So far, so good

Benton Center draws thousands, makes profit

Nikki Chumley, left, and Steve Jordan, the director and facilities manager of the Benton Event Center, respectively, have seen more than 60,000 people visit the center in its first year. Chumley commented that the center has advertised itself, with many event attendees referring other groups to the facility through word of mouth. Expectations are high for increased use of the center, Chumley added, because the center’s accompanying hotel, a 79-room Fairfield Inn & Suites, will open Friday to provide lodging for visitors.
Nikki Chumley, left, and Steve Jordan, the director and facilities manager of the Benton Event Center, respectively, have seen more than 60,000 people visit the center in its first year. Chumley commented that the center has advertised itself, with many event attendees referring other groups to the facility through word of mouth. Expectations are high for increased use of the center, Chumley added, because the center’s accompanying hotel, a 79-room Fairfield Inn & Suites, will open Friday to provide lodging for visitors.

Last weekend, the Arkansas Retired Teachers Association held its annual state convention at the Benton Event Center.

As one of the hundreds of teachers who attended picked up a name tag at the registration desk, he or she became the 60,000th person to attend an event at the center

in Hickory Square Shopping Center along Interstate 30 in Benton.

“It was the 220th event since we opened on Oct. 1 of last year,” Nikki Chumley, director of the event center, said Wednesday. “As of now, we have had 60,167 visitors, and we have the Arkansas Spinal Cord Commission coming this weekend, along with a wedding on Sunday, before we hit the one-year mark on Monday.”

The Saline County Gun & Knife Show opened the event center on Oct. 1, 2013, and the show will return Saturday as the first annual event to come back to the center. Five days later, Savor the Flavor, the annual event where local restaurants, fast-food places and other food providers show off their best or trademark dishes for sampling by Saline County residents, will make its return to the center.

The 29,000-square-foot event center is owned by the Benton Advertising and Promotion Commission and operated by the Benton Area Chamber of Commerce.

“The weekends are booked up through November, and bookings for events have been made into spring of 2017,” Chumley said. “It just shows that Benton is a great place to have an event.”

Chumley said the event center even turned a profit of at least $8,415 with one weekend left to go.

While many of the larger meetings, shows and conventions booked more than a year away are locked in, Chumley said, some of the smaller receptions, weddings and smaller group meetings that might only use a fraction of the center have “penciled in” their bookings, and plans will be finalized as the event dates grow closer.

“For some weekends, we do have some waiting lists,” she said. “We try to get the big events into the calendar first so I can schedule the smaller events around those.”

Steve Jordan, facilities manager of the center, said the growth in business from the very start surprised him, as it has almost everyone in Benton.

“We had no idea there was a pent-up market like this,” he said. “We were hoping for two bookings a week, and we often see two a day.”

The event in the past year with the largest attendance was the Glitz and Garland holiday shopping spectacular.

There were some 6,000 people at the event that benefited both the Benton Area Chamber of Commerce, helping to fund its local programs to promote the community, and the Saline Memorial Health Foundation, which provides private support to Saline

Memorial Hospital in Benton.

“There were people everywhere,” Jordan said. “We had only been open about five weeks. It was a good test of how we could handle things.”

Chumley said the second-biggest event held at the Benton Center was the traveling

version of the Memphis Flea Market, which drew more than 5,800 visitors.

On Friday night, the Fairfield Inn & Suites, the 79-room hotel built to provide lodging for visitors to the event center, will open across a mutual courtyard from the center. Chumley said the new hotel will help her book the center’s meeting rooms.

“We are trying to work on filling up on weekdays during 2015,” she said. “The hotel opening will be the game-changer.”

Jordan said the center’s management will now be looking for “those Monday to Friday” conventions and conferences to help fill the days during the week.

Chumley said filling the center has so far not needed much formal marketing.

“The building kind of sells itself,” she said. “The marketing has been mostly word of mouth. Someone will come to an event and then go back to another organization and say, ‘I know where we can go.’ It seems there is a real need for a place for meeting between Little Rock and Hot Springs.”

Both Chumley and Jordan said things have gone very well for the first year.

“This building bounces back really quickly,” Chumley said. “We can turn the center over quickly so it will look clean and fresh.”

She said the worst thing that happened was when three brides were in the building for their weddings — all at once.

“You have to keep an event on schedule so they don’t impact each other,” Chumley said. “One wedding got delayed because they were waiting on some guests to arrive. We had to shift some things around because of sounds. You can’t have a DJ and a party on one side of the partition and a wedding service on the other side.”

Jordan said the event center impressed one woman who had traveled from Colorado for the Arkansas Orchid Society’s annual sale.

“A vendor from around Denver said she didn’t think she would be able to do much business in Arkansas, much less in a place she had never heard of — Benton,” he said. “When she arrived at the event center, she walked in, stopped and walked right out to check the sign to make sure she was at the right place. She said she had never seen anything like this built by a community.”

Staff writer Wayne Bryan can be reached at (501) 244-4460 or wbryan@arkansasonline.com.

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