HOLLAND, MI (WHTC-AM/FM) – Renovating the Holland Civic Center physically isn’t the only overhauling that Greg Robinson has in mind.
The interim Holland City Manager proposed during Wednesday night’s City Council meeting the creation by ordinance a Civic Center Place Board that would oversee overall operations of the facility, including retaining a professional event management firm that would “enable a faster start-up towards fully utilizing the facility.” During a Thursday appearance on “WHTC Talk of the Town,” Robinson explained that “this is a new type of facility for us, it’s a new type of use for us in many respects from what we have done with other facilities, so we have to take a different type of approach in terms of how we think about this, how we market it, how we use it, than what we have done with that Civic Center for the past 50, 60 years.”
This panel’s members would be appointed by Council, and could become a reality as early as the first week in November.
In addition, Council also approved Robinson’s proposal that the five city organizations operating downtown – the Downtown Development Authority, the Principal Shopping District, the Civic Center Place, the Farmers Market and Windmill Island – report to the new Assistant City Manager position instead of the current setup in which they report to different departments. Robinson told host Ed Ver Schure that, “we want to make sure that everybody is working together and that we are all better because of the work that we are doing in similar geographic areas.”
