As the new interim board moves to try and fix what ails the Downtown Facility and Fieldhouse, two consultants have now been hired to observe the operations at Mosaic Place and Yara Centre for the next three months.

George Fowler and Will Antonishyn have been hired for the positions and City councillor Brian Swanson says Fowler, who is currently the General Manager of the Moose Jaw Exhibition Company, will be a good fit.

"You name it, he's going to come in and acquaint himself with the facility... and he'll he bringing whatever he finds to us at the board." said Swanson. "He's been hired to provide operations advice with respect to facilities and his expertise in food and beverage, facilities management and turning over facilities from one event to another."

Fowler ran in the recent civic election as part of a slate that included Swanson and councillor Dawn Luhning, along with Gerry Gieni. In their press materials, they called themselves "independent-minded candidates with common goals,".  In the end, only Swanson and Luhning were elected.

Will Antonishyn is the other consultant that has been hired and is from Saskatoon where he had a long career at what is now SaskTel Centre as director of finance and ticketing. However, his hiring by the DFFH board will not be without some criticism. He and a co-worker were fired in 2011 for "improper spending" on a trip to Arizona they claimed was for business.

The move to an interim board and review of the DFFH operations came after a report from Meyers Norris Penny in September that listed a whole host of operational and managerial issues at the two facilities. A quick look at the report provided some insight into the issues such as the two facilities have more managers than other organizations of comparable size. The report also pointed out that there was an apparent lack of formal training and oversight provided by the DFFH board.
 
Page 23 of the report suggested that too much trust was likely placed in Scott Clark as CEO with MNP saying his early success in getting the facility off the ground and bringing in high profile events contributing to a lack of annual performance monitoring by the board.
 
"The board and CEO have not fully understood their role, relationship and accountability to the other or with City Council." said the report. " The board has been too reliant on the CEO for interpreting financial data and performance results."

Clark resigned from the position earlier in the summer of 2016 and completed his last day with the DFFH shortly before the report was released publicly.