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Committee favors splitting coliseum and mixed-use solicitations after Hunden re-evaluation; renovation seen as lower-cost option
Summary
County staff reviewed a re-evaluation of options for the Dane County Coliseum that found renovating the existing arena could deliver similar event volumes at lower capital cost than a new build. The committee agreed to split the coliseum procurement from a separate mixed-use solicitation and to seek an owner's representative to help evaluate RFPs.
Kevin (director) briefed the committee on a re-evaluation of the Coliseum that the staff asked a consultant to perform to compare renovating the existing facility with building a new arena. Staff summarized three takeaways from the report: a renovated Coliseum would generate roughly the same number of events as a new facility at significantly lower capital cost; a renovation could generate sizable local economic impact; and renovation may be the prudent near-term approach.
Staff described the consultant's headline economic estimates: the report projects about $59 million in annual economic impact to Dane County under the renovation scenario and an average of about 141 full-time-equivalent jobs supported by that activity. The consultant estimated renovation costs at about $125 million versus an estimated $340 million for a brand-new arena, and presented modeled net operating-income scenarios depending on whether a sports tenant is part of the plan. Staff said the analysis divided revenue into direct, indirect and induced spending and included per-visitor spending assumptions for day-trippers and overnight visitors.
Department staff told supervisors they had asked the consultant to update the earlier 2023 study and that the new assessment showed a renovated Coliseum with a sports tenant producing more events than the renovated scenario without a tenant. Staff noted that having a tenant affects the facility's revenue and operating profile and that any operator contract would determine how much of gross revenue accrues to the county.
The committee also discussed procurement. Staff said they had interviewed three owner's-representative firms and received two proposals for the owner's-rep role; they expected to select an owner's representative shortly. Committee members debated whether to set strict preconditions or "bumpers" in the RFP for public-private partnership structures. Some members argued for internal clarity on acceptable deal terms before releasing an RFP; others warned that overly prescriptive pre-conditions could exclude useful proposals and that an owner's representative should help the county evaluate novel arrangements.
Staff said they decided to split solicitations so the Coliseum procurement would be issued separately and by the end of the month (pending the owner's-rep review), with a separate RFQ/RFI planned for mixed-use development. The stated reason was practical: the county found it difficult to evaluate both a Coliseum operator/partner and a mixed-use developer in a single solicitation. Staff said separating the processes should make evaluation cleaner and allow the county to better define the mixed-use program while the Coliseum RFP proceeds.
The committee recorded no formal vote on the procurement approach during the discussion; staff described the split-RFP plan and a near-term owner's-rep selection as their intended next steps.
