Bandits' front-office staff an 'all-star team'
A fresh coat of paint on the wall isn’t the only makeover in the front office of the Quad-Cities River Bandits this season.
Nearly the entire staff is new as well.
Only director of broadcasting Ben Chiswick and director of baseball operations Bob Evans return from the front-office staff in 2007.
Dave Heller, managing partner of MainStreet Iowa, the Midwest League team’s new owner, views the changes that have taken place in the front office as a necessity to move the team forward.
“As I walked around the office last summer, there wasn’t a lot of life,” Heller said. “It was dead. Changing the culture and the attitude was something that had to be done.”
Heller believes that lack of enthusiasm carried over to the game-day experience for fans. He suspects it’s one reason the club’s attendance numbers have been stagnant in recent seasons.
Attendance at Midwest League games in the Quad-Cities spiked at 173,370 when renovated John O’Donnell Stadium opened in 2004, dropped to 165,878 the following season and has averaged 147,730 over the past two seasons.
Newly hired general manager Kirk Goodman spent the past three seasons as the general manager at Double-A Jacksonville, where the team led the Southern League in attendance.
His charge in the Quad-Cities is to improve numbers in a market that averaged 218,463 fans from 1990 to 1996. That average is lowered by nearly 20,000 when factoring in a Mississippi River flood that cut attendance to 103,797 in 1993.
The club has not reached the 200,000 mark since 1996.
“The best way for us to grow attendance is to provide a great experience for our fans so that they will want to come back again and again,” Goodman said.
The nearly 18-month period that it took for Heller’s organization to purchase the club provided him with plenty of opportunities to study the market.
“There is plenty of room for growth, and it all boils down to treating people the right way,” Heller said. “We don’t go out seeking corporate sponsors anymore, we’re seeking partners. Instead of asking people ‘What can I sell you?’ we’re asking how we can help grow their business and in turn, grow our own.
“It’s a different way of doing business, a different way of treating people, and I believe that it can work here whether we are working with the largest businesses in the community or the mom-and-pop shoeshine store on the corner.”
Heller calls the team’s new staff an “all-star team,” and Goodman believes the combination of youthful enthusiasm and a strong work ethic will benefit the organization.
“When I left the office at a quarter after 12 the other morning, there were still three other people here working, and it’s that way every night,” Goodman said. “They’re committed to making this work.”
Steve Batterson can be contacted at (563) 383-2285 or sbatterson@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.