VOS EXCELLENCE IN OPERATIONS AWARD - TACOMA’S MATT BALK IN LOVE WITH LOGISTICS

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.The city is about to give the 34-year-old Tacoma (Wash.) Dome a $21-million facelift and Matt Balk, operations manager, is eager to take on the challenge.
Having handled operations at various venues through his 20-year career, Balk is the epitome of an excellent operations professional. He’s passionate about the industry, experienced in working with clients and customers and in love with the logistical aspects of operations. He is also the first Venue Operations Summit Excellence in Operations Award Winner and will be so honored during the 2017 VOS in Nashville April 30-May 2.
An operations award is long overdue in this industry, Balk agreed. “The operations department is usually the largest department in a venue. It’s great to have some recognition, as embarrassing to me as it is personally.”
Balk entered this field in college, while majoring is sport management at Iowa State, Ames. He worked his way through school specializing in conversion at Iowa’s multiuse basketball arena, Hilton Coliseum, managed by SMG.
He is very much a sports fan, with athletics being his initial drawing card, but it’s all about operations for Balk. “I’ve always been that person who likes the logistical aspects,” Balk said. “Obviously converting facilities spoke to me because that’s really just an exercise in logistics.”
Upon graduation, he decided to indulge another passion, seeing the country, so Balk was ready and willing to travel. SMG sent him to Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., then back to Des Moines, Iowa, to open Wells Fargo Arena. Then he moved to Arco Arena in Sacramento, Calif,; CenturyLink Center, Bossier City, La., and back to California to Stockton Arena. In Louisiana, he met his true love, married and committed to settling down soon.
The settling takes place in Tacoma, which is an aging facility and right up Balk’s alley. “I appreciate the challenge of working with older systems. Don’t get me wrong. I like new shiny things as much as the next person. But there is an allure of extending the lifecycle of equipment in facilities for me.”
“We call him Mr. Fixer,” said Kim Bedier, director of Public Assembly Facilities for the city of Tacoma. Bedier cited Balk’s ability to be “very consistent and super fair,” handling the day-to-day while keeping his eye on the big picture, the future. He’s helped “fix” several older venues and Tacoma Dome is the newest feather in his cap. “He knows change is a journey and he knows how to get there.”
Balk also likes the management side of operations, especially working with such a diverse group — custodial, conversion, maintenance, HVAC, IT — a group that invariably brings demographic diversity. “I love learning the differences of cultures and viewpoints from my crew.”
Operations is a challenging profession, and Balk enjoys rising to the occasion. One of the most gratifying was in Des Moines, when Paul McCartney and Bon Jovi were playing back-to-back dates and both needed a load-in day. “We ended up pre-rigging a lot of Bon Jovi and having McCartney come in and hang a lot of their stuff right below Bon Jovi’s. They were both Live Nation shows; everyone worked well together,” Balk recalled.
From a rigging standpoint, the challenge was to be sure the building and the roof were safe. The grid in Des Moines could hang 150,000 pounds. In Tacoma, he can hang 250,000 pounds if it’s done correctly, meaning everything is balanced and weight loads are correct.
Rigging shows is becoming more and more of a challenge because venues are tightening their programming and operations has to deliver a positive client and customer experience in a condensed timeframe. “I’m always in awe of the facilities that are able to do two events in a day,” Balk said. “It’s such a feat of coordination and teamwork to make that happen.”
In Tacoma, Balk oversees six facilities — the dome, the convention center, three theaters and a Triple A ballpark. He likes being able to put on a different hat for each, but his main baby right now is renovation of the Tacoma Dome. The venue opened April 21, 1983, and is in need of some tender, loving care.
He’s been able to make modifications on a shoestring, like sprucing up the back entrance and dressing room hallway. Now, he’s got a budget to do bigger things.
The big targets are improved technology and customer comfort. To that end, the dome’s 23,000 seats will be totally renovated. “The big thing is seat width and leg room,” Balk said, quite satisfied with the designs in progress. A contractor has not yet been selected. Work will start late this year with an October 2018 finish line.
With two decades in operations, Balk has learned some valuable lessons. One is to communicate well with all stakeholders. Early in his career, he had to deal with a power outage in a facility that damaged the ice plant the day of a hockey game. “So we were trying to fix the ice plant and keep the game as well. But I was trying to be covert and not keep all the stakeholders informed of the situation. People are very understanding as long as they feel they are involved. If you close those lines of communication and leave people in the dark, that’s rarely a good solution.”
In this particular case, Balk certainly should have done a better job communicating with GM and ensuring lines of communication were open with the team and box office and anyone else involved in the potential canceling of an event, which is exactly what eventually happened. “We got through two periods but the ice couldn’t make it through the third,” he remembered.
One of his triumphs happened in Tacoma, shepherding the DAS and WiFi upgrades. “It was a big undertaking. We had to figure out a solution with no capital investment on our end,” Balk said. “We were able to get some WiFi providers to recognize they could recoup upfront capital investments with some of the carrier dollars that came our way later. We installed a neutral party and then Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint all pay to access our equipment.” Mobility is the neutral party.
Though the preferred method would be for the facility to invest the upfront capital, the challenge is the workaround if those funds aren’t available. Just understand the tradeoffs, Balk advised. That upgrade was completed in 2016.
It is important to keep up with the Joneses when operating an older facility. To entice the city to fund those upgrades, Balk makes sure he produces well-researched supporting data, like client surveys, the cost of antiquated systems and cost reduction after an investment. “And telling a story about the role our facilities play in the community and the quality of life and growth of our community is important,” he said.
In managing people, Balk likes to listen and refuses to fixate on past issues. He oversees a fulltime staff of 24 in operations. “You have to be able to have a short memory when things don’t go right. If someone doesn’t show up for work, and even though it might put you in a bind, you can’t fixate on that. It’s about figuring out a solution to ensure our clients or facility don’t suffer because of someone’s absence.”
He also refuses to be complacent. “Put yourself on our customers’ shoes. It’s sounds basic, but it’s easy to slide into ‘this is the way we’ve always done it.’ I’m constantly pushing myself and my crew to challenge ourselves to not always do things the same way.”
To facilitate fresh approaches, he cross trains staff, requiring everyone to have a diversified skillset. “Then the people doing new things started asking, ‘why do we do things this way, how about that way?’ And it often makes sense,” Balk said.
For example, at Tacoma Dome, the staff had always set up portable seating left to right. Then along came a new idea with a fresh set of eyes on the subject. “Now we do it from center. It’s a little thing, but it ends up shaving 15 minutes off a conversion with two people working in two directions. Fifteen minutes matters.”
So does 20 years.