29,000 rooms booked for events at new sports and events center, officials say
It's June 4. The Greater Williamsburg Sports and Events Center generated 29,000 room bookings before opening this month, officials say. Rides for special needs children cost schools $1.475 million.
The Greater Williamsburg Sports and Events Center has already created more than 29,000 hotel bookings, and York County’s hospitality industry will be benefiting from a large number of them, the facility’s operators told the board of supervisors.
The Historic Triangle Regional Facilities Authority, which built the center, met with supervisors at their work session Tuesday night to review progress on the facility, which has its grand opening June 24.
“It’s bringing in a ton of business and that’s exactly what you expected it to do,” said Dana Creech Youst, executive director of the authority. She said 29,000 rooms had been booked already.
“I think hotel impact will be far greater than we believed,” in planning the center, said Scott Stevens, who is the James City County administrator and HTRFA chair.
HTRFA was formed by York County, James City County and Williamsburg to build and oversee the facility. Williamsburg guaranteed the majority of funding for the $80 million center, which was built on land leased from Colonial Williamsburg, and the two counties will subsidize its operating losses to the tune of $1.6 million a year in the first two years.
York Vice Chair Thomas G. Shepperd, Jr. said he expected York hotels would benefit to a greater extent because York has more hotels than the other two localities, “and we have probably the more modern ones because they’re the new ones.”
“You do have the best hotels today and probably into the the near future,” Stevens agreed. He added timeshares will also benefit.
York Chair Douglas R. Holroyd, noting the hospitality industry has been struggling, wondered “is this enough of a an increase... to allow them to reach back into profitability?
Stevens said some of the events booked by the events center would bring as many as 8,000 attendees, adding “that’s a lot of people that have to stay somewhere.”
Ben Hardouin, general manager of the facility, said it has already booked 89 events through 2030 and is negotiating nearly three dozen more. He said the center is not only booking sporting events like basketball, gymnastics and cheerleading, but non-sporting events including corporate retreats, car shows and a food and wine show.
$1.475 million cost for transporting special needs students
$1,000 per student – per week.
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