Lots more fun numbers on the France Family Convention Center Annex from this dispatch:

  • The first week of August saw visits drop to 844 per day, or just 25,000 per month. If the per person revenue number from earlier in the summer holds at $25, that is $625,000. That is less that half the $1.3m. the Hall planned on spending each month.
  • Yet in order to boost numbers, the Hall is giving away half-price admission to kids in exchange for a pack of pencils.
  • Officials claim that a survey shows that 70 percent of visitors live 100 miles or more away from the Hall. Do those surveys also ask if those folks are staying in local hotels and paying the hotel-motel tax that funds this deal? This is really the only question worth asking. Odd we don’t have an answer.
  • How likely are those out-of-towners to return to the Hall? Another vital metric missing.
  • UNC Charlotte economist Craig Depken relates that changing exhibits would bring repeat business. You paying for that Craig, or what is your plan?
  • Best guesstimate is the Hall averages 1000 visitors a day across its first year, or about 350,000. That is 43 percent of the expected 800,000 number.
  • After the first year, attendance at such attractions usually drops 25 percent. That would put the Hall at 262,000 visitors a year. At that rate it would generate about $4.7m. in admission revenue and $6.5m. in total revenue, leaving about a $10m. per year shortfall.
  • Deficits of $10m. a year would exhaust the $24m. “reserve fund” routed to the CRVA via the hotel-motel tax in about two years.

Plus do not forget the $21.5m. loan the city of Charlotte took out for the Hall which has not been paid back, or the $5m. loan outright from the city that the Hall is supposed to repay.

Let’s just cut to the chase and ask Brian France to cut us a check and see what happens.