Exec. Dir.: DECC’s $1M Loan Request From City Among Multiple Operational Challenges

DULUTH, Minn. – The Duluth City Council will decide whether to loan the DECC a $1 million line of credit.

This comes as the DECC’s executive director, Dan Hartman, said the entertainment venue’s current business model needs to be reimagined.

Hartman has been the DECC’s leader since 2021.  He said the DECC’s reserves are around $891,000, which is usually at $1 million. Hartman said that amount may sound like a lot of money, but he pointed to the DECC’s monthly electric bill at $100,000 a month.

Hartman told FOX 21 the DECC’s finances fluctuate greatly throughout the year, which can mean dipping into those reserves, which got as low as $58,000 last year.

Hartman points to the rising costs to retain employees as one example of the financial struggles at the DECC.

“The bigger conversation is the DECC, like a lot of institutions, we used to pay the majority of our employees 10 bucks an hour. Well, you can’t find anyone for 10 dollars an hour anymore. So now a majority of our employees are in that 14 to 18 range. … a quick mathematician can figure that out –that’s a 60 percent increase in the lion share of my employees,” Hartman explained.

The DECC employs roughly 500 people, with 450 of them part time.

Hartman said the increased pay is just a part of the problem. The DECC facilities are aging and require costly unexpected fixes, like the DECC’s ice-making machine that failed earlier this year.

“We were budgeting for the staff expenses, but what really caught us off guard were these giant facility costs that showed up, too. And you probably also heard the DECC arena ice chiller — we had to shut it down in March because it was going to cause another ammonia leak, and it turns out that the DECC arena ice chiller was used to Band-Aid the harbor side AC. So at some point, the AC unit broke in the Harbor Side Convention Center and they used the chiller for the DECC arena. So when the DECC arena broke, we didn’t lose one location, we lost two. And so, we had to run and put an emergency AC unit in so we didn’t have to cancel all the business into the summer and fall,” Hartman explained.

Hartman said his team has found new revenue since he became executive director. He said the Haunted Ship, for example, went from making $200,000 a year to $600,000 in revenue last season.

But Hartman said the added revenue isn’t catching up with expenses fast enough.