Winstar Dome in Pontiac, Mich., gives way under the weight of the season.
Winter storms that pounded the Midwest earlier this month had venue operators and owners biting their nails about event cancellations and damages to their facilities.
Luckily, most event centers were unscathed by the weather in terms of destruction, with the exception of one sports dome in Pontiac, Mich..
Winstar Sports hosts nearly 50 soccer events each weekend and, on Super Bowl Sunday Feb. 1, the dome has hit with 17 inches of snow in a 12 hour period, collapsing a portion of the big bubble.
“I’ve been in this business for 20 years, but I’ve never had this kind of issue,” said Winstar Facility Director Tony Hermiz. “All of it came at one time.”
Removing the snow was a tedious process. Basically, they had to heat the dome to make the snow melt off the top so it could regain its shape. Snow also was moved with heavy equipment from around the building and parking lot, making it an expensive process, although Hermiz hadn’t calculated the exact cost. The facility was back up and running by Feb. 6.
Despite the issues at Winstar Dome, its neighboring dome Oakland Yard Athletics in Waterford Township, Mich., remained intact during the winter storm due in large part to the facility owners having to completely replace the dome in 2008 from a vicious blizzard that completely destroyed the sports center.
The new state-of-the-art dome was designed to handle heavy winter weather, so most of the snow slid right off the venue, said Marty Greenspan who owns Oakland Yard. “We have a new dome design that sheds snow much easier,” he said. Yet the storm did cost him money in terms of removing snow from around the events center.
“It’s a lot of extra expense, because we don’t have front loaders, so we have to hire them,” Greenspan added.
Most facilities that endure heavy snow spend time and money removing it, yet VenuWorks that manages 50 facilities in 16 cities across 11 states in the Midwest reported no disruptions or damages with its events centers, said Tammy Koolbeck, chief Marketing officer and senior vice president for the company.
However, physical harm to buildings is not the only turmoil venues experienced during the storms. The Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau had to cancel its annual members meeting due to weather at the last minute on Feb. 2.
“We had a significant investment in this meeting, between the production we were going to do, the speaker and the food,” said Renee Monforton, director of Communications for the visitors bureau.
The event was supposed to be held at the Detroit Opera House but was canceled the morning of the conference. A total of 325 people were slated to attend the event, but luckily Monforton was able to reach all of the members via email and social media notifying them that event was axed due to the snow.
“We put a plan in place for communicating to all our membership. We were able to cancel it and only four people showed up. Feb. 2,” Monforton said.
It was a massive disappointment for the visitors bureau to have to cancel the conference, she said, noting that it took her and her team more than three months to plan the event. Not only that, but this year’s conference was focused on building better customer service and a keynote speaker was flown in to boost that initiative.
Dennis Snow worked in the customer service industry for over 20 years with the Walt Disney World Company and actually did fly into Detroit for the event, but he never gave his keynote speech. The whole debacle was extremely expensive for the visitors bureau.
“It was a blow; you could easily say we lost tens of thousands of dollars. It was significant,” Monforton said, adding that she’s not sure of the exact figure as she’s still tallying the monetary damage.
The Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau has no plans to reschedule the meeting.
Interviewed for this story: Tony Hermiz, (248) 882-8646; Tammy Koolbeck, (319) 929-5755; Renee Monforton, (313) 202-1999