Name chosen for city country club
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on September 9, 2015 1:46 PM
The Goldsboro Country Club has a new name: The Goldsboro Events Center.
The name change comes on the heels of a vote taken during the City Council's work session Tuesday evening, with council members Chuck Allen, Bill Broadaway, Charles Williams and Gene Aycock voting in favor of the new name, and council member William Goodman voting against it. Council member Michael Headen was not present for the vote, arriving after it had taken place.
Parks and Recreation director Scott Barnard said the name change will take effect immediately, and that the city will begin marketing the name as soon as possible.
"We'll be doing our best to have it up on our Facebook and the website by tomorrow," Barnard said. "It'll be a 'coming soon' type of post on more information on the Goldsboro Events Center, with a placeholder picture. It'll be as close to immediate as we can get."
The next step is to amp up the center's marketing plan.
"We'll start working the usual suspects, the ancillary industries that would be supporting the center," Barnard said. "We'll be getting information out to the catering companies, we'll be getting information out to the wedding coordinators, we'll be getting information out to the equipment rental companies. We'll target-market those folks first, because that will give us -- every one of them will give us 50 people, rather than me trying to find those individual 50 people on my own."
Barnard said it is the city's hope to host a wedding show in spring 2016 under the new name, in the newly renovated center.
"That will probably be our first big event that we host in the space," Barnard said.
A wedding show is a chance for an engaged couple to sample products from different vendors in the venue they will be having their wedding.
"You get to taste the little cakes, you know, it's the equivalent of going to a trade show if you're the bride and groom," Barnard said. "It's an opportunity to go see three or four different people in each of the different angles of the wedding business."
The name change comes on the heels of the City Council being unable to decide on a new name just one council meeting before, on Aug. 17.
Several council members -- including Goodman, who voted against the new name -- expressed a desire to see the center named after former Goldsboro mayor Hal K. Plonk. Other council members said an events center should not be named after a person, citing marketability concerns.
Renovations to the events center are expected to be complete by either late October or early November, though no firm date has yet been released for completion. The total cost of the renovations is nearly $500,000.