Political Buzz - Tacoma Dome wants $250K 'seed money' to become its own concert and event promoter

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Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

Tacoma Dome wants $250K 'seed money' to become its own concert and event promoter

Posted by Jason Hagey @ 12:13:25 pm

The City Council is expected to vote soon on a request to loan the Tacoma Dome $250,000 to get started in the event promotion business.

With the Dome's small theater nearly finished, Deputy Director Rob Henson said it's time for Dome officials to go out and book their own -- primarily smaller -- events, bypassing promoters.

They need the money to get started. Any profits from shows would go back into the fund; any losses would come out of the fund. "You're going to win some and lose some," Henson told me. "At the end of the day, we believe we will win more than we lose."

In a memo to City Manager Eric Anderson, he wrote:

This will be a key part of our strategy to compete against other facilities in our market, namely the Paramount Theater, McCaw Hall, Everett Events Center and the new Kent arena that is projected to be operational in 2009. This will also give us the ability to fill the "dark days" on our calendar with revenue producing events.

Henson also told me he expects increased competition from Key Arena "with the Sonics leaving." "If I were Key Arena, I would be putting together a very aggressive plan to attract as much business as possible," he said.

[More:]

Henson said he successfully booked his own shows into the facility where he worked previously in Mississippi. Promoters overlooked the building because they believed it was too small, he said. "I would just go and 'buy' a show," he said, including Poison and the Black Crowes.

Dome officials basically promoted last year's big dinosaur show, "Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience," out of their own offices, he said.

If it goes well, Henson hopes to use revenue from the new theater to begin chipping away at improvements to the Dome building that they had hoped to fund with a taxpayer bond.

The council's Government Performance and Finance Committee gave a do-pass recommendation to the plan. It's expected to go before the City Council next week for a first reading.

Categories: Tacoma

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