PhillyDeals: Convention Center getting new leadership
The Convention Center will be under a new boss - or a couple of bosses - beginning Dec. 1. Executive director Ameenah Young will be gone. SMG, the West Conshohocken facilities manager the center's politically appointed board has put in charge of the state-financed center, has tapped facilities pro Lorenz Hassenstein for a new position as operations chief, in charge of most of the 100 headquarters positions that reported to Young.
The Convention Center will be under a new boss - or a couple of bosses - beginning Dec. 1.
Executive director Ameenah Young will be gone. SMG, the West Conshohocken facilities manager the center's politically appointed board has put in charge of the state-financed center, has tapped facilities pro Lorenz Hassenstein for a new position as operations chief, in charge of most of the 100 headquarters positions that reported to Young.
The rest, 12 managers including the legal, financial, and personnel chiefs, will report to a new executive director, who will be paid $220,000 in 2014, less than Young's $267,500, plus benefits.
The executive director represents the state, which financed the big-but-underused center in hopes of boosting Philadelphia tourism and hotel revenues, jobs, and taxes. That post is supposed to be filled at a board meeting Wednesday.
Hassenstein, a Wilmington native, was a vice president at Advertising Specialties Institute, the Trevose-based group that, among other things, runs trade shows for corporate marketing people. He left that position in July. Among his duties there, according to his resumé, was "reducing headcount while maintaining exceptionally high levels of customer satisfaction."
His role at the Convention Center is different, Hassenstein told me. "The mission here is, one, to make the building a better partner" to its users and beneficiaries, "and two, to improve customer service across the board," he said.
His new boss at SMG, Bob McClintock, tells me that will mean hiring, not cutting, staff, a job made easier by the fact that about 25 of the 100 jobs are now vacant, and by Young's success at running the facility below budget the last few years.
SMG may move more people from back-office to customer-focused jobs. But the firm has promised to keep total payroll within the center's previous budget.
A key part of SMG's mission is persuading leaders of the carpenters and other Convention Center unions to ease limits on letting customers set up their own shows. That would mean fewer union hours on some jobs, in exchange for bringing in more shows, in hopes of increasing overall union hours.
McClintock says SMG was able to persuade unions in Chicago and Detroit to update work rules in exchange for the promise of more shows and more hours, which he says SMG delivered.
Given all the players involved, won't union leaders, vendors, and contractors who have a beef with SMG be tempted to work around its staff and appeal to the center staff and board, as they have in the past?
Won't be a problem, McClintock affirms. He knows a lot of people are checking show bookings and other public data. We're all watching to see if the private-sector pros can do this better.
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