: A. Who do we want to be? B. Is there one community to benchmark against? C. Are we negotiating the budget? D. Is the “its full we don’t want more people” timeline oriented? E. Can we afford where we are if beds are full? F. Are we the only venue in the mountains that can host 8-10,000 people? G. Last year really brought up the level, the bar is being raised. I think the council sees that and recognizes that. H. The numbers look very different when you pull Salute to the USA off our budget. Then our budget looks smaller compared to other resort communities. I. I think what you are proposing to do makes a lot of sense, my perception is we are leading other communities. J. It feels like we are doing some testing, what came about the opportunity that was presented for the ticketed event? K. All the peer community’s data is going to be beneficial; I think the marketing piece is interesting. I would like to know what kind of marketing they are doing and how Avon is marketing to our community. L. What does Culture mean? Values, place, and character. Google says Culture is defined as systems, practices, and behaviors. Do we have behaviors? Maybe the disconnect is behavior oriented because I do not believe it is not systems or practices. M. What resonates with me is the word behavior. We could take a poll on what our community likes but what is our behavior and what does that look like in each season is more important. What behaviors do you do every week instead of things we may just like but never actually do? N. Avon has gone from an open range to an amazing place to be. However, there must be a plan and social media must be part of that plan. We need to consider all aspects moving forward. O. Create guardrails, to bring the CASE and council “cultures” together and have them overlap. We have a vision and a mission; we have values below that and how we express those values are behavior. CASE COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 2023 HYBRID FORMAT IN PERSON AT AVON TOWN HALL AND VIRTUALLY ON ZOOM CASE COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES, 16 MARCH 2023 PAGE 3 | 4 P. The budget must be tracked with the 10-year vision, our behaviors don’t match what we are doing and that means that we are always going to fail, and CASE is always going to struggle. Q. What is it that we are trying to pitch to council? I don’t fully understand where the disconnect is. R. It is frustrating that we go to a meeting, we do a lot of work on the vision, we are wanting to support CASE and that we reversed course after we had our work session with council. How much is a factor of sentiment vs. budget? S. The council work session in October was off in general. When we go to council, we need to bring it as our meeting. T. There are concerns about neighborhoods around the park. U. What you want is a strategic plan at the end of the process that tracks with a budget that stays flat or grows. We need to get approval on the cadence on how we grow. V. If our foundation is community first, then we should benchmark against that. W. If you had to pick three communities, what would you pick? X. Pull out of the peer community research communities who share similar level of assets. For example, this town has a lake, ski resort, I-70, etc. and show what the other communities’ assets are. Our assets are not the same compared to any of our peer communities. Y. I have a hard time not thinking about the past. We need to mention what we used to have and what we have now. Z. Avon is not the same as any other community, it is hard to compare. Avon is not Vail, it is the bridge, it is completely different. We need to consider Avon from a different perspective, it is not a normal town and no one else has it. AA. Is the time now to bring in a $150,000 band, have it for free and then move to ticketed concert next year? BB. What keeps locals here? The culture and healthy connection keep locals here. CC. We need to present the value of events. DD. In 2009 we had Fog Hat on a trailer, that is where we started. Put the wins and put the failures since then. EE. I go back into not unpacking our failures because it is front of mind. It creates a fail-forward concept. Town Manager Heil stated, yes, the budget needs to have a strategy in another way. We don’t want more people in July and August. We want to be in a place where we can say yes to big events that are asking to come to Avon. Yes, we can afford where we are. They are sensitive to the community; they want to grow into it. What is reasonable with the expenditure, money well spent, and it needs to have value. Lastly, what do we want to be, what is the character. How do we nurture and support the areas that we are struggling with? CASE Manager Dempsey said the plan for council is to pose the question of “do we stay where we are or do you want to reach towards the 10-year vision”. The key elements in making that decision are budget, staffing and calendar. She continued that Town Manager Heil and herself think we need to bump up against number of days we are activating and number of events against other peer communities. That is the next step of the research, the thing to lead with. This will help us determine if Avon is in the game with our peers, or we are lagging or if we don’t invest, we will quickly lag behind. We would like members of council to hear from CASE along with industry experts in April’s council work session. The best outcome for us, no matter what, is direction. The restroom and infrastructure in the park are part of that direction. CASE Manager Dempsey stated the ticketed events that were presented in September went to other venues. We have not dived into why they did not choose us. CASE COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 2023 HYBRID FORMAT IN PERSON AT AVON TOWN HALL AND VIRTUALLY ON ZOOM CASE COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES, 16 MARCH 2023 PAGE 4 | 4 Town Manager Heil said we have been getting really good responses in community surveys. Getting into intercept surveys that are taken at our events is huge. He posed the question, what makes Avon special? We need to collect all that and put it into a cultural understanding? Think about asking questions that might lead to where we should focus our efforts. CASE Manager Dempsey said our purpose and our vision already create guardrails for CASE and council. It is the path to that outcome that we are losing our way and explaining that to council. Dempsey explained that she thought the next steps for the strategic plan are teasing out all the “extras”/tactics and putting them in appendices. For example, let’s get “art” into the building code for new buildings. She stated, she believed that CASE and council align on the goal of community first. Town Manager Heil continued the peer conversation saying Breckenridge Tourism Office has an art district along with other communities. We have music events, and some council members feel like we are doing plenty. We have not had the conversation about how we incorporate culture and arts into the strategic plan. I don’t feel like we have developed groundwork under culture like we have for music. We need to lay out and have a dialogue for the next two years to really get an idea of where we are going. Town Manager Heil said he sees the Council session differently, we threw some big new events at them, and they were taken aback. Sometimes they just need some time to think and process as they don’t spend the time to really learn the information. Something to be conscious of is that Avon is growing in every way, more people, hotels, housing, etc. The town is growing so it should match up with our events growing and that is what the 10-year vision does. We all agree on the goals so when we propose something new, we need to make sure we loop back to the goals. We need to have CASE’s input, when we go to council, we need to have you put it in your own words that this makes sense. Town Manager Heil declared, I wouldn’t pick a community to benchmark against because everyone has something different. Salida has the art piece, Dillon has a turnkey facility, there is no comparison. He stated that he thinks in the report on the work session, we should make a very short acknowledgement of where we have come from. He then said that he liked what was said about homing in on why Avon is unique and taking pieces of each community to compare. The best way is to show our assets, setting and why we are unique. He ended by stating we need to show the “flavor” of each peer community not the exact details and show that the events are apart of who Avon is. CASE Manager Dempsey exclaimed we are so close with third party producers wanting to have bigger names on Avon’s stage. It seems we need to be willing to put some money at risk to get a producer comfortable committing to a ticketed event. She believes an emotional attachment at the council level to the failures of ticketed events of the past. Council has such a big job and what we do is perceived as the icing on the cake and the fun and they have bigger problems such as housing to solve. She wonders if the work of CASE gets lost. Town Manager Heil also acknowledges that some things have worked, and others did not. Once we found that out, we refined our approach, and this is what we are doing. It is important to show who we are now and where we have been. 5. ADJOURNMENT The meeting adjourned at 2:05 p.m. Respectfully submitted by: Chelsea Van Winkle Special Events Coordinator