There are no events at Joel Coliseum in February except Wake Forest University basketball games, but university and coliseum officials say more events will be announced as the partnership they announced last September evolves.

Last September, Wake Forest announced that it had inked a five-year deal whereby Greensboro Coliseum Complex would manage non-university events at Joel Coliseum and the university’s athletic stadiums.

When Greensboro officials sent out their February listing of coming events, attractions at the coliseum in Greensboro included a circus, a concert by country singer Luke Bryant, the Winterjam 2014 Christian music show and a gymnastics competition – in addition to four UNC Greensboro basketball games.

What events would you like to see at the coliseum?

Joel Coliseum has five Wake Forest basketball games for February, but no non-sporting events until a March 13-15 appearance by Joyce Meyer Ministries.

“The results will be more evident as we get down the road, but we are comfortable,” said Steve Shutt, who is the associate athletic director at Wake Forest in media relations. “We are not concerned. The Greensboro Coliseum is not really booking anything more than they normally do. Frankly, before this partnership with Greensboro, there had been a period when the sale was pending that the coliseum folks were not working to try to book acts at that time.”

Andrew Brown, the public relations manager of the Greensboro Coliseum Complex, said that his organization is only “five months into a five-year deal.”

“The process of recruiting, booking and contracting of events can take months, and in some cases many months,” he said in an email. “We are still in the relatively early stages of cultivating new and existing relationships to bring more events to Winston, but it’s not an ‘overnight’ process.”

Brown said that the Greensboro Coliseum team hopes to have additional event listings in the near future for Joel Coliseum.

Scott Johnson, the deputy director of Greensboro Coliseum Complex, points out that by the end of the basketball season, Joel Coliseum will have also hosted 34 home games for the Wake Forest men’s and women’s teams. He said that by the end of July this year, Joel Coliseum will have had about 50 events.

Joel and Greensboro Coliseum are being kept separate for promotional purposes, Brown said. The Greensboro venues are on a web site at www.greensborocoliseum.com while the Joel Coliseum events are listed at www.ljvm.com.

“Wake/LJVM will continue to be a separate identity,” he said. “There will be a newly redesigned ljvm.com that will be hopefully launching next week. The new site will be dedicated to all LJVM events … and include LJVM booking information and a lot of the bells and whistles and auxiliary info that you see on (the Greensboro coliseum site).”

Under the deal that Wake Forest signed with Greensboro Coliseum last year, Wake Forest pays $115,000 per year for five years, with extra incentives based on event turnout split between the university and the Greensboro Coliseum Complex.

In addition to the Coliseum, the deal covers athletic fields at Wake Forest. The deal became possible when the Winston-Salem City Council voted in May to sell Joel Coliseum to Wake Forest.

Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines said that he has not heard much comment about the sale or new management of the coliseum, but thinks the relationship is still a young one.

“One of our objectives was of course to make sure that there was still good utilization of the facility and that events were available for the citizens,” Joines said. “I know Wake Forest is committed to that and I’m sure they will make that happen.”

wyoung@wsjournal.com

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