BATON ROUGE — The next step in the future of the Raising Cane’s River Center is just a few days away.
Visit Baton Rouge is taking proposals to find the company that will handle day-to-day operations at the facility when the current contract with Legends Global expires at the end of 2026. Legends has been managing the River Center for several years, and recently parted ways with Wayne Hodes, who had been the general manager at the River Center since late 2021.
Visit Baton Rouge will serve as interim management for the facility for about the next two years.
The deadline to submit proposals is Oct. 5 at 5 p.m.
Financial records attached to the request for proposals show that the River Center has lost money nearly every year from 2019 through 2025. The pandemic obviously played a significant part in that, with the greatest losses occurring in 2020, when the facility finished the year more than $950,000 in the red. That year the facility had only 44 events, less than a third of the typical number in other years.
In 2025, the River Center ended up with just over $127,000 in losses from 147 events.
The biggest revenue generator was food and beverages, which brought in more than $4.2 million in 2025, or nearly 70 percent of the $6.13 million in total revenue that year.
The changes come as hopes are high for a different role for the River Center. As LSU prepares to create a new arena for large-scale events, the city-parish wants to focus on attracting conventions to the River Center, where it hopes to replace the existing arena and add a hotel to the complex that will make it convenient for convention attendees to stay at the convention site.
The Metro Council approved an ordinance in 2024 voluntarily limiting the size of live events at the River Center to 3,500 people to protect the potential for events to be held at the LSU arena intended to replace the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
The council will have to ultimately approve the contract. According to the request for proposals, the companies that submit proposals will do presentations in mid-October and Visit Baton Rouge will choose the best proposal by Oct. 26. The council is expected to approve the contract by Dec. 9 so the company can be ready to begin when the current contract expires on Dec. 31, according to the proposal request.
Jess Genung, a marketing and politicial consultant who has been advocating for transparency and accountability for River Center practices, said she and some of her clients are watching to make sure they see the kinds of changes they believe are necessary.
Some of the past contracts for management of the River Center did not require either, Genung said.
“We’ve been working behind the scenes with the city parish for a while now to be able to try to work on fixing some of these things, and so in that process, the right people have we’ve gotten the right people’s attention to be able to have the right changes made, which ultimately does come down to a better written contract,” she said.
Genung said that Legends Global and one other company – Oak View Group, or OVG – have expressed plans to submit proposals.
OVG is working on the LSU arena project, which Genung said may make it a good fit to also handle the River Center.
“If you really look at how that would turn out, a lot of people think the LSU Arena is going to take away from the River Center,” she said. “But if you have the same management company over both, and they’re working together, both facilities can do very well.”
Metro Council member Aaron Moak has been involved with organizations that have used the River Center for events. The organizations have had good experiences there, but he said he’s aware that some groups have felt pressured to use pricier vendors that the River Center prefers.
He said he believes that, going forward, the city-parish will be in a better position to monitor contract details to address concerns users have raised.
“I think it’s a good thing – the path that we’re heading,” he said.
The council has already approved the hiring of Butch Spyridon as the navigator to handle the implementation of the city-parish vision for the project. He is the former heard of the Baton Rouge Area Convention and Visitors Bureau – which is now called Visit Baton Rouge – and spent 32 years running a similar agency in Nashville, Tenn. He retired from that post in 2023 and has worked as a consultant to Visit Baton Rouge since then.
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