Concept:

Seminar City
The idea is to provide a facility that will draw crowds of people from outside the area to the downtown shopping area (when we have one). The concept of the Seminar City facility is to provide a facility that will make space available for various NFP and commercial interests to conduct seminars, mostly free seminars. The facility and the conductors of the seminars would cooperate to recruit attendees from outside the area to travel (mostly a day trip event) to the area for the various seminars. The seminars might consist of any number of topics, including career, sales, health, hobby, academic, cultural, income, spiritual and etc. programs. The facility would operate year-around, 7 days a week and cater to a demographic that would likely visit the downtown and city-county shops and businesses in the area as a matter of incident to attending the seminars. Regarding site location, in order for the concept to work for the downtown area, first of all there needs to be downtown shops and attractions for the seminar attendees to patronize. On the other hand, the downtown shops need to foresee sufficient numbers of buying patrons attending the area before the shops commit to establishing themselves in the downtown area. This is a kind of chicken and egg, which comes first, problem. Another crucial consideration is the proximity of the seminar facility to the downtown shops. Two areas are suggested, the first preference would be an existing building in the downtown area, such as shown on the accompanying page. The second area, one possibility shown, would be an inflatable dome structure as close as possible to the Always Christmas Lane The proximity must be very close. In addition, the parking for the seminar attendees should be situated so that the attendees are routed through the downtown shops area as the attendees move to and from their cars going to and coming back from the seminars. Regarding locals attending the seminars, such attendance might be encouraged in some cases, and not in others. First priority should be given to out-of area attendees, as that is the new money that needs to be brought into the city-county area. Operation of the facility might be by a local private NFP created for that purpose, with the cooperation of existing NFPs in the area. The city-county would need to push the project with incentives, etc. Costs of the facility might be borne by a combination of user fees, rentals, sponsors, and public institutions, such as the public library, HCMH, WorkOne, churches, Chamber of Commerce, etc.
Doc: EPIC D-5 re NED re Seminar City concept.MSWord Samuel A. Helm/