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Tacoma venues director and Aramark outline contracts, local‑sourcing and capacity limits
Summary
Adam Cook (Tacoma Venues & Events) and Melinda Altamirano (Aramark) told the Economic Development Committee about venue operating structures, contracting models and local‑sourcing efforts; TVE reported partner revenue just over $2.1M and Aramark cited about $30M in food spend with roughly $3M direct to local suppliers.
Adam Cook, director of Tacoma Venues & Events, and Melinda Altamirano of Aramark Sports & Entertainment briefed the Economic Development Committee on Feb. 10 about how the city's venues are operated and how service agreements are structured to balance revenue generation with local economic benefits.
Cook said the city operates the Tacoma Dome and the Greater Tacoma Convention Center while Cheney Stadium is leased to the Tacoma Rainiers through 2041 and the Tacoma City Theatres are managed by Legends Global under a contract through 2032. "For Cheney Stadium and the Tacoma Rainiers, the city has no input or oversight on any of the agreements related to venue operations," Cook said, describing different management models across venues.
Aramark — the city's food‑and‑beverage partner for the Dome and convention center — described efforts to source locally and to bring small firms into large events. "More than $30,000,000 is spent on food," Melinda Altamirano said, and she estimated roughly $3,000,000 of that is local direct spend (about 10 percent). Cook noted that TVE partner agreements total just over $2,100,000 in revenue and that more than 80 percent of those partners are locally owned and operated.
Both presenters emphasized operational constraints: the Dome must feed large crowds quickly (Cook said the Dome feeds as many as 18,000 people in four hours), which limits the kinds of local suppliers that can scale to meet demand; the convention center has one professional kitchen that is highly booked. Aramark described ongoing outreach and an annual business review process to find new local vendors and trial concepts at smaller scales.
Council members asked about steps the city could take to help small food businesses scale up for venue opportunities, including whether convention or dome kitchen capacity could be made available as shared prep or 'test kitchen' space. Cook said the convention center kitchen is booked and the Dome kitchen is configured for concessions rather than broad catering prep, but he flagged the idea of creating shared kitchen/test‑kitchen space in future master‑planning work.
No service‑agreement changes were proposed or decided at the meeting. Committee members asked staff to coordinate with economic development teams to identify capacity‑building opportunities for small and WMBE suppliers and to return to the committee with program ideas in future meetings.
The committee adjourned at the end of the agenda.
