Following the conclusion of March's men's and women's basketball tournaments at the Charleston Civic Center, the Mountain East Conference event became a free agent, going out to bid to cities interested in throwing their hats into the ring to host the tournaments.
MEC commissioner Reid Amos confirmed Tuesday that Charleston has some competition, as the City of Huntington has also officially submitted a bid. Amos said that requests for proposals from other potential hosts may continue to be filed until the bid years are filled, but the conference will likely announce its decision on future tournament sites as soon as next month.
The city that is chosen for the current bid will be the host of the 2018 and 2019 MEC basketball tournaments with the option of hosting in 2020 as well.
"Much like how we embrace competition among our student-athletes, the MEC strongly believes that competition to host our basketball tournament is the best way to determine the value that potential host cities and venues would place on the opportunity to host our event," Amos said. "Other than to confirm that, at this point, we have received bids from the City of Charleston and the City of Huntington, our policy is to not further comment on filed or potential bids during the selection process until a selection is announced by the MEC."
Amos believes that the MEC tournament is a very valuable event that should be attractive to potential host venues. Since the league began play in 2014, the Mountain East has emerged as one of the premier conferences in Division II college basketball. This season saw three teams earn bids to the NCAA tournament out of the MEC, including national runner-up Fairmont State and MEC tournament champion West Liberty.
For years, the MEC - and formerly the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference - tournament has been held at the Charleston Civic Center, and city officials are hopeful that they will be able to continue to host the event in the future.
In Huntington's bid, submitted for the tournament through the Cabell-Huntington Convention and Visitors Bureau and the City of Huntington, the tournament would be held at Marshall University's Cam Henderson Center. Marshall officials confirmed Tuesday the proposed use of the Henderson Center as the tournament site.
"It was recently stated that the MEC basketball tournament had an estimated $2 million in local economic impact for the City of Charleston in 2017," Amos said. "Our expectation is that host cities and venues would be very interested in providing significant incentives to bring our event to their city. We are looking forward to reviewing the opportunities being offered to the MEC."
After changes to the tournament format from the conference, as well as adjusting the way the city promoted the event to visitors, Charleston is confident that its bid will show that it is the best choice to host the tournament in the future. Charleston added several components to its hosting package this past season, including partnerships with local restaurants and providing meals to participating teams in attempts to lower the bottom line for the MEC and its members.
But the city isn't surprised to hear it has competition, either.
"We're putting our best foot forward and I think we've put together a bid that makes a very strong case for keeping it here for the future," said Rod Blackstone, senior assistant to Charleston Mayor Danny Jones. "I'm hopeful and optimistic that when the conference looks at the progress we've made, looks at the way we're continuing to improve the product and the strong conviction here locally, they'll see it's worth keeping the tournament here."