Losing at home

NEW SMYRNA BEACH — The season home opener for New Smyrna Beach High School's football team was a time of renewed optimism and excitement for Cudanation.

But as Darry Evans watched his son, Darrynton Evans, a standout junior tailback and defensive back, warm up with the rest of the team, he was standing in what is normally enemy territory.

Evans and other Cuda fans have to sit in the visitors section this year after an engineer recommended just two weeks before the season started that the home grandstands were not safe and should be demolished and replaced.

New Smyrna Beach officials hope to avoid a potential $1.5 million price tag to tear down and replace the home bleachers. The stadium — centerpiece of a 68-acre sports complex — is a money pit compared to other city-owned stadiums in Daytona Beach and DeLand that enjoy cash flow from college games. New Smyrna Beach officials have in the past sought partners — businesses, Port Orange and the county — to help fund the stadium and now they plan to ask for help from the school district. But it's not clear whether any potential partners are out there.

Volusia County Schools already funds the maintenance and operation of the Deltona High School stadium where Deltona High plays its home games and University High School plays a portion of its home slate. In neighboring Flagler County, the school system largely pays for the two stadiums at Flagler Palm Coast and Matanzas high schools.

New Smyrna Beach bears the full cost of its football stadium, where New Smyrna and Port Orange's Atlantic and Spruce Creek high schools play home games. Over the past three budget years combined, the city has lost $2,325,712 on the entire complex, which also includes three softball fields, three soccer fields, a multipurpose field and four youth baseball fields, according to revenue and expense figures provided by the Finance Department.

“I would think that in today's day and age, when we really look at this rationally, it really should be a partnership with the school system and the city,” New Smyrna Beach Mayor Adam Barringer said.

Margaret Smith, superintendent of Volusia County schools, said she would sit down at the table with New Smyrna Beach leaders to talk about that potential partnership.

“There have not been any decisions to date, or any discussions on that point,” she said. “We will be having a discussion.”

There are two other municipal-run stadiums in Volusia that don't get a financial assist from the school district, but have big-ticket users that pump in tens of thousands of dollars annually and help share the cost of renovations and repairs at those facilities.

The city of Daytona Beach and Bethune-Cookman University signed a “historic” 20-year contract earlier this year that requires the university to pay annual base rent that will start at $60,000 and gradually climb to $105,210, as well as chip in an annual capital contribution fee of $23,684.

B-CU has played its home games in the stadium off LPGA Boulevard since the stadium opened in 1988. The university's use of the stadium has helped keep the charges virtually the same over the last decade for the stadium's other primary users, Mainland and Seabreeze high schools, which each pay $1,312 a game, said Percy Williamson, Daytona Beach's leisure services director.

“Bethune-Cookman is huge, they are very huge to the city of Daytona Beach,” Williamson said.

In DeLand, Spec Martin Memorial Stadium, which was originally built in the 1940s and is home to DeLand High School's football team, gets a significant financial boost from Stetson University, which after 57 years revived its football program last season and plays its home games there. Stetson pays on average $12,000 to $13,000 a game to use the stadium, and the city also gets a share of the advertising and parking revenue, said City Manager Michael Pleus.

While grants helped fund a portion of the $3.2 million in renovations that were made last year to the stadium, which included renovated locker rooms, a training facility and a three-story press box, Pleus said the city's partnership with Stetson “is what really helped make it happen.”

New Smyrna Beach doesn't have a local college or university to help bear the burden. The city has charged the three high schools each $2,000 a game to play their home games at the stadium, but cut those charges in half this season because the home bleachers had to be closed. The schools keep all of the revenue from tickets, parking and concessions to support their athletic programs. The only other primary user of the stadium is the local Pop Warner youth football league.

DeLand High School doesn't have to pay to play at Spec Martin, but the city does get a 15 percent cut of concession revenue, Pleus said. DeLand has a more than decade-old arrangement with the high school where the city's parks and recreation department gets to use a gym on the DeLand High's campus in exchange for the school being able to use the city's football stadium, he said.

In Daytona Beach, Williamson said Daytona Beach has an agreement with Volusia County Schools that allows the city to use the fields at Campbell Middle School and Hinson Middle School in exchange for keeping the fees the same for Mainland and Seabreeze high schools to use Municipal Stadium.

New Smyrna Beach officials found out they would have to shut down the bleachers on Aug. 15 just hours after they had celebrated the replacement of the stadium's troublesome scoreboard, Assistant City Manager Khalid Resheidat said. That new scoreboard, which cost the city about $20,000, also revealed that there could be a problem in getting corporations or businesses to sponsor the stadium. City Manager Pam Brangaccio said that no companies bid to have their name on the scoreboard.

Barringer said it's a difficult climate for businesses to get involved in sponsoring the stadium.

“We only have so many large businesses in town and they get hit up for so many different charities,” he said. “I think it's difficult to really say that (the stadium) should be a public-private partnership.”

Daytona Beach has Pepsi as a sponsor and the company has chipped in $110,000 for a new Jumbotron scoreboard at Municipal Stadium that should be operational by December, Williamson said.

As part of the city's new contract with B-CU, which ends Dec. 31, 2034, the university now gets a percentage of concession sales at the Municipal Stadium and also gets an increased share of parking revenue, Williamson said. B-CU also paid to upgrade almost 1,000 seats to chair backs in a section near the 50-yard line.

The Daytona Beach stadium will also get more exposure when the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics moves its National Football Championship to the stadium for this year as well as in 2015 and 2016.

“So we're looking at a lot of other activities to go in the Municipal Stadium to bring additional revenue in,” Williamson said. “We don't just depend on Bethune-Cookman, although they're a very important partner to us and they help us to generate revenues for operation and maintenance and upkeep, but we're out there looking all the time for additional events to bring to Daytona Beach.”

DeLand officials were able to find an additional revenue source for Spec Martin Memorial Stadium after signing an agreement to allow the Central Florida Warriors of the USA Rugby League there beginning in June. Pleus said the stadium expansion and Stetson partnership will bring in bigger sporting events.

“There is an inherent given in these kind of stadiums that you're not going to make money off of them, but the way we've designed it, particularly with the Stetson partnership, it is giving us roads to revenue that we would not have seen before that partnership,” Pleus said.

Before the construction of Deltona High School's stadium in 1990, which was funded by boosters, municipal stadiums were used for Volusia's local high school football programs. The Deltona stadium is maintained by the school district.

“So, part of the grounds and anything major that needs to be done, the district pays for,” said Nancy Wait, spokeswoman for Volusia County Schools. Grounds maintenance, utility bills and structural inspections come to about $21,000 annually, according to district figures, while other maintenance costs such as lighting fall under the school's normal maintenance budget.

Wait said Deltona High does chip in for some maintenance items, such as $10,000 for a new scoreboard. The school receives about $4,000 to $6,000 a year in user fees annually from University High School, which plays three home games there, and two Pop Warner leagues. The school district gets 40 percent of those fees, Wait said.

In Flagler County, the school system paid for the construction of the two stadiums on the campuses of Flagler Palm Coast and Matanzas high schools. Each school keeps the ticket sales and parking revenue to pour into their athletic programs, said Tom Tant, the school district's chief financial officer.

The average maintenance/repair cost of Flagler Palm Coast High's 36-year-old Sal Campanella Memorial Stadium over the last 13 years runs about $15,000 a year, and the school system is paying $375,000 combined over the next two years for renovations and new lighting.

While operating stadiums is costly for school districts, even the municipal stadiums that are buoyed by local colleges and universities using them aren't making a profit. Daytona Beach Municipal Stadium brought in $166,806 in revenue versus about $194,232 in expenses this fiscal year, Williamson said. But the city is getting closer to breaking even, he said.

“And with the new partnership and with (the NAIA championship game) coming we fully expect to, at a minimum, break even,” he said.

Pleus said the operation and maintenance of the stadium costs DeLand about $100,000 annually.

“No, we don't really make money off of it,” he said of Spec Martin. “But we certainly are breaking better even than we were before the partnership — thanks to Stetson.”

New Smyrna already spent about $500,000 to refurbish its rapidly rusting visitors' side section last November. Virtually the same repairs were planned for the home side after the 2014 football season wrapped up when city officials got the engineer's report that they would have to shut those bleachers down. Whatever the opinion from the second engineer says, Resheidat said the city plans to sit down with Volusia County School officials to talk about a partnership.

Port Orange Mayor Allen Green said New Smyrna officials approached his city in the past about helping out with funding for the stadium, and indicated he'd be willing to talk about it again.

“I think there would certainly be some consideration for it, yes,” Green said.

The New Smyrna Beach Sports Complex will cost the city about $900,000 to run and maintain the next fiscal year, while only bringing in $88,000 in revenue. The annual maintenance and operation of the stadium costs about $140,000, said David Ray, director of the sports complex. While these venues may not be built to turn a profit, Barringer said the importance of the complex to his city can't be understated.

“I don't think that local stadiums are meant to be a moneymaker, but if you look at the number of users of the stadium and our sports complex there is not another asset in the community that the city has that is used as much as that complex, or affects as many lives as that complex,” he said.