I think I'm gonna get started.

Oh, you've got a capital.

This is uh official.

I didn't get it just from what I was present of the Port Harrison Reece of Board.

I had the same issue.

I didn't knock on the table to get everybody's attention.

So I'm gonna keep bringing it.

Um Capital Improvement Board of Managers of Marion County to order.

So first item on the agenda is approval of our minutes on July 11th.

Second.

All those in favor?

Thank you.

Um now we come to the most important thing we're gonna do today, and that's consider our 2026 budget.

Um just a bit of a preface.

I think we all have been speaking about this all year, but we all knew that 2025 is not going to be the blackbuster year that 2024 was with revenue.

That was an anomaly.

We're not gonna have an eclipse every year, nor are we gonna have Taylor Swift in town.

So those things really uh made a different outcome for 2024.

And 2025, I feel like our staff and Andy and all our leadership team, well, really everybody has done a great job looking at costs throughout the year, as everybody on the board knows the budget process isn't just something that we kind of start working on in July and put together for August.

Um staff's work very hard throughout the year.

Um last year I started meeting with visit Indy with Andy to talk about their budget, and we did that again this year.

They receive most of their funds, 90% of them from us, and we receive our funds from the various people, not just citizens in Indiana, but um tax people that come in and use our venues, so it's taxpayers' money, it's public money, and that's a special trust that we call for everyone.

So appreciate uh the candor and the meetings with Leonard and his team last year and again this year.

Um Nick Terrell and I also meet with our senior budget staff and and Andy in preparation for this meeting, and I want to express my appreciation to Tim, Hart, and Caroline for all the time they have taken throughout the year explaining and going through these meetings with us, and we really appreciate all the hard work that goes into managing expenses year in year out, and that's been very challenging with the Sydney Hotel and the convention center expansion this year.

So thank you, Andy, for all your good work.

I think you've got a couple things.

Thank you.

Yeah, I just want to sort of remind folks, um, especially if there's uh folks watching or don't know much about um CI the CIB.

The CIB obviously is uh the major funder for and uh manager for the largest venues um that attract visitors to Marion County and the state of Indiana.

Um Lucas Royal Stadium Convention Center, uh Gambridge Field House, Victory Field.

Um and uh also you know we as Marcy mentioned um do fund visit India and they do an incredible job best in the business about making sure that the that our venues and the hotels um that are connected to the venues and surrounding um all of us downtown and throughout the county are full and um they do an outstanding job and resulting in you know just to make it clear 47,000 jobs just in Marion County, and that translates to about 1.8 or 1.8 billion dollars in wages just in Marion County.

Um about three point eight billion dollars of visitor spending just in Marion County people coming to Indianapolis, dropping off their money and leaving which we appreciate and that generates for the state and the city um about 300 million dollars in tax revenue again just from Marion County.

We say this to to sort of just highlight that when we spend this money, it is important um in that it really does facilitate an entire industry and that relies on it, and um you know it's our our job to keep uh reinvesting the money that we do receive from the state and from the city back into this industry and perpetuating it and growing, and that's our job.

So um this budget does that again.

There's lots to talk about in this budget.

Um I'm gonna let Tim, who unfortunately for Tim, but excitingly for his son, is dropping his son off at um college right now.

So thank you, Andy.

Um 2026 budget, um, revenues total 212 million dollars.

Uh that is down 10% or 24 million dollars from the 2025 budget.

Um the expenses total 247 million dollars, which is down 9% or 25 million dollars from the 25 budget.

Um that gives a bottom line or net amount of a negative 35 and a half million dollars.

Um that is about a million dollars better or higher uh than the 2025 budget.

Um that negative number, I want to remind you every year I talked about it, but um there's kind of a threefold deck um causes that to be a negative number every year.

Um, one is that it's what I call the appropriations budget, and what that is is that we build in contingency or um some funds there to ensure that we can take advantage of opportunities that um may come up, such as concerts that afford us the ability to uh put money up front so that we can um do events um quickly and we have the funds there so that we can make the money in the end.

Um also if there are any unforeseen major repairs, um that we can act quick enough to get those repaired um so events can continue as um expected.

Um so we need those funds appropriated in the budget so that we don't have to go back to the city county council to ask for additional preparations, which may take um some time to get that done.

So we put that in the budget.

Um if they if we don't need them, we're not gonna use them, um, but they're included in that budget.

Um second thing is just the ebb and flow of abnormal expenses, and I always relate it to your household.

Um if you have a furnace go out, you know, that that's a pretty significant um expense that you're gonna have, but you don't have it every year.

You have a meeting every 10 years, 15 years.

Um we have the same thing, we just have a really big house to care for.

So um there are going to be expenses that we have that we don't have every year, so there's that up and flow of large capital investments.

Um you'll see a few of them in our uh we'll talk about later, um, that we're not gonna have every year.

So there's that flow there.

The last part there is um investing in the future.

So there are also some of those capital investments that we're investing in in our future and as well as um then the future of our community.

Um, the economic impact that um some of those investments will make you know, we need to keep going forward and investing in the future so that we can do those uh future events and um help with the community on that.

So those three things I always keep in mind when I'm talking about why it's at a negative um bottom line there.

Um next slide, the budget funding.

Where that 35 million dollars is coming from now, and that'll be covered by utilizing our the CIB's unrestricted operating reserves.

Um as of June 30, those unrestricted operating reserves had a balance of 239 million dollars.

Um I I'm forecasting that to be at the end of 2025 would be a 209 million dollars.

Um if we did have the negative 35 million dollar bottom line, that'll take us at the end of 2026.

That'll be a we'd be at 173 and a half million dollars.

Um to put that in a frame of reference for you.

In 2008, we were pretty much negligible on the reserves.

We built that to a high point pre-pandemic, and 2019, that balance was 149 million dollars.

Um the pandemic happened, that balance came down a little, and we've been building that back up to the point where we're at now at that 239 million dollars.

Let me stop you right there and allow questions to be asked.

I mean, the reality is you know, we budget every year, every year you guys have come back and you've seen numbers in parentheses as a negative budget.

Um we have we we do that because we don't want to have to go back to the city county council and uh wait 60 days for them to introduce the fiscal ordinance, but you know, go to committee, vote on it, and come back if we have a roof to repair or a Taylor Swift concert to plan.

So that's been the case.

It was the case when Barney was here.

Um since the pandemic, we have overperformed that negative number over and over and over again, and that's why we built this um this fund balance back up past the hundred and fifty million dollars to the 209.

Our plan next year is to overperform this negative 35 million dollars.

And again, this is we've baked in a bunch of contingencies so that we will be able to do that, you know, uh barring any unforeseen sort of problems or opportunities that we will reap the benefit of, you know, in 2027, right?

So yes.

So if I remember low stage of the pandemic, we went down to between 80 and 90.

Yeah, the fund balance was down, but we finished 19.

Three and a half years we've gone from that back up to 249.

Is that accurate?

Yes.

Where we are now.

Now, I will say the 70 million dollars we approved to invest in the hotel hasn't come out yet.

Okay, that's that'll be that'll come out by the end of the year.

Right, and that's what gets us down to um the 209.

209 because we're also gonna have revenue that backfills that 70, yeah.

Which is still close to the 200 plus.

Yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

And I think it's worth noting that um our performance as a community in this industry uh allowed us to do that 70.

Uh people didn't realize how well it had performed the last three and a half years, to your point early.

Yeah, we've done a good job.

Um, and and I think I said this in February when we approved the the 70, is that we had a great year last year, and the revenue that we were able to derive from that allowed us to put the 70 in.

We also were able to not just increase the revenue from um from the hotel taxes and and the PSCAs and and the like, um, admissions taxes, obviously.

Um, but we've also been able to work out additional deals with the city of Indianapolis to ratchet back up a little bit of their um contribution to us.

So that's in on balance, we've been pretty good stewards of the revenue, and a lot of that's luck, a lot of that is economics, right?

Macroeconomics that we don't control, but um we've certainly with visit Indies health and sports corp have been able to capitalize on this wave um coming of of consumer spending coming out of the pandemic.

Yeah, one more time and the 70 on the hotel.

I forgot what's uh is that is that a loan, a grant, or equity?

Yeah, it's it's essentially equity.

Um it's 70 million, and then at the point at which we either sell the hotel and receive proceeds from a sale.

So we have a percent of yeah, we get 14% of the proceeds from sale or from the revenue of the hotel once the death paid off.

Without any additional liability, without any additional liabilities.

We are we don't have skin in it, but we get some some payment as a result.

And kudos to Andy and team who negotiated that.

That's uh a great example of being creative and also fiscally uh responsible.

Well, and thanks, I mean, obviously, um, to the mayor's office and the council for who agreed to do that.

I know it's it's it's it's these was that a motion?

Yeah, the well, and and just to round this all out, um, and it's been a it's been a uh uh sort of this sort of Damocles that's hold over our heads in 2028.

We start to uh some of our revenue, 30 million dollars of our revenue shifts from the CIB to the IFA in order to pay off the stadium debt.

The stadium debt's kind of backloaded.

So that is why we continue to try to invest and at the same time build a fund balance, right?

So this is it's just push and pull of we need as much fund balance as possible, so let's invest now so that we can reap benefits when things start to get really tight in the next you know five, ten years.

That's okay.

I do think that's the first time the sort of damage has ever been referenced to the CIB meeting, Andy.

Unfortunately, unfortunately I'll send our link out to everybody.

All right, great.

Take into the details here.

Uh so the tax revenue line the tax revenues are budgeted to be 160 million, 133,000.

Um those are budgeted as a 7% increase over the 2025 budget, and that's a pretty conservative budget.

And that's a pretty conservative budget.

We looked at the 20 2025 results so far.

We looked at the events that were going to that will be held as well as the economy.

And as I said, we stayed pretty conservative on that forecast there.

A couple of outliers there to note.

Admissions tax is up five, almost five and a half million dollars, 29%.

And there it's due to the plan events as well as the success of the Pacers and the Fever, which really drove the 25 admissions tax numbers.

So hopefully that as that continues, we'll see that in the 2026 budget as well.

On the other side, additional or also known as the hotel uh PSDA, which is a professional sports development arena or area, I'm sorry, yeah.

Um that just does not change.

It's a set.

Um there's a cap there of 24 million dollars, and we've been hitting that cap for the past couple years.

Um, so that one does not change there.

Um looking at the operator revenues, um, that total is $51,536,000.

Um that is a decrease of about $34.5 million of 40% from the 2025 budget.

Um, some of the lines denote their uh food service and concessions is down just over two million dollars or 22 percent from the 2025 budget.

Um that is due to just the expected higher cost um for our King partner.

Uh labor reimbursement line is up nine percent or just under two million dollars over the 2025 budget.

Um, there that's expected to the or due to the expected events and all the labor that um needs to be utilized for those events.

Miscellaneous income line is down 33, almost 34 million dollars there.

Um that decreases due to 34 million dollar uh potential infusion of funds from the city that was budgeted in 25, but we're not budgeting in 26.

Um to note there is that that full 34 million dollars won't have it in 25 either.

Um that funding is spread out over time um as opposed to all happening at once.

Yeah, let's stop there for some questions.

So last year we budgeted to begin spending on not just the soccer stadium, but also we were budgeting to spend on the on the stadium, expecting the reimbursements from the city because the city would own both, um and um you know, as we talk about the the contingencies that we build into the budget.

This is one of the contingencies we're built in on both the revenue side and the budget side.

Um we will that that 30 million um is not uh it's coming, it is spread out over time though, and that's the deal we I was just talking about where we were able to increase the revenue from the city.

Um we spread it over time rather than a big lump sum payment.

So um, so that money's gonna be there, it's baked into this budget, but at a lower amount because it's spread out over time.

Um really the operating revenues are very similar to what they are for this year, or for 26 are very similar, notwithstanding that piece are going to be very similar to what they were in um budget for 2025.

The the food service concessions are down from the 2022 budget based on higher costs, but it's also we've had I mean it's just a market thing.

We've had fewer concerts, we've had fewer um you know, huge huge FMB shows in uh in the convention center, and so that's a variable that can ebb and flow a year to year.

So um yes, and then any questions about that sort of miscellaneous income piece, and then keep going about investment income.

Um investment income that is down uh by about two million dollars or 22 percent, and that's just due to the lower cash balance and then the potential decrease in interest and interest rates moving to the expense side, uh character one personal services that's budgeted to be 32 million three hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars.

That is an increase of eight percent over or two point three million dollars over the 2025 budget.

Um items to note there, salary and wages.

We uh added in a possible three percent increase, say possible.

It's it's not definite that we'll give it away, it's just in there in case we do.

Um, also the union health and welfare pension costs are line it in there.

Um that is up due to the wage benefit increases in the most recent contract negotiations revenues because of the Taylor Swift and whatever of the other those three things you talked about.

Why wouldn't then the expenses so say with personal service also be layup?

I'm just curious why you understand my question.

I think so.

Well, if you hit if we had the Taylor Swift concert, we had uh whatever the thing is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and so I'm just curious.

So, yeah, I mean I why wouldn't the expenses I think those those really net out for us mostly um in a positive way?

They there's a net revenue, like we make money on those on those expenses, right?

So um because you didn't add staff, you would just charge short, yeah.

So your baseline staff was was flat, but you layered in these these high revenue opportunities and capitalized on that, right?

And those staff up according to the show, and the staff that gets brought in very similar to a Colts game.

Um some of that's like the eclipse doesn't have any yeah, we didn't have any for the eclipse that was it was a net benefit revenue, and it didn't affect our food coverage.

Um but the swim trials and Taylor Swift and the other concerts, we had seven concerts last year.

Um you want to take a crack in the Earl's question?

I don't know how to go.

Yeah, I think it's part of that contingency that we are still planning um similar events, and so the expenses are going to be there as well.

Um, and so the personal services there.

I mean, we still put in a three percent over that.

Um so we budgeted as if not necessarily at Taylor Swift concert that's a print run, but that we do have um similar number of concerts coming in, so that we can't afford to add it if we do add it.

Yeah, and the other piece is that this is in character one, which is basically our employees.

A lot of that is controlled by contractual labor, which would be in character three, which did see a very uh significant increase as well for this year.

Right.

So um to Jim's point, we haven't increased the scope or the number of people that we have on a permanent basis or really even a part-time basis.

The the fluctuation on part-time really does go to stage hands.

So when we do have big events like that, and we don't necessarily um budget for the Taylor Swifts, or you know, we didn't budget for seven concerts this year, those have always kind of been um the uh great or icing, right?

Um but um that's temporary services other than the stage hands, which become part-time, um, and then we cover that.

Well, if we do have seven concerts in 2026, we're gonna cover that with a contingency, the 34 million dollar, 35 million dollar contingency that we have sort of baked in in the overall budget.

Yeah, that's a big part of it.

Yep.

Thank you.

All right.

Um character two supplies.

Um, that total budget is eight million two hundred and twelve thousand dollars.

Um, that's a thirteen percent um increase or nine hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars over the twenty twenty-five budget.

Um item that I and mainly that's just due to increase the cost that we're seeing um as we're purchasing those supplies.

One item I did want to point out there, um, starting in the 2026, the parts and supplies line and the repair maintenance line that is in character two.

There, we are combining those, um, and that is just there's been confusion on uh the difference between those two, and also there are two repair maintenance lines, one in character two, one in character three.

So we're just kind of cleaning that up and making it less confusing for our internal.

So uh those two lines just are being combined as that parts of supplies line.

Because we know you guys go line by line and look compare it year over year.

Character three, other services, uh total budget was 140 million one hundred and thirty thousand dollars.

Um there, that's an increase of about twenty-seven million dollars or twenty-four percent over the twenty twenty-five budget.

Um, some of the lines uh with some larger changes there, security increase four million dollars or eighty-two percent over the 2025 budget.

That increases due to our continued work.

Let's make sure that we have the best class security at our facilities.

And also there uh it's a result of a recent security review that we did.

Um consultant fees increase just over two million dollars.

Some of the consulting work that we included in the budget were for the soccer stadium for the hotel.

Um food service at both convention center and Lucas O'Neill Stadium, and then also promoting the concerts.

Um tractual miscellaneous line is up just over a million dollars, and that's mainly due to the NCAA final basketball sharing that we'll host.

Repairs of maintenance uh line is up four, just over four million dollars or eighty one uh percent.

Um that increases due to the schedule and carriers of maintenance.

Um there we're seeing just the aging buildings that we have.

Um, and we also have a long-term set maintenance plan, and this just seems to be one of the years that uh many of the maintenance uh larger cost items are uh popping up.

So um that's up just due to the normal maintenance that we have planned.

Other grants line is up 11 and a half million dollars, and that it includes some grants for the Signia Hotel, uh repairs to the Pan Am Tower, and then also grants visiting for the ASAE.

Um, I think we mentioned many times in this meeting um that that's the Super Bowl conference, so the American society association executive.

So let's stop there.

I want to talk about that a little bit.

I mean, the the grants for the um so we bought the Pan Am Tower, um, it's being held by the our buildings facilities corp.

Um, we we bought it at a really good price, um, and it's an old building built in 1987, and we are um dealing with the issues of having uh purchase that that old building.

So um a lot of talking around the windows, a lot we've already done a bunch of concrete repairs, um, and we're also positioning it uh to and and some improvements um around amenities and the like um to position it to really be able to um rent it out.

Um we have a really good partner in Colliers who has laid out a strategy for us and it's it's it's working.

Um so but we do have to put money into that building.

Um again the the Signia Hotel um is a grant because uh we that's just where we had to put it because it's not necessarily all capital.

Um this is really built in because um to deal with contingencies as the hotel may um experience as we're getting ready to open.

We're we still have to buy all the table linens and the you know chairs and and all those sorts of things, um, which are not capital, so that's why that numbers in this other grants or character three, um but it's it's the OSNE and pieces of the FF and E.

Um, I don't operational supplies and equipment versus um uh fixtures, furniture fixtures.

So um that's why that's there.

Um and then yeah, and then next year this time or next year, last weekend, we will have um ASAE, which is really the Super Bowl for groups like Visit Indy, and we'll be hosting it in Indianapolis um first time I think.

Oh, yeah, first time for sure.

Um we had to Sarah in 2019 to pitch it, and um we landed it, and I'll let Leonard talk about it.

But um, we had a commitment from the CIB of two million.

Um, this will be um so this fund's part of that.

Yeah, visit Indy is putting in two million, CIB's putting in two million, and we're raising um another million.

This is an expensive show to put on.

But to give you some context, uh, I think LA had about five thousand people and about two thousand them are C level decision makers for these associations.

Uh and so literally basic math, if you can convert even five percent, you're talking about a hundred incremental uh events uh for Indianapolis, and so you're talking about hundreds of millions of not go to a billion dollars for that five million dollar investment.

So I'm super excited to have it.

Very appreciative when Sarah and Andy um uh came to Washington DC with us in 2019 and and helped us learn that uh that piece of business, and uh we've been told by you know Columbus Ohio a couple years ago hosted this, and they told us that their incremental business is from associations skyrocketed after hosting it, so we would anticipate the same thing for that's next August 15th to 18.

We expect you there all.

Thank you.

Okay, we need to keep going with today.

So okay.

Character 4, capital investments.

Total is $35, $169,000.

That is about $50 million lower than the 2025 budget.

Main difference there is the CID board approved hotel construction costs last year.

Some of the bigger projects in 2026, there's $8 million for Sky Bridge from the convention center to the Signia Hotel, and that will be over Capital Avenue.

There's $7 million for Wi-Fi replacement at Liquis Old Save.

Five million dollars for the Sky Bridge from Gainbridge Field House to the future Shinoa Hotel, which is over Pennsylvania Street.

Then there's four million dollars for new seating at Victor Field, which half of that will be reimbursed back to the CIV from the Indians.

There's four million dollars for Sky Bridge from Virginia Abbey Garage to the Fever Practice Facility, which is over Maryland Street.

And then there's a $1.5 million for the convention center boardroom office lobby renovation.

So we'll have the option of moving back to our own boardroom instead of continuing the company.

You're always welcome here.

I know, and that's why I said it's an option.

And I'll mention the renovation of the lobby that's also for security issues and updates to protect better protect staff.

Correct.

It is budgeted to be $31,247,000.

That is uh it's a decrease of almost six million dollars, but it's for the bond payment schedule or the amortization schedules.

Um so it's right in line with that.

Um slide 11 is the salary grades.

And you think you were getting yeah, I mean these um, you know, in the past we've had to come back and approve these annually.

This is really to keep in mind with the state board of accounts who requires us as a board to set the salaries.

So what we did three years ago is set salary ranges, and thus gives our HR department and uh senior staff the ability to set um you know wages and raises and uh the like compensation essentially for each of these categories of uh or each of these grades of position um within these ranges.

So um and the board doesn't need to approve them, so we just included as part of the budget resolution.

Okay, thank you, Andy and Tim.

Are members of the board have any further questions?

Not we have the resignation.

I think okay.

I'm keeping above yes.

Um so this requires a board vote to approve to budget and then also to approve the salary levels, just to be clear.

The chair's intertaining a motion to approve.

So move.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

Thank you, both.

Um, we have several reports today, no votes required on those.

So we'll start first with the CIB monthly financial report.

All right, uh June 2025.

Uh finished with resolution of expenses of $2.3 million.

That's about $3.3 million more than the budget.

Um positive budget variance there is mainly due to the underspend we had in the capital investment line.

Um tax revenues total $13 million, which is right in line with the monthly average for the year as well as the budget, uh, which is second year in a row that or month in a row that we've seen that um PSDA tax revenue was the only line that had an unfavorable bearance at one and a half million dollars, and that was just because we hit that $24 million cap I was talking about earlier.

Um, and that's just earlier than normal.

Um so next month in July, we'll see as that the hotel BSDA will be zero because we're we've already hit that cap in that restarts in August due to the state's fiscal year.

Um the other tax uh revenue line items um combined offset that BSD negative bearings there.

So operating revenue was four million dollars, which is less than the budget by about 700,000 or 14 percent.

Largest um unfavorable variance there was in the food service and labor reimbursement lines, uh which are both due directly due to the events that we have on the expense side, personal services is under budget by about six hundred thousand dollars or twenty-four percent.

Again, um that's due to the events held and the temporary part-time labor costs.

Total supplies is over budget by 134,000 dollars or 22%, mainly due to relocation of the steam line for the hotel there.

Other services is $670,000 or 8% of the budget.

Some of the larger variants there.

Some of the data dollars that we spent in June.

$1.5 billion.

And the $500 renovation.

And then debt services as usual was right in line with the organization schedule and the budget.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Okay.

Alright.

Our next report then is from Matt Albrecht at Casey Sports and Entertainment.

Good morning.

Everyone should have received our fourth quarter ending June 30th report.

Just a few comments that I had.

We had another great year grave at Gambridge.

As we all saw with the Pacro and the Fever and other events, we ended up having 10 more shows this year than we have the prior year.

With all that being said, we did set an all-time high on admissions tax as well as an all-time high on sales and food and beverage tax.

So hopefully we can continue to see that in future years.

And then lastly, I would say we look at different shows now that the MBA schedule has been released, which was last week.

We had an announcement for that, and we had an announcement for Rascal Flax.

So we're continuing now that we have that schedule to go out to the axe to try to start booking more and more shows.

So happy to answer any questions you may have.

Yeah, it's a great grants to the case.

Thank you.

And the feature.

Okay.

Next item on report is visiting.

Thank you.

We go to slide number what number is that.

28.

The hotel market share report.

June was not a great month.

The only thing that's green in those boxes is supply because we have record supply.

We had a great June the previous year.

If you remember, we had USA swimming, so that said all sorts of all-time records.

And year to date, we are currently at uh 65.2% uh downtown uh for occupancy, and and uh we are still at a very healthy 13465 uh revenue prevailable room, which is down 4.9%.

There's uh if we go to the next slide, you'll see some interesting data.

We decided to pull um our day of the week data.

We had a hotel uh symposium earlier this week where we help hotels forecast for the next year, and in that process we were pulling data to see what are the days of the week like.

Uh so even though we're down from particularly downtown occupancy of 68.1 to 65.2, when you look at slide 29, you can see that we're actually uh outperforming certain days of the week better this year than we did last year.

What we've seen is a fairly big drop on Sunday and some drop from very healthy on Friday, Saturday to just strong.

Uh so Friday, Saturday in 2025, for example, is at 72% and 72.4.

Last year they were closer to 77 and 78.

Um, but our Tuesdays and Wednesdays are now over 70 percent.

So we've gone from having um in 2023 two nights of the week where we were over 70 percent, 2024 three nights of the week, now we're up to four nights of the week in 2025, even with the lower occupancy.

Uh so for hotel operators like Jim and others, you've got four days a week where you are filling nearly three out of every four rooms, which is a lot better than completely yo-yoing uh up and down.

Sunday is still terrible.

It's one of the reasons we continue to want to develop the destination vision to find uh demand drivers to help us on those Sundays and Mondays.

Uh, but Sundays and Mondays are typically only either healthy in uh cities that have one of two things.

Um you've either got to have a really strong business transient, 42, 500 companies, etc.

Uh, so that people want to come in to start their week.

Uh you know, we have work meetings, or you've got half the theme park or or a Las Vegas type of demand driver where people check out on Sunday and a whole new group starts coming in on the Sunday night.

Uh so I'm pretty pleased actually when we pull that data because I had no idea where the numbers kind of broke down by week.

The other thing I'll point out in there, and this is through July.

The report you just saw a second ago is through June.

So we're able to pull some uh more individual data like this a month uh farther out.

You'll see the June July report next month.

But you'll see that even though we were down four and a half percent year to date in Rev par, this one shows 25 over 24 is only down 2.8%.

That's because next month I get to give a great report that July's the all-time record.

Uh so our preliminary data says the July WAP L star game and some of the other things we put in here, beat any other July in our history.

So there's still some uh in fact, we're probably gonna gain ground on that 4.5% deficit until we hit November, in which case it's gonna then dramatically drop again after Taylor's whipped.

Uh but our fall uh group business is really strong.

But the other thing I want to point out on the far right is the 25 over 23 numbers.

Those green numbers are absurdly high growth.

Uh as Marcy pointed out right off the bat, you couldn't expect 25 to match up to 24.

But when you use the baseline of 2023, we've been we're up nearly 16% in revenue for available room over the last 19 months.

The US is up 2.5%.

So we're still outperforming the US average over the last two years by six times over, which is really an impressive number, I think, for our community.

Uh if you go to the visit then you report past that, we have um we're only at 78% occupancy.

Darren is sitting over there nervously in his suit and tie, which he always looks good with the CIB.

Um, but uh he and I meet every week along with some other people on our uh senior people on our sales team.

Uh and we this time of the year we go through every single piece of business that we're actively bidding on.

And right now we're still confident we're gonna get to 100.

So we're all even though we're only at 78% of where we need to be, we could get as high as even 105% if everything goes our our way.

So uh we have the pipeline for it because our lead number uh is 146%.

So at some point the 146% pipeline is gonna help you 78% catch up.

Uh, there's some bottlenecks right now.

One of the things we asked some of our customers at ASAE was are you guys like slowing down your your you know booking in future years?

And they for the most part they basically said yes.

Um that they're super concerned about attendance this year, wherever show they're at, and if they're in Nashville or Dallas or wherever, uh that they're super concerned about their own budget cuts.

A lot of these national associations um are subject to uh funding that is affected by federal policy.

Um, and so that's obviously taken um uh a lot of their time as they try to figure out how they do their own budget.

So they're kind of like the last thing I need to do is deal with booking you guys for 2034, even though we plan to, uh, sort of thing.

So there's a big bottleneck in there right now, so that's why we are confident we can still get from 78 to 100 at the end of the year.

Um I don't like like our hotel community to worry that we don't have the pipeline for this additional inventory because we actually do on the group side.

We just need to get it through uh, you know, get those guys to book it and subscribe reasonably fast time.

So uh again, that pipeline number, 146%, is really really good.

Uh the last thing I'll note is um uh what I'll at ASAE, Andy and I got to do a little dog and pony on the last day of the show in front of a couple thousand people.

And David, that went about as well as you could expect.

Great.

Um so uh it's uh it uh it was a lot of fun.

Uh we uh we I think we had people telling us after afterward that uh that they were really impressed coming by the indie presentation and and looking forward to coming next year, so I'm excited about that.

And then earlier this week we had a show called SISO in the building.

Money may touch on this as well, but uh SISO is a society of independent organizers.

They're only about 300 people, but they are the for-profit racial world.

So for example, um Clarion owns the fire department instructors conference.

At the end of the day, Clary's got a portfolio of a whole bunch of other stuff besides FDIC.

Uh a show called uh a company called Informa for Profit owns the wet show that we have every February.

They've got a bunch of other shows.

So even though it was only 300 people, it's kind of a mini ASAE in a sense, and we had to spend far fewer dollars.

But if you can get some of the other decision makers in the for-profit trade show world to look at you and go, oh, there's a big other project here going with that project there, there's another ballroom.

I think my other show could fit here now.

Uh, that I think is gonna be potentially a great event fit to us with well.

Thank you, Lynn.

Quick question.

You you mentioned the booking window.

Do you think that that's going to do you think they're still going to keep booking all the way out to 2030, like that far out?

Or do you think that's gonna narrow?

Yeah, in general, and I was talking to uh the head of the global sales for Hyatt at an event about a month ago.

He was saying that um the lead time to get some of these things done is tripled for them.

So they're so they're no longer getting stuff when they thought they would get it, they're having to wait another three months, another six months, etc.

So I think we're seeing the same thing at the city level.

Um eventually they will book it, uh, especially if if in Darren's logs that shows it's a strong candidate, we know that it's likely to book.

It's just a matter of, hey, and Q4, like in December, you may see a massive upsurge in December because our salespeople for economics 101 will be begging them to go ahead and sign it in that month as opposed to wait.

So we just see a shift on expectations.

It's a it's a it the the booking cycle is taking closer to the end date to the date of the actual booking.

It's more timing than yeah, it's really more time.

The pipeline's there.

Thank you.

Maybe anything else.

Yeah, that's great.

Okay, thank you.

Next two quarters from uh Monique that this field can read it's in there.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

All right, our July occupancy it was 58.4%.

Um, without comparing it to last July, which was really off the charts and unprecedented at 80%.

Uh 58.4 is very respectable, very much in line with the typical summer month for us.

Um, our attendance, it was 154,45 uh seven.

That is our highest July attendance on record.

The reason for that, we had a lot of back-to-back events that really just brought a great deal of people to the convention center, and a big handful of them were public-facing.

So IBE summer celebration, they saw almost 20,000 over the course of their week-long event.

Um, and then WNBA Live.

That was at the exact same time.

Uh, they saw almost 13,000.

Their event was only two days.

Uh both of those events were followed by uh United Costello Youth Congress, another 25,000 dumped into July.

Uh the end of the month, we uh kicked off Gen Con.

We had two of their event days in the month.

You might have read in the media that they broke their all-time attendance record again.

So that was another 72,000 uh that we had.

So just tremendous vote for Gen Con.

Um really proud, we're happy to be a part of that group and to see them grow uh each and every year.

Uh we got Gen Con moved out on August 5th.

Um has been a little lame since then, these last couple of weeks.

We've had some small meetings.

We had HR Indiana Conference, also Indiana Water Environment Association, IUI's new student induction ceremony, and then Leonard mentioned uh SISO, small but mighty group.

Um I also want to mention Darren just reminded me that a lot of the attendees for that uh event had never been to Indy.

So great opportunity to get in front of them and hats off to Leonard's group, Roberta, uh Joyce and Darren, they did a tremendous job hosting this group, really spotlighted Indianapolis, gave us the convention center uh many opportunities to spotlight our services as well.

So that was just a really wonderful event.

We thank you for that.

Um we will end the month though, really, really on a high.

Uh next week we have Eli Lilly's um uh level up conference.

They're using uh the whole North Campus and then some.

At the same time, we've got Sam's Club also in the South Campus.

Right after both of those, we're gonna welcome long time annual do it best.

Um, I think Leonard or Darren might have reported this uh not too long ago, but they acquired true value hardware not too long ago.

So this will be the first year there of building-wise bet for us.

I was really excited about that.

Years past, they've used all the halls except for two.

So this year they're our building-wide events, really exciting to see their growth as well.

I won't go too much into September for the sake of time, but um it'll be really good for us.

We don't have any dark days, uh, no building wides either, but just a steady stream of small to medium-sized events that'll keep us busy throughout the month.

So I'm really looking forward to that.

And I think it's my work.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Thank you.

So we have Eric Group.

Good morning.

Uh we have uh similar to the convention center, we had some really um large and packful things since this group last met.

We have the United Pentecostal group uh in GlucusOil Stadium as well.

Uh huge production and set up and stage.

Uh that went really well.

Gen Con, big time at Lucasor Stadium continues to expand its footprint within the building.

Um that went extremely well.

Drone Court International's World Championship, uh, an annual event.

Um they have a uh really excellent event staff that continues to elevate their event.

It was one of the smoothest uh DCIs in my recollection.

Um a lot of people came, food and beverage did well.

It was a it was a successful event.

And then, of course, on Saturday we had Colts versus Packers for the pre-season game.

Um very strong showing attendance-wise for a preseason game.

Um per caps for food and beverage were up your over years significantly beyond any pricing increases.

Um I really feel great about how we started the season.

Um it really helps us um with our momentum going into the additional eight games we have this year for sure uh with the Colts to really really uh get it out of the park, and you know, I think everybody's really happy with that and how that went.

And and I think part of that is because in the last uh month and a few weeks we've we've done a lot of things.

We've had the job fairs to bring uh new event stuff in.

We've had um a series of really great staff trainings, welcome back events to try to get some camaraderie on everybody enthusiastic, and it shows the people uh the cold scan.

We've also had private events, public and private tours.

We spent half a day on uh a security and public safety tabletop where we brought in the FBI, IMPD, the NFL, the NCAA, all of our team, all of our security staff, and ran through scenario after scenario.

So just know that we're working hard to make sure that that our buildings are a safe place for people to go.

Um it's a short period of time before this group meets again, but we do have a lot going on this weekend.

We have the home homeschool football classic.

Home schools have a have a um several football teams that are gonna meet up at the stadium this weekend.

We have Playbook Sports, which is a recurring group that comes in and does youth football.

We have a the military job fair, we have the Colts 5K, we have the Colts versus Dolphins game for our home opener, um, which we're excited about.

We have cleaners annual um uh huddle against hunger, which again gives us an opportunity to um showcase the community in an impactful way with the group that's important to our our city, and then we do have uh TED Sports Indy is happening um in September over at the old national center, but there is a discovery session at Lucasola Stadium, so we're gonna have a presence with that, which is a high impact group.

The small but high impact group that's coming in.

Um beyond that, um well, we're just getting ready for the rest of the cold season and looking forward to seeing you hopefully at some of the events this year.

Oh, one more thing.

Before we meet again, we we should have some pretty cool concert announcements for 2026.

Um we are working really hard on concerts.

You heard all the budget discussion, we're conservatively planning because these things don't aren't real until they're real.

But there are there's a series of shows that uh have a really strong possibility of coming to fruition, some of which we'll be able to talk about at the next movie.

Any questions for us?

Eric Wettniger appetite.

Thank you.

I will just say this.

Um, this TED talk, um, if this is a partnership with TED International Technology, education, whatever it is, I don't remember.

Um Ted, but it's it is a that we've never done a TED Sports summit.

No one has ever done it.

Um, and it's really bringing uh the sports world and all the eyes of the sports world back to Indianapolis, um solidifying the um uh our our uh image to the world as a smart as a sports city.

And I just really thank Eric, he's really had a huge impact on this and really taken a laboring ore and making sure that this works.

This is all self-produced.

This is Melee Bot and Eric and Sports Corp really pushing this, and Eric has been um a huge asset to that group, and I appreciate you doing that.

Anything else?

No, it's okay.

Um next item is a report on construction project.

Um we're doing great 36 floor is being poured or um 37th next week.

Um we're up to like the 29th, 30th floor with uh glass.

Um we will be in topped out by next month, end of next month.

We'll do a topping out ceremony.

You all get invitations at the end of September.

Um I didn't know before I started doing construction projects about a topping out ceremony, but they're they're they're pretty important um uh festive things.

So we'll do that closed again.

We'll we'll have the building enclosed, weatherproofed by the end of the year.

Hopefully, try to accelerate that as um bad weather starts to come in this fall.

Pray for a mild um early early winter.

Um as that happens and we continue we we are going to be able to open um early.

Um we continue to, and there's been we did a tour with some new media uh folks thanks to Monica and uh the folks at A Common Hunt for doing that.

So you may have seen some news about that this past week.

Showed the model rooms and all the um and did a tour of the building, and uh it's coming along and uh we'll we will at least be on time, but more than likely be at least 30 days, as could be as many as 60 days early to finish the project and open.

Um you know that's it's it's a good to be able to say that we won't be late.

It's even better to say um we're we're gonna be uh we have a real strong chance of being early.

Don't know how early.

Um, but that's that's what we're planning on right now.

Um the original official day, Andy was December 1st of 26.

Yeah, and and so Hilton for everybody's uh benefit here uh has a very conservative date on when they will take contracts.

But right now it's seven months past that December 1st is July of next year uh of 2027.

We're hoping they accelerate that because when we were at ASAE, we talked to the Hilton Worldwide Sales People and they said they had a ton of business self-contained that would fit just in the hotel that wants to book in between that window of Q426 and July 127, but they obviously need to have a close to have a better date when Andy's uh construction team is more confident when they'd be open.

Plus they have to then train staff and get get all the pipelines done and yada yada.

So and just to close the loop on that, when we top out, the contractor has 30 days after that to tell us when they will be done, right?

And we have to mutually agree on because we'll look at it and go, yeah, that's that's crazy, you can finish earlier.

And we'll say, no, we're gonna mutually decide, we have 30 days to mutually decide.

We're going to open on this day in October, right?

Hopefully.

At which point we'll be able to give Hilton the schedule as to when they will back fill their training dates and get everybody way more comfortable as to when they can start booking and when they um can plan their hire.

So uh more to come on that, but um round October, maybe early November we'll announce is the exact date that it will open.

And frankly, they're not used to these being on time at all, much less ahead of time uh from our conversations with them.

So kudos to Andy and to AECOM Lent.

I mean, amazing, amazing job.

That's true.

Of any construction project.

So it's been great.

Thank you, Andy.

Uh next item on the agenda is disposal of obsolete equipment.

So we're all those in favor say aye.

Okay.

And then the last item in claims.

Claims, we have an expense voucher of 4,440, 474,490, or 449.38 cents get for it going fast.

And a confirming expense voucher of 12,3,355.6 cents.

Um basically the confirming vouchers more because we're later in the month.

And I'll just leave it down.

Yeah, unless there's objection, I'd like to take the claims vouchers together and entertain a motion points for them.

Some of them.

There's second.

Those in favor say aye.

Thank you.

Is there any other business to come before the floor?

Okay, public comments?

All right, take a motion to it.

Well, we're adjourned.