WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2017
HERMISTONHERALD.COM • A3
NEWS
STAFF PHOTO BY E.J. HARRIS
Umatilla County Fair day campers visit Bill Jennings and
Bob Daniel at the American Legion booth in the EOTEC
event center in August at the Umatilla County Fair.
Estimate: EOTEC to be
profitable in three years
By JADE MCDOWELL
STAFF WRITER
T
he Eastern Oregon
Trade and Event Cen-
ter board plans to contract
with VenuWorks to run its
facility, and the manage-
ment company believes it
can get EOTEC profitable
in three years.
The Iowa-based ven-
ue-management company
operates arenas, confer-
ence centers, fairgrounds
and other facilities, in-
cluding Toyota Center and
Three Rivers Convention
Center in the Tri-Cities
“I totally have confi-
dence in VenuWorks,”
board member and hote-
lier Vijay Patel said. “I’ve
seen how they operate in
Kennewick ... I can assure
you it’s a class A team and
they will help us bring
in more events than we
would otherwise.”
The board unanimously
passed a motion directing
a subcommittee and inter-
im manager Nate Rivera to
negotiate a contract with
VenuWorks to vote on at
a special Nov. 21 meeting.
During a presenta-
tion to the board, Corey
Pearson, executive direc-
tor of the Three Rivers
campus in Kennewick,
displayed a cost/revenue
analysis estimating that
under VenuWorks’ man-
agement EOTEC would
be at a $116,350 loss for
the first year of the facil-
ity, $93,362 loss for the
second year and a $4,968
profit on year three. Built
into those estimates is an
assumption that the city
and county will continue
to pay $75,00 per year to
EOTEC for operations as
it is currently doing.
One reason it would
take time to become prof-
itable, Pearson said, is that
even though VenuWorks
would “come out swing-
ing” with its marketing
strategy, most conventions
and trade shows book their
events two or three years
out.
“Year one you’re mar-
keting to groups that have
already made a commit-
ment somewhere else,” he
said.
Under the VenuWorks
model, the EOTEC board
would still have full con-
trol over setting budget
and policies for the facil-
ity, but VenuWorks would
provide recommendations
based on their expertise
and run day-to-day op-
erations. The company
has proposed a base fee
of $10,000 per month for
services such as market-
ing and financial manage-
ment. Those costs would
be in addition to payroll
for a general manager,
event manager/adminis-
trative assistant and two
operations staff.
Rivera said EOTEC’s
operating costs have been
significantly more than
budgeted in recent months
because labor is being
contracted, causing the
current year’s budget to
look a lot like VenuWorks’
year one projection. If EO-
TEC doesn’t change how
it is operating the facility,
he said, the budget will
continue to look that way
each year. Rivera said he
felt Hermiston and Uma-
tilla County taxpayers
would rather EOTEC go
with the safest option most
likely to help the center
start turning a profit within
a few years.
When board members
questioned whether Uma-
tilla County and the city
of Hermiston would be
willing to cover EOTEC’s
projected losses for the
first couple of years in
addition to the $75,000
per year each had already
committed, Mayor David
Drotzmann said that the
city had expected to have
to help subsidize EOTEC
for the first few years and
he thought the city coun-
cil would be willing to
support the amounts that
VenuWorks had estimated.
“We took a leap of faith
together knowing there
would be some losses in
the first year,” he said,
calling VenuWorks’ pro-
jections of getting EOTEC
out of the red by year three
“exciting.”
STAFF PHOTO BY E.J. HARRIS
Hermiston Foods on South Highway 395 in Hermiston will close this month, laying off 199 employees.
Employees prepare for plant closure
CAPECO and
Worksource
Oregon help train
people looking for
new careers
By JADE MCDOWELL
STAFF WRITER
Nearly 200 Hermiston
Foods employees are get-
ting help seeking new jobs
as the plant prepares to
process its last vegetable
this month.
NORPAC Foods Inc.
announced at the end
of June that it would be
shutting down the vege-
table-processing plant —
Hermiston’s ninth largest
employer — in order to
consolidate the plant’s op-
erations with a facility in
Quincy, Washington.
According to a Worker
Adjustment and Retrain-
ing Notification sent to the
state, 199 people will be
laid off, including 14 sal-
aried employees, and “clo-
sure separations are antic-
ipated to begin November
13, 2017 or within fourteen
(14) days thereafter.” The
notice states that there will
be “some limited work”
decommissioning the plant
in the ensuing months.
The notification is re-
quired by law for layoffs
involving at least 50 peo-
ple. It gives the state’s
dislocated worker unit a
chance to partner with state
and local agencies to help
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workers with the transition
to unemployment or their
next job.
“The goal is to re-em-
ploy the workers as quick-
ly as possible,” John Asher
of the Oregon Dislocated
Worker Unit said.
For the Hermiston Foods
closure, CAPECO (Com-
munity Action Program
of East Central Oregon)
and Worksource Oregon
have been making visits
to Hermiston Foods each
week to train employees
on things like applying for
unemployment, enrolling
in health insurance plans
in the Affordable Care Act
marketplace and writing a
resume. CAPECO held a
job fair for workers recent-
ly, and Worksource Ore-
gon hosted individualized
meetings with employees
to discuss job hunting.
“We know a lot of man-
ufacturing plants in the
area that are desperate for
workers,” Tara Bishop of
CAPECO said.
For some laid-off em-
ployees, immediately get-
ting a job at another food
processing plant in the
area, such as ConAgra
Foods or Shearer’s Foods,
may be their preference.
But Bishop said many of
Hermiston Foods’ hourly
workers lack English skills
or a GED, and CAPECO
is willing to help them get
both — or other needed
education and skills train-
ing — in order to improve
their job prospects in the
future.
“There are a lot of op-
portunities for this group,
but it’s also a great oppor-
tunity for them to scale up,
increase their education,”
she said.
NORPAC spokeswom-
an Amy Woods said in
an email that Hermiston
Foods’ day shift ended ear-
ly and its night shift started
late last Wednesday in or-
der to give employees an
opportunity to go to the job
fair, which featured booths
by 22 local employers and
five agencies.
“The goal is
to re-employ
the workers
as quickly as
possible.”
John Asher, Oregon
Dislocated Worker Unit
She said production su-
pervisors and quality as-
surance supervisors have
also been encouraged to
apply at NORPAC’s Quin-
cy facility.
Hermiston Foods has
been an employer in Herm-
iston since 1990, with
hiring ramping up each
harvest season. The facil-
ity processes peas, sugar
snap peas, edamame, lima
beans, carrots and aspar-
agus. Woods said most of
the produce came from the
Hermiston and Boardman
area, except for the aspara-
gus, and was sent to NOR-
PAC’s warehouse facilities
in Salem afterward. NOR-
PAC will continue to con-
tract for peas, sugar snap
peas and carrots from area
growers but will send them
to other NORPAC facilities
in future seasons, she said.
In its 2016 financial re-
port, the city of Hermiston
listed Hermiston Foods as
the ninth largest employ-
er in town, making up 2.8
percent of the city’s total
employment. Hermiston
Foods was also the city’s
largest water customer. It
purchased $119,584 worth
of water from the city over
the course of a year.
Hermiston Foods has
been a community partner
over the years in a num-
ber of ways. It has donat-
ed produce to the Agape
House’s food bank, given
tours to Leadership Herm-
iston classes learning about
agriculture, and processed
food for Farmers Ending
Hunger.
The company has not
released information yet
on its plans for marketing
or re-purposing the Herm-
iston Foods facility.
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