For the past year, a consulting firm partnered with the city of Aurora has been conducting a multipurpose venue feasibility study, which will dive into its next phases after the council heard an update on the study Monday night.
According to the study so far, 70% of Aurora residents leave the city to seek entertainment, based on cellphone tracking data of almost 280,000 residents.
Aurora has been discussing the need for a cultural center or performing arts center for more than 30 years, but there has not been any definition or alignment on what that entails, according to MIG planning company’s Denver director Mark De La Torre.
Over a year ago, the city hired consulting company Johnson Consulting to do a feasibility study on the topic, updates from which they presented to councilmembers on Monday.
Ryan Johnson from Johnson Consulting discussed the 70% of residents leaving the city for entertainment, calling the number “significant.”
The city is losing money that could stay in Aurora to venues outside the city, he said, and the purpose of the study would be to find a way to keep that money in the city rather than letting it trickle out into the surrounding area.
The company’s initial studies — involving talking to residents and city departments and organizations — also show a “clear desire” for the facility to be able to accommodate a wide variety of events, with a stronger focus on sports and entertainment rather than performing arts, De La Torre said.
Surveying residents and getting a sense for what they want and need is what Johnson called a “bottom up” study technique. They have also done some initial “top down” studies, looking at venues in the metro area, across the state, and even across the country that could compare to the type of venue Aurora needs.
Part of this has included looking at local venues, from the Front Range to Pueblo, to see if there’s a gap in the venue market that Aurora’s potential venue could fill, Johnson said.
While they’ve developed a baseline understanding of what community members want and created a list of potentially comparable case studies, they have more work to do before creating a framework to present to the council on what Aurora’s venue could look like, he said.
On Monday, they asked for the council to sign off on their next steps, which include conducting a consumer preference survey to get a better idea for what Aurorans want to see and continuing their market assessment and narrowing down the case studies they’ll look at.
The matter did not need to go to a vote, but the council did not have any issue with the feasibility study moving into its next stages.
