The DECC has seen and felt the effects of rising utility costs over the past few years. Last October, the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center asked the City of Duluth for a million-dollar line of credit. After significant financial struggles with employee lay-offs the DECC is thriving once more.

Dan Hartman, the DECC’s Executive Director says they never used the line of credit from the city. He further added the DECC won’t be extending the line of credit it in the future.

“At the time we were asking for a line of credit to help us get to that fall business,” Hartman said. “We even said at the time, ‘We’re going to try our best not to use this, but we just want this as a fall safe in case we really need it.'”

The Board of Directors needed to pay for last minute emergency maintenance costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hartman says changes in state wages were also a factor in their financial struggles. This resulted in having to lay-off more of their part-time employees during the late summer months.

“I’m happy to report that we’ve made a lot of significant changes to the size of our team. We’re also just frankly just trying to spend less whenever we possibly can that makes sense,” Hartman said. “While still investing in the business.”

After restructured finances, and new staffing levels, Hartman says the DECC is back on track and thriving. He added that there’s a possibility the DECC will see workflow adjustments in the future. The DECC’s number of employees would fluctuate depending on how busy their multiple venues can be throughout the year.

“The DECC long term is slowly moving to a model that convention centers across the country have done decades ago, which is when there’s no business here, there’s very, very few staff. Then when there is business, boom, there’s hundreds of people here,” Hartman said. ‘I think as time progresses, the DECC is going to get closer and closer to that model where there may be very few of us around when there isn’t business, but there may be hundreds of us when there is.”

Hartman added the DECC saw a 19% increase in their revenue. But how will the DECC’s Board of Directors ensure they won’t face these financial concerns in the future? Hartman says the DECC is thriving by what they do best, by providing the community with plenty of events, conferences and concerts.

“The best way we’re getting out of this is by continuing to create new business,” Hartman said. “So the more concerts we bring in, the more conventions we bring in, especially the bigger ones, those really help the decks bottom line.”

For more information about events coming up soon at the DECC you can read more here. Also for other stories happening down at the DECC you can read more here.