Clubs finding new places for meetings

Four of Cape Girardeau's civic clubs are on the move because of a developer's plan to tear down the Holiday Inn that has been home to club meetings for years.

Cape West Rotary Club will start holding its Thursday noon meetings at the Elks Club near Cape Girardeau County Park North in July.

Rotary Club of Cape Girardeau will move its Monday noon meetings to the Show Me Center in September.

Cape Girardeau Lions Club board members expect to make a final decision on a new site at its weekly noon meeting on Wednesday. The board likely will select the Elks Club, said Bard Womack, who chaired the site committee.

Zonta Club is looking to move its monthly meetings to the University Center or the new meeting room at My Daddy's Cheesecake restaurant on Route W.

Janet Ruopp, a member of the Zonta Club board, said the all-female club hopes to relocate its dinner meetings by June.

The Holiday Inn will close Sept. 1. It will be torn down and replaced with a Holiday Inn Express that, unlike the current hotel, won't house a restaurant.

Members of all three luncheon clubs said they'll miss meeting at the Holiday Inn, where members could go through the buffet line at the restaurant just off the meeting room.

The meetings have been attended by countless civic leaders, a who's who of Cape Girardeau. Speakers have included city and county officials, congressmen and other dignitaries. Many local tax issues have been outlined at the luncheons over the years.

Price hard to beat

A spokesman for Midamerica Hotels Corp., which owns the Holiday Inn, said the civic clubs received free weekly use of a meeting room that typically would rent for $250 a meeting.

Club members paid $7.50 per meal, a discounted price that members of the clubs admit is hard to beat.

Zonta Club members paid $8 per meal with the Holiday Inn staff serving the meal at the tables rather than buffet style. Ruopp said the cost of the dinners could increase by about a dollar per person per meal when the club moves to a new location.

Ruopp said Zonta Club's 50 club members have to pay dues and contribute to many service projects. "They don't want another dollar added onto their meal," she said.

Womack, who headed the Lions Club committee, said his group studied at least a dozen possible meeting sites, including restaurants and the Show Me Center. He said it was hard to find a suitable meeting room that wasn't too costly and was accessible to wheelchair-bound members.

"There is a huge sticker shock out there," he said, because some places want to charge clubs $13 to $14 per person for a noon meeting. "I don't know too many people who eat a $13 or $14 lunch."

Lions Club members would end up paying about a dollar more per person per week to meet at the Elks Club, Womack said.

Members of the Rotary Club of Cape Girardeau will be in about the same boat.

"Nothing's comparable to the price we're paying at the Holiday Inn," said Denise Stewart, the incoming president of the club.

The club will have to pay the Show Me Center a rental charge for use of its meeting room, she said. On top of that there will be the cost of having the meals catered by Port Cape Girardeau.

The cost will be borne by the club members. They'll each pay about $9 per weekly meeting.

Stewart said the club looked at 17 different meeting sites, including church facilities. The sites ranged in price from $8.50 per person to $15 per person, she said.

The Show Me Center seemed the best fit, she said. "They really wanted our business and wanted to work with us," she said.

Varying attendance

Still, lining up catered meals for meetings is tricky when attendance varies from week to week. "The first six months, we'll probably be playing a real game of wait and see," she said.

The club has about 100 members. Stewart said its weekly meetings draw about 80 Rotarians on average. Members can attend other area Rotary clubs when their schedules don't allow them to make the Cape Girardeau Rotary Club meetings, Stewart said.

Stewart said her club has no signed contract with the Show Me Center. "We didn't have a contract with the Holiday Inn, either," she said. Without a contract, the club has the flexibility to relocate should the group find a better deal, Stewart said.

Cape West Rotary Club, which has about 70 members, started looking for a new meeting site as soon as Midamerica Hotels Corp. officials announced the planned closing of the Holiday Inn in January.

"We looked at seven or eight different places," said president-elect Ted Coalter, who takes office July 1.

In the end, the club settled on the Elks Club, which is providing the meeting space at no charge. The Elks Club has agreed to cook the meals, providing a buffet for the weekly Cape West Rotary Club meetings.

The cost will be $6.75 a meal, slightly less than what members are paying to meet at the Holiday Inn, Coalter said. "It is a beautiful place. It overlooks a lake," he said. "I think it worked out pretty well."

Coalter said his club decided to relocate as of July because that is when the organization's new fiscal year starts and its new officers take over.

Even with the economical arrangement, Coalter said he hates to see the old Holiday Inn torn down because it's been such a local landmark. The hotel at William and Interstate 55 opened in 1962.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123