Summary of Monday’s (2/17) DI informal member meeting in San Jose

| February 21, 2014| Blog

On Monday (2/17) an informal member meeting was held in San Jose to give an update on the Dedicated Ice initiative. For those of you who couldn’t make it, here’s what was discussed:

We kicked things off with Mike Greenberg giving us an Olympic update. As of Monday (2/17), we had over 800 people come out to try a Learn to Curl during the Olympic push, and over 40 new curlers have registered for lessons starting this Saturday.

Brian gave a quick status on the multi-threads various committee members are working on:

  • At the time of the meeting, the Letter of Intent (LOI) has been finalized and is ready to send to the owner (see LOI post). We expect to hear back within one week. The LOI includes a provision giving SFBACC the option to purchase the building. Some members were pleased to hear this and recommended we make this clear to all members.
  • City of Hayward Discussions: We have held several meeting with the City of Hayward to assess their interest and support in our project. The feedback was very positive. In fact, one meeting with a City Councilman resulted in us getting access to a number of business and political leader contacts to follow-up with. We can thank Tony Puentes, a member and a policeman in Hayward for the introduction.
  • AUP: The Administrative Use Permit application is still being pulled together by our team. We hope it will be ready sometime next week to submit.
  • Next Steps: We reviewed the upcoming schedule of member forums and scheduling the membership vote on the dedicate ice initiative.

    • A number of questions and comments were raised about the dedicated ice initiative and the business plan documents recently distributed. Here’s a summary of the Q&A session:

    Q: Are we pursuing other funding other than from members and corporations, such as the WCF (World Curling Federation)?

    A: The answer is yes, but such sources are difficult to get funds from so, though we are pursuing them, we cannot count on receiving these funds.

    Q: What assumptions were made in the financial model about the cost to curl?

    A: The financial model in the business plan assumes a single league cost (13 weeks) of $385.

    Q: Were other league fee models considered, such as curling in 2, 3 leagues?

    A: Yes they were, but, given the number of potential scenarios, the financial model focused on the average number of leagues a member will curl per season, which is 1 l Fall, Winter and Spring league.

    Q: The business plan refers to developing junior and wheelchair curling programs. Have we considered a deaf curling program, as SFBACC has worked with a local deaf/hearing school and helped train members of the US Deaf Olympics team?

    A: No we have not considered it yet, but we will now – a terrific idea!

    We have scheduled 2 in-person meetings that you can attend to review the plan with, and ask questions of, the Dedicated Ice committee:

  • San Jose Sharks Ice – Feb 25 at 7:00pm. (2nd Floor Conference Room) immediately preceding the LTC
  • Oakland Ice Center – Mar 1 at 5:30pm (conference room to be confirmed) immediately following the LTC

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