Westerner Days at Westerner Park in Red Deer. (Westerner Park)

By Sheldon Spackman

AGM

Westerner Park CEO “confident with where we’re going financially”

Jun 11, 2021 | 2:23 PM

After a year and a half of financial turmoil, officials with Westerner Park are feeling good about the organization’s future moving forward.

During its Annual General Meeting (AGM) held virtually on Thursday, shareholders and board members learned that the organization’s operating loss in 2020-2021 was $671,167, with an overall loss for the year ended at $1.232 million, compared to $3.4 million the previous year.

CEO Mike Olesen pointed out that every core function of the organization has had to be maintained despite their challenging circumstances.

“If we terminated any deeper than we did (90% of staff)… its north of half a million dollars in rental activity would not have occurred. We needed those resources in-house in order to be able to have anything operating through this year, which we had a modest level of activity.”

The bottom line, according to Olesen, is that Westerner Park needed the chance to pause to work on itself.

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“It (City of Red Deer financial oversight) really represented an opportunity for Westerner Park to refocus on itself, to repair a lot of our operations that did need rebuilding and this gave us that opportunity. We had to rebuild.”

With Alberta now in Stage 2 of the government’s reopening plan and Westerner Days now anticipated to go ahead this summer, Olsen said they’re approaching the event very carefully.

“We’ve not overcommitted ourselves, very minimal expense committed to the event until we are absolutely sure,” he explained. “Our approach is very calculated and really responding to not over selling the event and making sure it’s falling well within the guidelines will go a long ways, assuming that we do open up at that time (late June/early July).”

Olsen acknowledged Red Deer County council’s decision this week to deny a $1 million funding request from Westerner Park for help with replacing the ice plant and HVAC Chiller systems at the Centrium – a decision shareholder Michael Donlevy expressed his disappointment in.

“There is still life in those systems. The challenge we have with it right now, certainly one, is its very inefficient and two, it will need repairs,” explained Olsen. “The beauty of a system that old is that it’s fairly mechanical and it can be fixed, but repairs and parts become few and far between and it gets more expensive, so really a drain on the organization the more we have to do that.

“But we will still move forward with our Community Facility Enhancement Project, submit that grant application through the province of Alberta and we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to take advantage of those opportunities.”

In addition, thanks to a short-term COVID support grant of up to $3 million from the City of Red Deer, along with a $19 million loan from The City to refinance the Exhibition Hall loan, Olesen says he’s confident with where Westerner Park is headed financially.

Events currently planned for Westerner Park this year include Westerner Days, Cowboy Kicks, Canadian Finals Rodeo, Agri-Trade and World Junior Hockey Championships, among others

“There’s so many exciting new announcements coming soon that I anticipate a number of those happening in June, July and throughout the summer.”