Missoula Carousel spinning in the red – additional funds needed

– 2/02/04

Missoula director says power bills, park insurance hurting attraction

They never intended to call it A Part-Time Carousel for Missoula. Question is, do Missoulians feel the same way?

By VINCE DEVLIN – Missoulian

http://helenair.com/articles/2004/02/02/montana/a10020204_01.txt

After years of being self-supporting, A Carousel for Missoula is riding in red ink for the first time, according to executive director Theresa Cox. Closing during the off-season may become the only option, but before that happens the Caras Park attraction will turn to the people it was built for to ask for help.

Next month the carousel will begin to sell annual memberships to individuals and companies in the hopes of raising the approximately $25,000 extra it needs to operate year-round. Called ‘‘Community Powered,” the program will offer various levels of annual memberships at prices ranging from $25 to $5,000.

‘‘We were community-built, so we decided to call it Community Powered,” Cox said. The carousel, a nonprofit which gives free rides to people with disabilities and provides ride tokens to agencies that help families in need, will also seek grants from private foundations to help offset its debt.

‘‘A lot of people think we’re supported by the city, but we get no funds from the city, state or federal governments,” Cox said.

The carousel will raise the price of rides for adults from $1 to $1.50 come June, but is loath to up the fare for children. It’s always taken just 50 cents for a child to take a spin on Snapples or Dispatch or Cannonball or one of the other hand-carved ponies, and the board that oversees the carousel wants to keep it that way.

A Carousel for Missoula opened on May 25, 1995, and through its gift shop, parties and rides has always not only paid for itself, but also been able to contribute to its reserve fund.

In its most recent fiscal year, however, the carousel brought in revenues of $253,000, but had expenses of $278,000, half of that for payroll for the 20 people who work there.

Several factors have played a role, Cox said.

‘‘The novelty has worn off,” she admitted. Ridership has averaged 230,000 a year since 1997, but the 2003 figure was only 214,000.

Then there are the soaring monthly utility bills. The check Cox wrote to NorthWestern Energy this time last year was for $667.46. The bill she just got for the same month this year was for $1,043.55.

‘‘The increase in energy costs has been hard on us,” agreed assistant manager Becky Ophus. ‘‘It costs more to light the carousel now than it does to run it.”

And then there were the Beanie Babies.

The carousel’s gift shop brings in the bulk of its revenue — almost $140,000 in 2003, more than rides ($83,000) and parties ($30,000) combined. When the Beanie Babies fad hit, the gift shop, which carried the little stuffed animals, was overrun.

‘‘We’d have people waiting outside the door for us to open,” Cox said. ‘‘Beanie Baby buyers were calling every day to see if we had a new shipment in. People would fight over them. We finally had to have rules about how many you could buy. People were buying these little $5 stuffed toys as investments, reselling them over the Internet for hundreds of dollars. It was wonderful, and we got to feeling like this is what life is like.”

Instead the Beanie Baby boom crashed, the buyers went away and revenue suffered.

There are other problems, too. Insurance costs are higher now — $12,000 a year since the play area Dragon Hollow was added next to the carousel in 2001.

‘‘Don’t get me wrong,” Cox said. ‘‘Dragon Hollow is wonderful. We love it. But it doesn’t bring in any income. One of the ideas behind it was if kids had a place to play, they’d stay longer. But what we’ve found is they’re playing instead of taking rides.”

The carousel staff is responsible for care and maintenance of the play area. Cox said A Carousel for Missoula may approach the city to ask for help with the insurance costs. While the city, through the Missoula Redevelopment Agency, contributed $100,000 toward construction of the carousel’s home at Caras Park, it has not been asked to pony up any money since, Cox said.

‘‘We’re one of the few carousels in the nation that is open year-round,” said Ophus, who was the first person hired when the carousel opened in 1995, and is its only full-time employee. ‘‘A lot of carousels just go from Memorial Day to Labor Day.”

‘‘That’s what we’ll have to look at” if Community Powered doesn’t work, Cox said.

‘‘That’s not to say we couldn’t open at Christmas or other times,” said Cox, who noted that the carousel offered free rides on Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, and more than 2,000 people took them up on it.

‘‘I like to think of this as a vote on whether people want us open year-round,” Cox said. ‘‘We’re not saying we’re going to close if you don’t give us money. If it’s important to people, we want to know. If it’s not, we’ll quit beating ourselves over the head trying to figure out a way to keep it open year-round.”

Cox thinks it is important. The carousel, she said, is a popular place for Missoulians to take out-of-town visitors. ‘‘I think they’d like to be able to take them whether they’re here in July, or October,” she said. ‘‘And it’s one of the few places open in the winter where kids can go.”

Besides, there’s one other thing to consider.

‘‘The ponies,” Cox said. ‘‘They’d get awfully lonely.”