Friday, November 13, 2009

One Way to Make Music City Center Revenue Numbers Work: Double Them

Posted by Bruce Barry on Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 12:17 PM

click to enlarge MCCFootprintCR.jpg
A new analysis of revenues and expenses for the proposed convention center from hospitality consulting firm HVS is due next week, and its numbers will inform judgments of the financing package that the mayor will propose soon after. One key thing to look for in the HVS report will be its estimate of a key revenue source known as the "sales tax redirect." It captures sales tax generated by economic activity at the Music City Center "campus," defined in the last consultants' report as including the convention center itself along with "the planned 1,000-room headquarters hotel and a second convention hotel." This "redirect" revenue merits close scrutiny because it has been a mysteriously moving target--and the movement has been dramatically upward. We see this in a simple comparison of the two most recent analyses by consultants hired by the city. In March 2007, KPMG forecast the redirect revenue at $7.5 million in 2020 and $12.4 million in 2040. In August 2009, C.H. Johnson Consulting estimated redirect revenue at $14 million in 2020 and $23.2 million in 2040. Holy multiplier, Batman! (A chart showing the numbers directly captured from the two consultants' reports appears after the jump.) What accounts for this near-doubling of the sales tax redirect forecast in less than two-and-a-half years? We posed this question to city finance director Rich Riebeling, who said he "can't explain the differing amounts" without "going back and talking with them about the underlying assumptions." We'll find out next week if the new redirect revenue estimates from HVS look more like the 2007 numbers or the inexplicably higher 2009 numbers. And some further questions: What is the "second convention hotel" to which the Johnson report referred in defining the MCC campus? Is it speculative revenue from a future hotel, or is it a redirected revenue stream from an existing hotel such as the Renaissance, which would mean taking money that presently funds other things? What proportion of the sales tax redirect estimate is drawn from the "second hotel"? (Neither of the two previous consultants' reports spelled out those assumptions or breakdowns.) The talk around town is that a new headquarters hotel will have substantially fewer than 1,000 rooms, so will new forecasts from HVS reflect that diminished hotel scale expectation with a corresponding decrease in estimated revenue? And lastly, if the mayor doesn't put a hotel on the table at the same time that financing for the convention center is proposed, as some recent reports have suggested, then how should we evaluate a financing package that relies significantly on the sales tax redirect, which presumably relies in turn on sales tax revenue from a hotel that is not yet on the table?
click to enlarge MCCRedirect.jpg

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Borrrriiiiinnnnggg. You guys are really digging to find reasons to oppose the project.

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Posted by Yaaaaawwwwwnnnnn on November 13, 2009 at 1:46 PM

facts are boring to children.

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Posted by eric on November 13, 2009 at 4:18 PM

Tell it to Gaylord CEO Colin Reed, eric.

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Posted by Noodles Sarducci on November 13, 2009 at 5:12 PM

If it were up to these guys nothing would ever get built in a public/private partnership. They are Republicans in Liberal clothing. Now they have a another spokesman -- Carl Boyd Jr., the TSU senior with a radio show on the school's AM radio station. The guy has to be one of the most uninformed radio people I've ever heard, not just from the standpoint of the proponents but from the opposition as well.

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Posted by Blubber on November 13, 2009 at 5:16 PM

There's not much doubt the hotel will be smaller. BB is reaching with the question on revenue relative to a smaller hotel. It just means more business for adjacent hotels. Also, a second hotel could be built at Second Avenue and Broadway and not be that far away. People forget that the zoning still exists for a hotel after the Westin deal fell through when the financial markets tanked.

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Posted by Blubber on November 13, 2009 at 5:24 PM

noodles,was'nt it gaylord that said they turned a profit collecting cancellation fees?

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Posted by eric on November 13, 2009 at 9:41 PM

There's not much doubt the hotel will be smaller. BB is reaching with the question on revenue relative to a smaller hotel. It just means more business for adjacent hotels.
You are entirely missing the point. Yes, of course a smaller HQ hotel means some convention center lodging business will go to nearby alternatives, where sales tax will be duly paid. But the point in the post is not that a smaller hotel will yield a decline in sales tax revenue generally; the post is about the redirection of certain sales taxes to service MCC debt. That redirection doesn't involve "adjacent" hotels; it involves only sales taxes generated on the MCC campus -- which in hotel terms means the HQ hotel. So if the HQ hotel is to be significantly smaller then was assumed at the time that previous revenue forecasts were made, then the redirected tax revenue servicing MCC debt will obviously be concomitantly lower.
And let's keep in mind that the sales tax redirect is not a trivial revenue stream here. The annual debt service number for just the convention center will likely end up in the low-mid $40 million vicinity, and the most recent revenue projections for sales tax redirect (CH Johnson, Aug. 2009) estimate that it will rise over time to the low-mid $20 millions.

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Posted by bb on November 14, 2009 at 6:46 AM

Heh, heh... why do I keep thinking health reform numbers?

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Posted by john on November 16, 2009 at 5:18 PM

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Yes, in due time to answer, it is important

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Posted by photo_technica on December 3, 2009 at 9:56 PM

I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
And you et an account on Twitter?

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Posted by rugby_fans on December 25, 2009 at 6:45 AM
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