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By R.V. Baugus
Facility Manager recently had the opportunity to sit down with incoming IAAM
president Steve Peters, CFE, for a conversation. It didn’t take long to
realize the things he values most — family, friends and the many colorful
memories of his participation in the public assembly facility industry as a
facility manager and as president of Compass Facility Management over the
past 30 years.
What do you like most about the public assembly management field?
The
people. I truly enjoy meeting with the boards, commissions and clients,
finding ways to make a difference, developing new venues, new concepts for
new buildings that will work in smaller markets, and figuring out how to
fund them. Smaller communities have so many of their ambitions and dreams
wrapped up in their public assembly facilities. Venues are a bragging point
for the community, their own place for entertainment, conventions and
sporting events, so residents don’t have to travel hundreds of miles for
that experience.
Some people can point to a defining moment that led them into their career
path. Do you have one? When I was in seventh grade in Sac City, Iowa, our
class got to ride the bus to Sioux City to go to the Shrine Circus at the
old Sioux City Auditorium. I walked into that building, and I thought it was
the most exciting and luminous place I had ever seen. I just wanted to be a
part of making that kind of magic. I couldn’t have known then that later in
life our company would serve as a consultant to the City of Sioux City to
help come up with a plan for a new arena. Our conclusion to that study was
that the auditorium should not be torn down, but instead saved and adapted
for reuse as part of what is now the Tyson Events Center.
Tell us a little bit about your early years.
I was born and raised in Sac
City in northwest Iowa. Everybody knew everybody or was related to someone.
The town had a movie theater, and I went to the movies incessantly; I loved
the movies. In fact, I guess my first glimpse of facility management was at
the local movie theater. I was at the movies so much that the manager would
tell me “Steve, just lock up on your way out,” and he’d go home before the
afternoon matinee was over. I was probably all of 11 or 12.
We moved to Marshalltown, Iowa, when I was a freshman in high school. As a
member of the Mask and Dagger Drama Club, I got to act in and work on shows.
It was a great experience. I loved it. My teacher, Stan Dorr, was a great
inspiration to me then. In the summer between my junior and senior years a
new community theater was built. I played Macbeth on that stage when I was a
senior. I didn’t have any idea that running a building was a profession. I
just knew there wasn’t any other place that I felt so comfortable.
I originally went to college thinking I was going to be an art teacher, but
that gave way to theatrical design classes, which really clicked for me. I
got a BA in theater, and thought I was going into the MFA program in scene
design. When I was a senior, there was a student strike, times being what
they were back then. After I served on the committee to help resolve the
issue, Lewin Goff, the chair of the theatre department, came up to me and
said, “You do pretty well in a meeting. The university is starting a new
program next year in arts management. Why don’t you consider applying?”
Since there would likely be an assistantship for the management program, but
not one in design, my interest in management jumped considerably. Two years
later I emerged with an MFA in arts management.
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So you were on your way to your first industry job? After I graduated, I
headed up to Dubuque, Iowa, in a Pinto station wagon with my wife, Randi,
and our daughter Katie to manage the 700-seat restored Five Flags theater
that was opening in the bicentennial year. I was 23 years old.
I’d been in Dubuque less than three months when they passed a referendum to
build an arena adjacent to the theater. I talked my way onto the design
committee by offering to be secretary, make coffee and take minutes, because
no one else wanted to do that. That allowed me to participate in the design
process and go on trips to see other arenas. We toured buildings around the
midwest and met Roy Gumtow and Herb Frank in Madison, Joe Sturckler in
Duluth, and Atwood Olson in Minneapolis. At that time IAAM had a board of
consultants, and if you were creating a project, they would give you a list
of people who could consult. Our consultants ended up being Joe Sturckler
and Atwood Olson.
Is that how you discovered IAAM? Yes, through the visits we made with the
architects on the Dubuque project. I joined IAAM in January of 1977. The
first national IAAM meeting I attended was in 1978 in Louisville, Kentucky.
I also attended the forerunner to our present day Public Assembly Facility
Management School at Oglebay. It was a week long session held in Monticello,
Illinois, near Champaign-Urbana, at a retreat center operated in conjunction
with the University of Illinois. Our meeting site was a very quiet and dry
place at night. I was one of a few people with a car, so I was immediately
popular with my school mates in having transportation into the night spots
of Champaign-Urbana. The school was really a wonderful experience, a real
eye-opener for someone just starting out in the business. You find out all
these issues you should have been worrying about but were too naïve to
recognize.
Eventually, construction got underway in Dubuque and I was chosen to manage
the new arena in addition to the theater. We had adopted two more children
from Korea, Michelle and Joe, and in January of 1979, our daughter Lindsay
was born. The arena opened in March of 1979. So we went from one child to
four children and opened a new building in the space of about seven months.
I don’t know where we found the energy. I guess that’s why most people do
those things while they’re young.
What was your next career stop? In 1982 I moved to a job as associate
director at Iowa State University in Ames — a much bigger four-building
complex anchored by a 15,000-seat arena, and a 2,700-seat theater. I worked
under the late Dick Snyder, another terrific mentor, who was a very active
participant in IAAM. A year later, Dick moved on to the Ordway Theatre in
St. Paul, and I had the chance to apply for his job. In January of 1984, I
became executive director of the Iowa State Center. By then, we had welcomed
our youngest child, Toby, to the family.
During those years, we got to try so many things. The center was doing all
the top touring acts as they passed through Iowa. We created a convention
bureau, got a hotel tax passed to support it, and we got additional support
for university museums that were housed in the complex.
I created Compass Facility Management in the
fall of 1996, starting out in the basement of my home. Three projects got
Compass off the ground: a facility feasibility study in Dodge City, Kansas;
a management agreement for the Mankato Civic Center (now the Midwest
Wireless Civic Center), which I had been involved with designing and opening
for Ogden; and consulting work for a new indoor stadium in Grand Forks,
North Dakota. The Grand Forks project was almost derailed when the horrible
flood nearly destroyed the City in 1997. However, six months later, I was
asked to join the team working to create a completely new design that had no
event areas below grade level.
As Compass grew, I moved out of my basement to an office. A year later we
moved to a larger office, and a little while later, moved again to our
current offices. Compass employs 18 people at the core of the company, 150
full-time employees around the country and another 2,000 or so part-time and
oncall workers. We have some tremendous people working with us, creating
events, and creating and managing the venues for those events.
As we begin our eleventh year in business, we are completing a corporate
re-branding review. This process has led us to discover some confusion with
other companies offering facility services under the Compass name. As such
we have created a new name for our business, VenuWorks. We are certainly
proud of what we have accomplished as Compass, but we believe this decision
will give us a strong individual identity and allow us to build our core
businesses of management, events and consulting.
Through all of this, you’ve stayed very active in IAAM. In the mid-80’s I
served on the Board as a director at large. Then I was district vice
president for District 3 for a few years. Two really great things happened
while I was on the Board. First, IAAM voted to take management in house and
hire our own director. Second, was the creation of the school at Oglebay. I
was a charter member of the board of regents and an instructor for the first
six years of the school. Throughout the years the school has grown in
quality. The content we teach at the school now is first class in every way.
Who were some of the people who helped when you were beginning in the
industry? The people in IAAM have been tremendous, much like a family. I’ve
already mentioned several, but I should add Joe Floreano, who has been a
true friend throughout my career.
While I was working at the Iowa State Center, the late Gordon Smith who ran
the Civic Center performing arts building in Des Moines was a friendly
rival. He gave me so much of his time at IAAM meetings and arts booking
conferences in New York.
After he retired from the Civic Center and moved to South Haven, Michigan,
he worked for Compass as a consulting staff member. He taught me that an
important part of this work is to have fun. He very much lived that
philosophy. I miss him every day.
And Tom Scallen, current owner/producer of the Chanhassen Dinner Theater in
Minnesota, has been a major influence on me. We first met when Tom owned Ice
Capades and the Globetrotters. Tom has been my role model in trying to
maintain an ethical balance in all business dealings. He is a true gentleman
of the old school and a valued and trusted friend. Other people I have had
fun growing up with in the association include Dexter King, IAAM’s executive
director, and Bob Mayer, head of the International Steering Committee, both
past presidents of IAAM. Both of them are McElravy Award winners, and
deservedly so.
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Frank Russo, who I worked with for so many years at Ogden. I first
encountered Frank when he was making the rounds telling about the roof
cave-in at the Hartford Civic Center. I remember an infamous golf game
involving me and these three on the free afternoon at Oglebay. At the time,
none of us were particularly gifted at golf, but we set off nobly trying to
do our best, zig-zagging back and forth across each fairway chasing errant
shots. Before many holes went by, up comes the Ranger cart, with the guy who
keeps things running smoothly on the course. We looked up the hill behind us
and saw there were at least five foursomes stacked up waiting for us. I
turned to Bob Mayer and said in my best Yogi Bear imitation, “Cheese it.
Boo-Boo, here comes the Ranger!”
For many, many years, the only opportunity for a vacation with our family
was to bring them along to IAAM each summer, and then stop and see the
sights at and along the way to the conference. We’ve had all five of our
kids to Nashville, Washington, D.C., Toronto, San Francisco, Kansas City,
Minneapolis, Denver and Dallas. The kids were part of the IAAM family. They
had friends they looked forward to seeing each summer. IAAM has been our
extended family, and we’ve grown up in that family.
What do you do when you’re not working? Our children are now spread out all
over the country, and we enjoy going to visit them. Randi and I are still
movie buffs, and love going to the movies. My favorite movies are
Casablanca, followed closely by The Sting and Silverado. I like to read,
especially mysteries. I like to find the regional authors who set their
mysteries in a specific part of the country, such as Donald Karstad, a
retired Eastern Iowa sheriff, who has written a series of novels based on
his experiences in law enforcement, and Dana Stabenow, who writes about
Alaska. The last book I read was Down Under, a comic travel book by Bill
Bryson. I read it in one sitting flying home from Brisbane.
What’s the most memorable night you’ve spent in a facility? So many stand
out. The energy and excitement of the Rolling Stones at Cyclone Stadium was
pretty remarkable, although I got to see very little of the concert. Brad Mayne, who ran an Ogden building in Cedar Rapids at the time, came over to
help with that event, along with other Ogden managers. Our weakest security
point was the NW gate, and Brad and I were watching over that situation. At
one point, some guy came along with a 12’ step ladder and started charging
people $5 for a glimpse of the concert from the top of the ladder he had
placed against the fence. We admired his entrepreneurial spirit so much that
we let him operate the whole night.
I had an incredible day with George Burns in the spring of 1980 in Dubuque.
His movie Oh God had just come out, and he was enjoying a huge resurgence of
popularity. He was being presented in the arena by the local hospital. He
arrived early in the afternoon and did his sound check. But it turned out a mixup had occurred with whoever from the hospital was supposed to look after
him until showtime, and I found myself being his host. I took him into the
restored theater next door. He looked around and said, “I remember playing
here with Gracie in 1928 or so.” He looked me right in the eye and said
straight-faced, “ Did you ever find my trunk?”
Our building staff was so small then, I had to leave Burns to go back to
work before the concert, so I called my wife, Randi, and said something
like, “Quick! Come down to the building. There’s somebody you’ve got to
meet.” She left the kids with a neighbor and raced downtown. Randi ended up
taking him to lunch. We have a great picture of the three of us.
What do you think are the most important qualities of being a leader?
The
best hall manager, the best arts manager, the best facility manager is the
one who also knows how to sweep the stage. And even if you don’t know how to
do every task, you must have a keen appreciation of how much effort goes
into each of these jobs before you start telling people what to do. Only
then can you plan and act appropriately and really value what your staff
does for your facility.
I think vision is an important quality, as well. Steven Covey tells the
story of a safari traveling through the jungle. The manager is the person
busy sharpening all the machetes, making sure the food supply is there, and
making sure that everything is packed up in the morning and set out in the
evening with the tents. But the leader is the one with the vision who climbs
to the top of the tree and says, “Oops, wrong jungle.”
What are some of the challenges facing the industry today? Safety is
certainly near, if not at the top of the list. Since 9/11 safety has taken
center stage with all of us. Good managers have always been concerned about
safety and security. But after 9/11, we realized how many forces are at work
beyond anything we can control. Someone trying to do ill, only has to
succeed once, but we have to be right and diligent all the time. So I think
that will continue to be an important factor of what we do. All of those
things are impacted by events beyond our control, such as acts of terrorism
and pandemic situations. Look at what SARS did to the visitor trade in China
a few years ago. Look at what 9/11 did to businesses everywhere.
Programming. There will always be a challenge to provide programming for our
facilities. What you fill your buildings with is your lifeblood, whether
it’s performing arts, popular entertainment, sports, franchises, or
conventions and meetings. Where are those artists and those events and those
conferences and those sports that will bring the next generation in? There
is a generation that wants to be truly interactive, rather than passively
watching an event unfold. How do we get today’s young people to even hear
about our events or be interested, because they’re not watching TV or
listening to radio? They’re plugged into an iPod. As ticket prices to events
go higher and higher, staying at home becomes more desirable.
Intellectual copyright law is about to come front and center. The last time
copyright law was adjusted in the United States, facilities ended up bearing
a good deal of the burden. If nobody else pays, responsibility for paying
licensing fees is ultimately left to the buildings. Miniaturization of
electronic equipment makes illegal taping harder to detect. Almost all cell
phones today can take photos. Yet in other countries, pirated material is
sold openly on the street, and nobody pays any attention. IAAM must be at
the table in the coming discussions about intellectual property.
The notion of “green” and sustainable facilities is going to be a major
topic for all of us. Other parts of the world, especially Europe, are ahead
of many of us here in this country in thinking about this. We need to move
past the point of just recycling bottles and cans in our buildings and
separating the cardboard from the rest. We’re on to calculating the carbon
foot print left by an event.
Tracking all of those people and how much fuel they expended to get to that
event, how they were served when they were there, and how much trash was
collected, and where did that trash go. How much water was consumed, how
much energy consumed. These are monumental issues, and when you put all of
our buildings together around the world, we’re consuming a lot.
And finally, there is competition. There are so many ways to entertain
ourselves today. TV screens continue to get bigger and clearer with more
channels, and TV is now moving into 3- D and holographic territory. You can
put on goggles and sit in a room where you perceive that you are inside of a
video game. These are pretty nearly five senses experiences that rival being
at a live event.
What we’ve always said is that there is nothing like being at a live event,
but we’re more and more able to have 90% of that experience at home. What
does that mean about the facilities we run? It tells us we’ve got to be
easier to get to. Our population that is attending our events is aging,
which means that they need more comfort, more help, and fewer stairs.
I guess that’s a pretty long list of challenges, but I have a great faith in
the collective ingenuity and spirit of the people in IAAM to successfully
address all of these concerns and more. fm
Incoming IAAM president Steve Peters, CFE, served on the association’s
board in the mid-1980s as a director at large, and was an instructor at
Oglebay for the school’s first six years. All photos by James Cobb
Photography unless otherwise noted. |
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