The City of Fresno selected new managing partners—VenuWorks and ATG Entertainment—for the Fresno Convention and Entertainment Center. The new management will be effective January 11.
Fresno, California’s entertainment complex includes the Fresno Convention Center, Valdez Hall, Selland Arena and the Saroyan Theatre.
Michael Silva, chief operating officer at VenuWorks, explained his vision for growth of the convention and entertainment center is to start small.
“First and foremost, we're going to start advertising the spaces locally and build up Valdez Hall as a destination for community activities,” Silva said. “Certainly we are not afraid to pick up the phone and start reaching out to local meetings and associations.”
Valdez Hall is a 32,000-square-foot banquet space. Silva said the space exists in the memory of anyone who grew up in Fresno. The spot was a staple for birthdays, anniversaries, weddings and more social events.
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The other venues belonging to the Fresno Convention and Entertainment Center also offer ample space; Selland Arena is 9,000 seats, Saroyan Theatre offers 2,300 seats and Fresno Convention Center features 19 meeting rooms, a full-service kitchen and a 60,000-square-foot exhibit hall.
Silva saw an opportunity to create meetings and events for Fresno and jumped on it.
“From the outside, it didn't look like the occupancy was really full in any of those venues,” he observed.
For now, Silva said the sales team is focused on regional and super regional business with the prospect of looking to expand outreach to national businesses.
A City-Owned Asset: Fresno’s Future
Silva said Selland Arena has established a vibrant sports tourism business. His goal is to maintain the sports tourism presence and focus on growing banquets, meetings and conferences.
“The other thing that we noticed is that [the convention hall has] all these meeting rooms and most of them sit empty lot of the time,” Silva said. “So, we really want to open that up to the community to get traffic in there.”
When it comes to inviting community groups to the venues, Silva said special pricing on labor and AV can be offered if pricing is a hold up.
“We get the feeling from the city that their mission is that the community should have access to city-owned venues like that,” he said.
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The new managing partners presented the City of Fresno with a joint proposal. ATG Entertainment is a premiere player in theater management. Silva said the management group is going to be contributing a lot of content and booking for the Saroyan Theatre. The theater currently has a robust schedule, but the new management has goals to increase the schedule further.
The arena, on the other hand, has been severely under program for some time now, Silva said. It will be opened up for more commercial content moving forward, including comedians and concerts.
“Our strategy is to sell all four venues [and] increase the event count across all four venues,” he said.
Making a Difference in the Market
In 2023, VenuWorks became a fully employee-owned company.
Silva said prioritizing the company’s employees and applying the employee stock ownership plan really factors into the culture that his team is bringing to their venues.
“We want to hear from the employees what policies and procedures are going to work in Fresno,” he said. “We don't want to just apply these cookie-cutter procedures in every venue we manage.”
Employee ownership provides the opportunity to build an employee culture where people will take pride in their stake and in the ownership of those running the venues.
“We believe that we can make an immediate difference in the market,” he said.
