Persons arrive and go from MetraPark on Feb. 25, 2021, in Billings.
As Yellowstone County officers proceed preparing for a big expansion of MetraPark, adding services like an outdoor amphitheater and scaled-down functionality corridor, they are also looking at how the public amenities will be managed.
At the very same time the county is seeking a substitute for Metra’s retiring Standard Supervisor Bill Dutcher, officers are also looking into community facilities elsewhere in the West that are privately managed.
“We’re likely down equally routes, on the lookout at selecting a new manager and checking out the execs and drawbacks of private administration,” Yellowstone County Commissioner Don Jones said Thursday.
At present, MetraPark is managed by county workers, together with an advisory board and the Fee. If MetraPark did transfer to private administration, that could include things like present professionals, Jones reported.
Jones has researched privately-operate community services in Nampa, Idaho, and Casper, Wyoming. In the circumstance of Nampa, non-public administration was capable to create new revenue streams that assisted to near a economical hole that might normally have experienced to be shut by taxpayers.
“The timing is very good to search at all the opportunities,” Jones reported. “We’re on the lookout for a new supervisor at Metra, and we’re hunting at what it would just take to take care of a larger facility.”
Much of the recent MetraPark campus includes the 12,000-seat Very first Interstate Arena, originally developed in 1975, an exposition and convention centre, and acres of asphalt where by the county hosts the once-a-year MontanaFair.