‘Shining star’: After years of struggle, Lake Granbury Conference Center on the rise

For years, the Lake Granbury Conference Center was a target for criticism. The City Council shouldn’t have spent the money. Why isn’t it bigger? Whose bright idea was it not to have a full-service kitchen? Why aren’t there more bookings?

As with anything, there may always be critics of the city-owned facility. But after being moved under the Visit Granbury umbrella, with both staffs working in partnership toward the same goals, the LGCC on East Pearl Street is thriving. And when the conference center thrives, so do tourism and the local economy.

“We see the success of our conference center every day,” Visit Granbury director Tammy Dooley said. Visit Granbury is the city’s convention and visitors bureau.

The events calendar posted on the LGCC’s website, which currently shows events booked through May, doesn’t tell the whole story, according to Dooley. The list does not include events such as weddings or other less public gatherings.

Now in its 15th year, the conference center was the vision of a previous City Council, back when the late David Southern was mayor. Those elected officials succeeded in bringing the Hilton Garden Inn here specifically to serve conference attendees and they constructed a beach with white sand as well as a boardwalk to help connect it all to the nearby square. The beach idea, in particular, was a hit.

Municipal conference centers typically aren’t built to put cash in city coffers but rather to help local businesses. They put heads in beds at hotels, seats in chairs at restaurants, and shoppers with disposable incomes in shops and boutiques. Nevertheless, the fact that the LGCC was so often in the red caused headaches.

Eventually, city leaders found the right medicine.

In October 2018, when a new fiscal year got underway, the city moved the conference center under the umbrella of Visit Granbury. In Dooley’s opinion, that is why things began to turn around.

The LGCC’s small staff, which includes facility manager Mike Linnabery, work with the Visit Granbury crew to not just market the conference center but to promote everything that the lake community has to offer, including smaller city-owned venues available for rentals, such as American Town Hall by the library, the Langdon grounds near the square, and the Neely House on East Rucker Street.

Their shared catchphrase is “Meet me at the lake.”

The conference center’s sales executive, Crystal Douglass, and Visit Granbury sales manager/assistant director Kristen Gibson work closely together and Visit Granbury provides support services to the LGCC, Dooley said.

“We take care of groups from start to finish,” she said. “If the group needs tickets to the Opera House or The New Granbury Live, or they want to coordinate something on the square, like through (the Historic Granbury Merchants Association), or they want to take a tiki boat ride or they want to have a big party at Warren’s Backyard, we facilitate and help them plan the whole thing.”

Abbie Carswell and Rhiannon Crump are another example of teamwork, according to Dooley. Both are event coordinators, Carswell for the LGCC and Crump for Visit Granbury. Crump’s duties include coordinating welcome bags to distribute to attendees of conference center events.

“It’s just a really great relationship because it’s all under one umbrella, which makes sense because we have the same mission,” Dooley said.

Things at the conference center haven’t been completely smooth since the transition, but that was because of COVID-19.

“The pandemic kicked us in the teeth a little bit, but those days are behind us, and we are moving forward,” Dooley said. “We get excited to go get business. We celebrate that. We do bid presentations, we do phone calls, we do zoom conferences, we do everything we can to generate business.”

In an email to the Hood County News, City Manager Chris Coffman stated, “The Lake Granbury Conference Center continues to be a shining star on the lake. The center’s leadership and staff serve a wide array of clients. Almost without exception, the feedback on their customer service is excellent. Recently the staff has expanded the number of venues they oversee, adding American Town Hall, for example. Even with a more diverse clientele, the service is still first rate.”

Dooley summed it up this way: “The conference center is just rockin’ and rollin’.”

TRADE SHOWS, CONVENTIONS

Local groups use the conference center but almost half of its bookings involve out-of-town guests who book hotel rooms, according to Dooley.

In 2022, the LGCC hosted 115 groups and saw 17,000 people pass through its doors.

A Shriners convention was recently held at the LGCC. The Lubbock-based Plains Cotton Cooperative Association, which held its convention at the LGCC last year, is coming back in July, putting 180 heads in beds. In August, Granbury will host the Texas-Oklahoma district Kiwanis convention.

“That’s one we bid on,” Dooley said of Kiwanis. “We went to Georgetown — myself and Kristen and Mike Linnabery — and we did a big presentation to the entire convention. They are coming here and it will have over 300 room nights in our community. They are utilizing the Hilton and they have overflow at the Best Western and we are currently trying to find a third hotel.”

Visit Granbury offers lodging establishments the opportunity to bid for conference center business, which helps fill rooms while also offering deals to event attendees. As an added perk, Visit Granbury offers trolley service to and from hotels for LGCC guests.

The LGCC is also doing more trade shows such as the Hank FM Home & Garden show and pool and spa shows. There is also the annual Spooky Spectacle, a popular pre-Halloween season event that is the brainchild of Granbury’s Brandy Herr.

The number of weddings booked at the LGCC has declined but Dooley said that is because several wedding venues have opened in and around Granbury. She estimates that those wedding venues result in almost 4,000 hotel room bookings every year.

“Granbury still gets the business and it leaves the conference center to focus on more multi-day conferences,” including mid-week bookings, Dooley said.

SERVING LOCALS

The conference center is a popular location for galas and fundraising events for nonprofits, offering a ballroom, a centralized location, a concourse where silent auctions can be held, scenic views of Lake Granbury, and a 35% discount rate.

The downstairs ballroom can hold about 300 people and can be divided. There are large projection screens and, while there is not a full-service kitchen, there are kitchen facilities that serve the needs of restaurants hired to cater events.

Prior city officials who planned and built the conference center intended for it to boost local restaurants through catering contracts. Dooley said this arrangement provides more freedom of choice for those who book and organize events.

The facility’s second floor offers additional event/meeting space. The larger Brazos Room can hold 200-250 people depending on set-up, Dooley said, and can be divided into three segments. The Comanche Peak Boardroom can also be divided.

The Brazos Room has served as the location for such events as city budget workshops, which are open to the public, and candidates forums during election season.

KEEPING UP APPEARANCES

It has been a long time since the conference center opened its doors in August 2008. To keep her from showing her age, the city’s annual budget in recent years has included funds to keep the facility appealing and up to date.

A new marquee was purchased a couple of years ago and last year the downstairs ballroom received a fresh coat of paint.

The current fiscal year budget provided money to repair the front fountain and to install colored lights. All of the air walls, or moveable panels, were recently serviced, Dooley said, and furniture was added to the upstairs balcony, where guests can step out for a private cell phone call while enjoying views of the beach. Soon, the upstairs carpeting will be replaced.

Dooley said that the budget for the 2023-2024 fiscal year will include money to replace monitors in the concourse. If the expenditure is approved by the City Council, the monitors will become more “way-finding and directional,” she said, rather than showing promotional videos or welcome messages.

The Lake Granbury Conference Center has been quietly chugging along, not making waves, which is perhaps a sign that the ink is more black now than red.

“We work together daily on leads and business prospects. We have a great staff with little to no turnover,” Dooley said. “We have a tourism-friendly attitude and we understand our mission is to generate economic impact through tourism for this community. And our conference center is our biggest tool to do that.”

She added, “It really is a shining star here, and we’re so fortunate to have it. The people who thought ahead to do that were really putting Granbury in a good place. And so now, it’s our job to keep it that way.”