Business View Magazine l November 2022

154 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 11 National Beard and Mustache Championships. “It’s about bringing in outside income to our community. The forefathers, the people who built this building, had a lot of vision and a lot of insight. For it to stand the test of 40 years and continue to go on is really a testament to what they did, and what they saw,” says Murphy. Owned by the City of Casper, the facility is expertly managed by OVG 360, a full-service event management company that strives to create a high-quality experience for every event. With an arena capacity of over 8,000, the venue itself offers 106,000 square feet of space including 4 permanent concession stands, 3 subcontracted concession options, and a second- floor meeting space that holds up to 360 people. The venue also has 2,800 free parking spots, which Murphy maintains is “a huge advantage for us as far as customer satisfaction.” Noting that there are some VIP options that include a fee, he conveys, “That is one huge advantage that we have, is the ingress and egress from the building. With 2,800 parking spots everybody gets in fairly quickly or gets out quickly and they don’t pay a dime for it.” Keeping the 40-year-old facility up to date is an ongoing effort, including the installation of new scoreboards through Daktronics Sports 7 years ago, and the replacement of a sound system, which is in the design/build proposal stage. “Hopefully we’ll have it by spring of 2023,” says Murphy. “It’s out for bid right now, so that’s pretty exciting for us. That will include a new set of speakers, a new sound booth, and equipment as well, just to kind of get us up to the 21st century, as we say.” Working with local provider Mountain West, along with Spectrum Enterprise, Ford Wyoming Center is endeavoring to upgrade the current Wi-Fi capabilities of the center. To further this, a Digitally distributed antenna (DAS) system has been installed in the building through