Wisconsin Dells Utilization Local Investment Grade Amenities

The Village of Lake Delton has given the Kalahari Resort 10 million publicly collected dollars to build a convention center ( 212 thousand square feet) capable of serving large regional - national groups.  This is a public - private partnership forged to create a physical space designed to attract a huge new population of shared customers in to the Wisconsin Dells area.

It will be beneficial to monitor utilization of this huge space.  Extensive proper promotion will be essential to receiving the size of groups that demonstrate evidence of functioning at the higher end of occupancy.  To receive a return on the hefty investment of public resources the new convention center will need to be occupied frequently with very large groups.

Monitoring utilization is an important task when considering future requests for publicly collected dollars to fund a private enterprise.  This applies for all the private amenities that have received public dollars to construct a space.  Simply- on a daily basis how often are the sports fields being utilized at the higher end of occupancy.  This task may quickly rule out the assignment of future public money in to a similar enterprise.

The same will apply to the new convention center being constructed at the Kalahari Resort - on a daily basis how many hours is the space functioning at the high end of occupancy.  This is taking a needs based approach at the community level to requests by private business operators for public money.   The elected official can then demonstrate that this new public - private partnership has created a physical location that is being utilized at the high end of occupancy which would indicate room in the community for another similar business operation.

The elected official may also discover through reviewing utilization records that the new convention center is not functioning any where near the high end of occupancy throughout the year - indicating there is no room for a similar business location in the Wisconsin Dells area.  The need for another does not exist and the elected official has current data to back up there decision not to use public money to fund a similar private enterprise.

Given the huge size ( 10 million dollars) of this investment of public money the community would expect the Village of Lake Delton to have the service in place that evaluates utilization numbers for the new convention center on a scheduled frequency.  The Wisconsin Dells area has entered stage II of the convention hosting industry.