Monday, March 08, 1999
Poll reveals views about bigger convention center
Media campaign in the works
BY LUCY MAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
People pushing to expand Cincinnati's downtown convention center know taxpayers in Hamilton County and Northern Kentucky think the expansion is important.
They also know taxpayers don't want to pay for it.
How do they know?
For more than a year, the city, which owns the center, and the Greater Cincinnati Con vention & Visitors Bureau, have been studying public views to prepare a campaign to win over taxpayers and elected officials.
“We have to ground everything we do in research,” said convention and visitors bureau President Michael Wilson. “We're not going to take ourselves down the wrong path.”
A poll and public information plan commissioned by the city and obtained by The Cincinnati Enquirer offer a glimpse into what advocates have learned about what taxpayers think and help explain the messages you will hear over the coming months.
Opinion polling is common with such major projects and political campaigns, but it's unusual to get a peek at the resulting strategy in the midst of the effort.
The expansion would more than double the Albert B. Sabin Cincinnati Convention Center to try to lure more, higher-spending professional and trade groups. Advocates say the project could cost $325 million to $350 million.
The University of Cincin nati's Institute for Policy Research said most Hamilton County and Northern Kentucky residents surveyed in 1997 said the convention center should expand rather than keep its current size.
Pollsters also said a majority on both sides of the river also characterized the development of convention business as “extremely” or “very” important for Greater Cincinnati.
Because of that, the publicity plan cautions advocates to balance “negative” messages about conventions being lost to other cities with “positive” news about the conventions that come and the money they bring to the region.
That strategy was recommended by Northlich Stolley LaWarre Public Relations, the downtown firm that prepared the Public Information Pro gram Recommendations based on the poll.
Now HMS Success, a Columbus-based advertising and public relations firm, is running the convention center campaign.
HMS, which ran the successful campaigns in 1996 to pass the stadium sales tax and in 1998 to keep the Reds ballpark on the riverfront, is known to use a similar strategy.
The firm tends to create a balance of threat and promise. In the 1996 stadium campaign, the threat was that the Bengals would leave town. The promise was keeping major-league-city status and getting a new “front door” for the region.
With the convention center, the threat is that downtown hotels and businesses will suffer without the expansion.
The promise is that an expanded center would import tens of millions of dollars to help businesses, create jobs and provide additional tax dollars to the Tristate.
Some researchers question the economic benefits of such centers. But the survey shows the public has heard and accepted the positive message, so the toughest part of the campaign will be answering the question, “Who pays?”
The poll and plan obtained by the Enquirer show taxpayers favor increasing hotel taxes, but that can't generate enough money for the project.
The poll was conducted between May 29 and June 5, 1997. A total of 641 adult registered voters were interviewed by phone — 329 people in Hamilton County and 312 in Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties. The margin of error was plus or minus 5.5 percentage points.
Sixty percent of the Hamilton County residents surveyed favored taxes on alcohol and tobacco to pay for the project.
But “sin taxes” aren't a good funding source for several reasons, said John Williams, president of the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce and an expansion advocate.
He said Cincinnati and Hamilton County residents could easily buy alcohol and cigarettes in Northern Kentucky or Indiana to avoid the tax.
Also, consumption of alcohol and cigarettes is on the decline, Mr. Williams said, and such taxes would be an unreliable source to pay off long-term debt for a public project.
Taxpayers told pollsters they don't want an increased countywide sales tax. Voters approved a half-cent sales tax increase in 1996 to fund stadium construction for the Bengals and Reds.
Because another sales tax won't get the OK from voters and hotel taxes alone can't generate enough money for the project, advocates are considering a broad range of sources.
One could be a citywide Cincinnati restaurant tax. Ohio law would have to be changed to institute such a tax, and pollsters say the public doesn't like the idea.
Advocates also have suggested the city of Cincinnati and Hamilton County earmark millions of dollars from their general funds each year to pay off the expansion debt.
However, it's unclear whether city council and the county commissioners would agree.
Commissioner John Dowlin said he wouldn't because county funds should be used for more basic services than a convention center expansion.
For all their polling and planning, he said expansion advocates haven't talked much with elected officials still expected to foot at least part of the bill.
“It appears as if they have taken whatever information they have gathered and have come up with a plan that involves the board of county commissioners without seeking our input,” Mr. Dowlin said.
But Mr. Wilson said no funding plan is final.
“We've tried to be fair about this and not in any way dictate to any government body what their role is,” Mr. Wilson said. “But you have to have a target.”
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