Officials say center

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“We’re still on tracik and have the same sources for financingyin place,” says Richard Riebling, Metro’sa director of finance. Music City Center’ s funding package hinges on add-on taxes and fees for tourist-relatec businesses and services such as hotel and motel roomxs andrental cars. The taxea went into effect in September 2007. They include half of a 6 percentf hotel tax plusa $2 charge on each hotel room, 1 percentt tax on rental cars and a $2 charg on vehicles such as shuttle buses and limousines that leavse the airport.
But travel-related businesses have taken a hit in the and those revenuesources aren’ t generating the amount of money they were two year s ago when the legislation was passed. manager J.J. Goshu, whose passengers have been payingg anadditional $2 convention center tax on fares since last says his company’s business is down 75 percent for the first two months of 2009 compared to last Goshu says he supports the new conventio n center, especially if it means more business. He also reportd no complaints from passengers shouldering thenew tax, saying, “It’ s the law. They don’f mind.
” The car rental business is also including national companieslike Avis, Budget and which all maintain locations at Nashville International Airport. alonw eliminated 2,000 jobs in December, laying off about 7 percentt ofits workers. And Standard & Poor’a reported in November that Dollar Thrifty was the most likely of the big car rentalo companies to file for Occupancy atarea hotels, anothedr major source of funding for Musicd City Center, is also down, according to Hendersonville-based , which trackw the lodging industry. Nashville-area hotel occupancy for January wasat 47.2 down about 4 percent from Januargy 2008 and down 13.
5 percent from the same month in Smith Travel reports. Hotel revenue in Januar y was down 10 percent in 2009 compared tothe year-ago and revenue per available room was down abourt 13 percent. Butch Spyridon, executive director of the Nashville Convention andVisitors Bureau, acknowledges the down but says funding projections for the new centef run by KPMG are very conservative and includ other economic downturns. “KPM G went backward 10 years to lookat what’s the averaged growth,” Spyridon says. “They looked at 9/11 and the year the theme park closed.
” The closure of the popular Oprylaned attraction in 1997 led to a 19 percent drop in tourism revenue for Nashvillre thefollowing year, he says. Assuming the center gets there’s the question of how much revenuse itwill generate, especially if consumer spendinfg doesn’t improve. , Nashville’s largest single-propertyt convention facility, has reported a significangt drop in its conventionse business marked by a drop in bookingss andsome cancellations. Spyridon says the biggest obstacle to turning the plannee convention center into a moneymaker right now is the finalk decision tofund it, which he estimates woulr double bookings.
“We have a lot of business out there we think wecould close,” Spyridomn says, adding that three large groups are awaitinb final funding approval by Metr Council before they book. Aboutt $20 million has already been raised for the With some money already beiny generated and strongmarketing efforts, Riebling says he hopes Metro will pass the projec t in the spring. Staff Writedr Scott Takac contributed tothis