Since the Bastrop Convention and Exhibit Center was built on Chestnut Street six years ago, it’s been struggling to stay afloat financially.

With $150,000 in revenue collected during the last fiscal year but $500,000 needed to pay its debt, officials have debated the best way to move forward with the space. The latest plan: Open it up as a civic center that would be used for community events, instead of companies looking to book conventions.

"We’ve got to quit trying to fix something that isn’t what it is. Accept it. And if changing its name helps with that, then I hope we do that," City Manager Lynda Humble said at a July 20 budget workshop.

Dale Lockett, who leads the newly created destination marketing organization, identified several problems with the building, chief among them its location, with no walkable restaurants or attractions nearby and a four-block hike to Bastrop’s Main Street.

Even more challenging to the convention center when it’s trying to book sales is that it doesn’t have a catering operation or a food and beverage kitchen, Lockett said. That’s what most customers are looking for when they’re scouting which venue to book, he said. Additionally, there are no turnkey packages that offer bundle-pricing for visitors.

Officials say the biggest pitfall, however, is that the center doesn’t have an adjoining hotel, where visitors can book rooms while they stay for business.

"It is absolutely critical to have sleeping rooms attached to or within walking distance of the facility," Lockett said.

The city attempted to solve the problem by commissioning a feasibility study to determine if it would be possible to build a hotel next door to the convention center, on the empty city lot where the 1832 Farmers Market has operated nearly a decade.

The Bastrop Economic Development Corp. paid $19,500 for the study, which is expected to be finalized soon.

But Lockett said that even with a hotel next door, it doesn’t make up for problems with the center’s location.

"We are in the most competitive meeting region in Texas, if not in the United States," he said. "If we were isolated where there were no other facilities, it would be a different issue."

He did not suggest the city subsidize a hotel next door, unless a developer came in and took on the full risk to build it.

The city owes nearly $7 million on the convention center, which was built in 2011 through certificate of obligation bonds. Bastrop uses a portion of its hotel occupancy tax revenue every year to pay off the debt — about $500,000 annually, the city’s finance director said.

Humble said that the hotel occupancy tax revenue used to pay off the center’s debt could be used to benefit the city in other ways. At a budget workshop last week, she suggested using general fund debt service money – which come from taxpayers instead of tourists – as well as revenue accrued by the center to pay off the debt.

The goal is to shift from having the debt fully paid by hotel occupancy taxes to about 40 percent, freeing up hundreds of thousands of tourism dollars.

The city also is proposing other ways to cut costs at the convention center, including managing its overhead by shutting down lights and utilities in unused parts of the building and opening the center for tours by reservation only.

The center’s staff of five, when they aren’t working to book reservations, would be used in other parts of the city, focusing on beautification projects downtown. It’s a way for Bastrop to leverage the $275,000 it spends annually on their combined salaries to help tourism in the city, Humble said.

After the presentation on the future of the center on July 20, the air among the council was one of defeat. City staff reported that sales tax revenue, which accounts for a large percentage of the city’s revenue, was slowing in Bastrop.

"We have to do different," Humble said. "We are on the edge of a cliff, folks."

Shifting the purpose of the multi-million dollar building from a convention to a civic center is a significant move, she said, but it will give the DMO time to plan some changes so it could reopen for conventions in the next two years, hopefully with food and beverage service and alcohol sales.

Officials said the proposed changes are conceptual, and nothing has been approved.

"I will be working more closely with the community to inform everyone on our new customer service initiative, pricing structure and availability for local use," convention center executive director Kathy Danielson said by email Wednesday. "It can be and should be a win-win for everyone."