Sunday, October 17, 1999
Tall Stacks, tall order
Planners, businesses, volunteers pull together
BY LUCY MAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
When the big boats were in town for Tall Stacks '95, a whopping 850,000 turned out for the event. Problem was, that was 450,000 fewer than planners had predicted. The lower-than-expected turnout contributed to an $800,000 debt. (The city of Cincinnati forgave $200,000 of that debt last year.)
Since then, event planners have worked triple-time to retire the rest of the 1995 debt and to ensure Tall Stacks '99 had enough money to cover its own $8.6 million budget.
“There's this perception that we're this big fountain of money — that people can ride on our coattails,” said Managing Director Joe Warkany. “It's real tough to communicate what a challenge this whole thing is to break even.”
Community leaders say the event — with all the time, money and energy it absorbs — is worth it. Mayor Roxanne Qualls called Tall Stacks the “quintessential” example of an event that is purely Cincinnati.
“This is the type of national and international attention that's priceless,” Ms. Qualls said. “It puts Cincinnati on the map for an event that is very unique — that is rooted in our history and very few places could duplicate. No one else does Tall Stacks. They can't even touch it.”
Or as Tall Stacks Executive Director Rick Greiwe put it, “We're using the river as the Main Street of the region.”
“I call it Cincinnati's signature event for promoting our image internationally,” he said, adding that Tall Stacks '95 generated 482 million print and video media images worldwide.
But pulling off such an extensive event every four years is not easy, especially with the financial challenges of retiring a debt and raising money for the '99 event. To accomplish that, planners:
• Set a goal of $1.5 million in corporate sponsorships for this year's event. Mr. Warkany says the group is just a few thousand dollars shy of that goal.
• Decided to charge $5 general admission in Covington, as well as in Cincinnati and Newport. Covington had no such charge last time.
• Broadened efforts to sell tickets. Tickets for Tall Stacks '99 were available by mail in time for last Christmas. The group also tried to make it easier to buy tickets at the event, and tickets were available in advance at area Kroger stores. (Kroger Co. is one of nine $100,000-level corporate sponsors.)
• Sought as many donated goods and services as possible — and got about $1 million worth — and trimmed the budget.
“Over and above the donations, we looked at every line item in the budget and tried to figure out how to do more with less,” said Mr. Warkany, a retired Cincinnati Bell executive who took over the top Tall Stacks job several years ago.
“When you're working with a large team of people, it's communicating to the whole team that you're serious about the expense controls.”
Kelly Kolar got the message. Ms. Kolar, owner of Kolar Design Associates, has been the design director for Tall Stacks from the start. This year, she recycled decorations and materials from the '95 event.
Ms. Kolar said her firm reused about 80 percent of the tubes that are turned into steamboat smokestacks for the event. Crews cut one foot off the normally 12-foot-tall smokestacks to remove the most worn parts and make them sturdier, she said.
“Things might be a little shorter, a little skinnier, a little scratched. But for the most part, I got it back up,” Ms. Kolar said.
Ms. Kolar's firm also designed a “cook book” of Tall Stacks designs for this year's event and put it on compact disc. That way, Tall Stacks staffers could use those designs for literature and various publications instead of having to pay Ms. Kolar's firm repeatedly to do that work.
In addition to Kolar Design staffers Janice Radlove and Jeff Grimes, Ms. Kolar credits the consistent, hard-working volunteer labor she got from Hamilton County Probationers for her firm's success in making the event look good while cutting costs.
The group supplied her with people on probation to do Tall Stacks work as community service every day starting Aug. 1.
Mr. Warkany said the efforts of volunteers and the donation of about $1 million in goods and services makes all the difference with an event such as Tall Stacks.
Planners have to cover just about $3.8 million in expenses related to the boats, such as fees, the boats' share of the cruise tickets and housing for the boats' crews during the event, Mr. Greiwe said.
But those expenses are necessary, he said. “If we don't have the boats, we don't have an event.”
In addition, Tall Stacks has to raise enough money to pay Cincinnati, Covington and Newport for additional police and fire services the cities provide for the event. This year, those payments will total more than $400,000, Mr. Warkany said.
“It's a big challenge,” he said. “We can't pull it off if we can't make the budget balance.”
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