The College Football Hall of Fame, a high-profile downtown Atlanta project, will open sometime in 2014, according to confident insiders who say they’ve got the funding and a business plan to ensure the attraction’s long-term success.
Last year, some wondered whether the hall would happen after a leadership change at Atlanta Hall Management, the non-profit running the project. And privately there were whispers around town doubting whether the group could raise the roughly $60 million needed for the ambitious plan.
Atlanta landed the hall in 2009, when the Dallas-based National Football Foundation agreed to move its hall of fame from South Bend, Ind. It was considered a coup, especially after we lost the NASCAR Hall of Fame to Charlotte. Civic leaders saw the hall as a way to add to Atlanta’s list of downtown attractions — the Georgia Aquarium, the World of Coca-Cola — as we continue to grow convention and tourism business. But the initial enthusiasm for the college hall slipped amid some economic and business realities:
- The Atlanta economy was in bad shape, especially the real estate business. And in the end the College Football Hall of Fame, with its planned location on a parking lot next to the World Congress Center and near Centennial Olympic Park, was essentially a downtown real estate development project.
- An economic downturn is a difficult time to raise money or convince companies to grow their marketing budgets with a new sponsorship. (It also didn't help, according to some, that early on the hall was perceived as a Chick-fil-A project, rather than one with opportunity for other national companies.)
- Many funders have grown skeptical of museums and halls of fame. After an initial burst of enthusiasm and attendance, some such facilities tend to struggle with high operating costs that are out of line with the revenue they can attract. Just look at the struggles of the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. Philanthropic foundations have looked more and more askance at such projects.
- The NASCAR Hall of Fame had become a cautionary tale. According to media reports, attendance fell short of estimates, feeding skepticism about business models for such attractions.
So how did Atlanta recapture momentum for this project? According to John Stephenson, interim CEO of Atlanta Hall Management, it took the discipline to vet each aspect of the plan to make sure assumptions held up. While no one doubted the emotional support — “the idea speaks for itself,” he said — leaders had to test the business plan and create confidence in the project to attract funders. Stephenson says the college hall plan is sustainable and his group has created a plan that ensures success and doesn’t require public money.
In the “attraction” business, the most important element is how many people will pay to come through the door on an annual basis. The plan, Stephenson says, is based on 500,000 per year, a number consultants tell him is conservative. For example, the Coke museum got 1.1 million visitors last year and the Georgia Aquarium gets about twice that many annually. For a cost perspective, the hall expects its tickets to be priced similar to the World of Coca-Cola, but less than the aquarium.
The other elements for success with these kinds of attractions are events and catering sales, and the always-present retail store where visitors spend money on souvenirs. (And yes, you’ll have to walk through the hall’s retail store to exit after your tour.)
Supporters believe there will be great enthusiasm for events at the hall, which will have a large area to accommodate them.
But the most important thing the College Football Hall of Fame did? Attract big-name, big-money sponsors and position the hall as an attraction of national interest. The Hall and its representatives aren’t saying who the sponsors are just yet. After all, they’ll announce the sponsors with great fanfare in a strategic way; that’s just how it’s done. But if you’re interested in speculating, it seems clear that some large Atlanta companies are interested, as are a number of national names.
If you watched some college football on TV Saturday, it wouldn’t be hard to guess at hall sponsors just by noticing which companies dominated the commercial time.
The goal is to give fans, whether wearing Georgia Bulldog gear or with their faces are painted in team colors from a far-away state, a reason to visit Atlanta, the capital of the football-crazy South.
Atlanta is, Stephenson says, “the perfect place for it.” Apparently people writing big checks agree with him.
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