The city-parish is planning to issue a request for proposals in the coming weeks for a firm to study ways to improve the performance of the Raising Cane’s River Center.
Visit Baton Rouge will pay for the study, which will cost an estimated $125,000 and is the brainchild of an informal advisory committee appointed by Mayor Sharon Weston Broome.
“The bottom line is something needs to be done to see where this River Center needs to go to compete against the (Lafayette) Cajundome and other facilities,” says Broome’s Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Veneeth Iyengar, who heads the committee. “As the capital, we should not have the fourth-best facility in the state, so we have to look at what we need to do to move this forward.”
The Raising Cane’s River Center, which comprises an arena, exhibition and meeting hall space and a separate performing arts theater, receives hotel-motel tax dollars, a small general fund appropriation, royalties from naming rights and fees from its operations. Yet, it continues to lose performances to larger venues in New Orleans, Shreveport and Lafayette, and has failed to capitalize on the increase of downtown hotel rooms by attracting newer and larger conventions.
Adding to its challenges, Iyengar notes, is a lack of investment over the past 30 years in the kinds of maintenance and upgrades that would make the facility more competitive.
“I can’t speak to why it was not maintained in the past,” he says. “But we want a win for the city, a win for the state and we want more than a fourth-class facility for Baton Rouge.”
For more than two decades, the facility has been under the management of a third party—ASM Global, which, until recently, was known as SMG. ASM estimated the cost of the study, which Iyengar hopes will be completed by the fourth quarter of this year, and is drafting the language for the RFP.
For more than a year, SMG/ASM has had an interim director, Les Crooks, overseeing the River Center. He defends the performance of the facility and says its immediate future looks promising.
“Our convention business is great and we have a strong 2020 ahead of us,” Crooks says. “Concerts are always going to be a challenge due to the capacity and the proximity of New Orleans.”
But city-parish Chief Administrative Officer Darryl Gissel says it’s time to stop making excuses for why things can’t improve and focus on ways to make them better.
“Why isn’t the River Center performing better?” he says. “What can we do to take advantage of the facility? How can we maximize those resources? That’s what we want to learn from this study.”
Among those on the River Center advisory committee with Iyengar are: fellow assistant CAO Kelvin Hill, Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge President and CEO Renee Chatelain, Baton Rouge Area Foundation Executive Vice President John Spain, Louisiana Hotel and Lodging Association President Ben Blackwell, Center for Planning Excellence President and CEO Camille Manning Broome, Downtown Development District Executive Director Davis Rhorer, and Visit Baton Rouge President and CEO Paul Arrigo.
Editor’s note: The River Center advisory committee members’ job titles have been updated their correct positions since this story was first published. Daily Report regrets the error.
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