Two o'clock, so welcome everybody to our city council strategic planning meeting today.

Um we do have a pretty full agenda, so if I can get a quick motion on the minutes from our last meeting will be approved.

Second, all right.

We do have a motion properly seconded, and our minutes will stand as published from our previous meeting.

Um to start off we have some folks from Chattanooga Tourism here to talk with us about the sports facility study.

I believe I said that right.

You've said it exactly right, Councilman, absolutely.

So the floor is yours.

Awesome.

Uh good afternoon.

I am Susan Harris.

I am the interim CEO with the Chattanooga Tourism Company, and we met a couple of months ago when I came and kind of gave you that 30,000 foot view of the work that we do.

And so today I want to give you more information about one of our more recent projects, um, and that is our sports tourism facilities study.

And that is um interestingly, I heard some of the folks who will be with you after us and looked at the agenda.

It is also uh it is funded through a grant from the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development that was some of the ARPA funds that the state shared uh with tourism.

So for uh research, so this is none of our tax money, none of our visitor money, this is coming uh from uh down from the state.

And and the purpose of our sports facility study was to take a look at what we call tournament ready sports venues uh in our area and basically do an evaluation of those.

So today I want to tell you what that we learned from that study, what some of the opportunities were that were identified, some of the potential economic benefits of those things, as well as some of our resident benefits from those things.

And the purpose of this, similar to um some of you were here when we did our convention center uh future study, right?

We we don't own any any baseball field, softball fields, soccer fields, much like we don't own the conventions, like we are providing data to those of you who have the input.

So we're using basically leveraging the department of tourist development to provide information so that as you are and I'll say that at the end when we finish, as you're looking at all the competing priorities, and as a uh as a city resident who lives in Councilwoman Hills district, I'm aware of all of the competing priorities.

So we are just trying to provide information for you to be able to use that.

Um as a reminder, our goal, big picture to market the destination to bring more visitors to the area.

And sports tourism is a huge part of that.

A number of uh the groups that come into place.

So we undertook this study um last year is where when we started it, and it was um really a great collaborative process.

And um, it was informed by community members uh here and uh particularly by some of our clients who bring some of our larger sporting events into the area.

Um we facilitated site visits with the consultant to 16 different venues.

We um surveyed hundreds of event operators for different sports facilities, and then we held a number of stakeholder sessions, including with you if you were able to participate.

So thank you for that if you were able to participate.

Um with uh city council, with the mayor, with our parks and rack department, and Greta Hayes is here.

We'll talk about um other great work that Greta and her team do through this, but she was really an important part of driving that forward for us.

Um same thing again with county commission, the county mayor, their parks and rack, East Ridge, folks at Camp Jordan.

So really kind of take a look at our whole sports tourism landscape.

And then we also included the new sports and events corporation, we included some of our local foundations who often like to invest in our community, um, as well as some local planning groups.

Sports venues in general, they drive economic growth by bringing visitors for tournaments from out of town.

And then they also positively impact our residents.

And when we released the study a couple of months ago, there were a lot of interviews with some of our local AAU operators who are like, oh, we would love to have a place to practice here in town where we don't have that.

So the recreational access of any investments that are made, and we see that at Summit, and we see that at Warner Park, right?

Both of those are huge venues for out-of-town tournaments, bringing you know millions of dollars of economic impact in the community, but they're also used by our residents and our rec teams.

And so that's one of the advantages of investments in these type of uh facilities.

Um out-of-towners may use them on the weekend, and then our residents may use them through the week.

Um, so we kind of started big picture, like why why is this the thing?

Um, so the first thing is that that sports tourism continues to grow, and the demand is greater than what we can handle with our existing assets in the community.

So we don't have enough fields, be they diamonds or rectangles, we don't have the indoor facilities to meet the demand of people who would like to bring events to Chattanooga.

Um that is really um larger scale events is what how the industry has evolved that allows the event operators to make money, like it's it's kind of within the business model, and so that scale, our ability to compete on that level is what will let us continue to be competitive in that market.

Um centralization, that third bullet.

So uh an event operator, when they bring a tournament or an event somewhere, they want they want everything as close together as they can have it.

And so if they have to spread out and use multiple facilities and multiple venues, that's it just doesn't lead to satisfaction for their attendees and the teams, the families uh in particular in the youth sports market would be families.

Um reliability uh increases volume.

What does that mean?

Well, if it rains, I heard an interview with Barry Corter this morning on the news talking about his Boneroo weekend and about all the mud and the rain and all of the thing, right?

So that happens in tournaments.

So if you're at an outdoor field and it's rained and the tournament gets sloggy, um, at certain at a certain point, some of our some of our rec leagues will say you can't you can't play anymore because if you do, you're gonna tear up what we've already invested in, right?

And we don't see that if it's artificial turf.

So that's a great advantage.

Um, so that reliability of being able to make it through weather dependency is a huge part of uh of keeping up with that, and then that allows the event operator to be really consistent and know what they're gonna get to not have to change schedules to change, right?

It allows them to be there.

Um, and then the other the other piece of that from a reliability standpoint, things that that operators are looking for, right, is good spectator areas, good restrooms, good concession areas, like lighting, all of those type things that make the venue something that families would want to come to and and participate in.

Um really familiar to you because you have invested at Warner Park, and we have seen the return on that investment, right?