The Gering Civic Center now has a new vendor to manage the facility and provide catering services.
The Gering City Council last night approved a five-year contract with Terri Tosh and her business, Faithful Creations Catering of Ft. Collins to take the reins from Rick and Judy Keller, who retire in February.
City Administrator Pat Heath was on the selection committee that recommended Tosh, and said they’re really looking forward to seeing what she will do when she takes over.
“She has 25 years experience in the catering business, and she had some big contracts with Walmart and Budweiser in that Front Range area,” said Heath, “and so that was it kind of a fit for what she does she’ll do here. And, you know, we’re just excited to see her on board and see her here soon.” Tosh visited the Civic Center, and the surrounding area, during a visit in early November.
The city initially conducted their own search, but after about four months without any proposals being submitted, turned to recruiting agency GPAC out of South Dakota to help. Heath said for five months they worked with Erin Hayes from GPAC, and that was vital to the outcome. “They reached out to I don’t recall how many people, but they interviewed several. They kind of weeded out some of them that maybe didn’t quite fit for the Civic Center, and then they brought forward some others. We had several resumes we looked at. The biggest difficulty was getting people to relocate, most of them were coming from metro areas because you don’t see a lot of convention centers in smaller communities,” Heath said.
The initial year of the contract has a graduated scale that start at $130,000, going up an additional $5,000 by the end of the first year.
