The Tribune

By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Tribune Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

AS Fusion Superplex’s financial woes persist, its chief executive officer, Carlos Foulkes, told The Tribune that officials were grateful for the holiday surge in business and equally hopeful this would allow the facility to break even this month.

In a candid interview yesterday, Mr Foulkes said executives saw the business boom as a light at the end of the tunnel “to help us to begin to climb out of the hole that we’re in”.

The cinema and entertainment complex managed to retain about 300 workers of its original staff complement since reopening earlier this year after being closed for about 11 months due to restrictions sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The employees who did not return sought more stable means of income to support their families, creating gaps in labour at Fusion.

“We have been grateful for the increase in business and the holidays are responsible for that,” Mr Foulkes said yesterday during an interview at the facility’s Pure VIP Lounge.

 “We did see some of the crowds that came in over the holiday weekends. We believe it’s because of Fusion being the only Over-the-Hill main entertainment facility during this period—the carnival was closed, there was no Junkanoo—and so there was indeed a surge and we are grateful for that and it’s going to help us to begin to climb out of the hole that we’re in, but it’s still a long ways off from getting back to normal.

 “I just hope that this allows us to break even this month.”

 Tecoyo Bridgewater, Fusion’s chief legal officer, also spoke of how the facility suffered financial loss due to the cancellation of its annual New Year’s party.

 He said executives of the facility wanted to be good corporate citizens and opted to cancel the event due to the rise in COVID-19 cases in recent days.

The cancellation resulted in Fusion having to forgo $50,000 in revenue that would have aided payments to vendors, employees and other commitments.

 “As a business we have a number of amenities being our movies, our restaurants, our arcade as well as our events department,” Mr Bridgewater said.

 “Of course, it’s a big part of our bottom line and so what we as a business who are providing those amenities to our customers, we decided that in our persistence in trying to aid the country as it relates to eradicating the spread of this new variant, we decided that we would put off our annual New Year’s event along with our partners.

 “We said, you know what, we are not going to host the mass event on the outside even though it affected our revenue, even though it’s something that we needed,” he said.

 Asked what was Fusion’s plan to continue operations  outside of the holiday rush, Mr Foulkes said this created some “ambiguity”.

 He appealed to health officials to keep medium sized businesses in mind when enforcing restrictions if more were to come.

 “See, this is where we have the ambiguity. What we have asked the Ministry of Health to do is to at least give us sufficient time to react to some of the impending protocols,” Mr Foulkes said.

 “Business can’t be a knee jerk reaction. We must continue to operate for the economy to be stable, for the economy to grow, for people to recover economically and we largely depend on knowing that we have reasonable operating conditions ahead.

 “When we have these new variants popping up and cases rising quickly and the ministry is responding and those responses can be putting limitations on business activities that can have a significant negative impact on the business’ revenue and our ability to plan is also compromised, and so we are taking this one week at a time to be quite frank.

 “We hope that we have the capacity to continue normal operations. We hope that this new variant, even though it’s more transmissible, we hope that the reports of it being less deadly with less cases of hospitalisation, we hope those are accurate so that even if a person is catching it, they are not significantly ill and they can return to normal life faster.

 “So, there is maybe good news there, but I am cautious to set a long-term plan in place not knowing what’s going to happen next week by some government mandate or some change in the medical environment.”

 Fusion executives appealed to patrons to come early to purchase items from the concession stand, order tickets online to avoid large gatherings at the site and adhere to health measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.