POCATELLO — After 42 years in the events and facilities business, George Casper certainly didn’t think it was going to end this way.

But the director of events at the ICCU Dome received a notification of non-renewal recently, a victim of the layoffs and budget reductions that have impacted the entire Idaho State University campus.

“I wasn’t planning on retiring,” said Casper, who has managed the ICCU Dome, and its earlier iterations as Holt Arena and the Minidome, for 29 years over two different stints. “I’m exploring all of my options. At this point, I don’t know what’s next.”

Casper’s contract to manage facilities at ISU, including the ICCU Dome, Reed Gymnasium and the Performing Arts Center, expires on June 20. Casper’s position has been eliminated as part of a restructuring effort that will merge the university’s auxiliary services team with the event management organization that Casper managed, according to Brian Sagendorf, vice president of operations for Idaho State.

“We’re going to be merging event services with the larger auxiliary services team, which oversees the student union, student housing, our student activities and student events,” said Sagendorf. “One thing we’ve recognized is that we have a decentralized event operation. This will bring those units into more alignment, and give us a larger team with pooled resources.”

Casper, who first began his career in facilities at ISU in 1983, declined to go into detail about his feelings on his non-renewal, or to talk about his career at the university. “Not at this time,” he said when asked for comment on his departure.

Sagendorf said he doesn’t foresee one person replacing Casper in overseeing all events at the ICCU Dome, Reed Gymnasium or the Performing Arts Center. Rather, he sees the development of specialized teams for each facility that will have their own leaders.

In a 2023 interview with the Journal, Casper said the key to his success in the facilities management business, which also included stints at venues in Montana and Texas, was “being able to adapt and change.” He talked about how the dome had morphed over the years from being not only an athletics-oriented facility but to a multi-use entertainment center for the community — and then back again to a largely athletics-dominated venue.

When Holt Arena opened in 1970, it housed not only the ISU football and basketball programs, but it hosted concerts, indoor rodeos, dance festivals, spring fares, RV and outdoor shows, monster truck exhibitions and Idaho high school championships in wrestling, football and basketball. Some of the greatest performers in the world — Bob Hope, Bob Dylan, Garth Brooks, the Bolshoi Ballet, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir — made their way to Pocatello to perform in the facility.

During his three decades of association with the dome, Casper got to rub elbows with many of those stars. In the 2023 interview, he talked about how he became friends with Brooks, the country music star who played at the dome in 1993. Casper first met Brooks and his brother, who was his manager, while Casper was working at the events center in Billings, Mont. Casper was put in charge of taking care of the needs of Brooks, who was still a struggling young performer, and the opening act for Reba McEntire. He developed an ongoing relationship with the Brooks brothers, and stayed in touch as Garth’s career exploded.

When Casper moved back to Pocatello to manage the dome, Casper let the Brooks brothers know he’d love to have Garth play in Pocatello.

One morning, Casper got a call from Brooks’ brother, who wanted to meet with him that afternoon. The Brooks team flew up on their private plane from Dallas, and met with Casper to discuss an upcoming stadium show they were planning. They wanted to use the dome as a test venue for the production, and they reached agreement on staging the show in Pocatello. Garth himself was a key part of the discussions and the negotiations with Casper.

For much of its first 40 years, the dome was a very active concert venue and Casper was directly involved in the planning and execution of many of those shows. But over time, the dome became the victim of the demand by the biggest name acts for larger pay days, and of the necessity to accommodate huge amounts of sound, lighting and video equipment that exceed the dome’s infrastructure capacity.

Those two factors essentially brought an end to the dome’s ability to serve as a concert venue. The professional rodeo was attracted to larger venues and bigger gates, the remodeling of the dome in 2023 foreclosed indoor monster truck shows, ISU’s basketball teams relocated to Reed Gym and the local high schools moved their regular season football games to school district owned facilities.

In the meantime, the demands on the dome from the ISU football team increased. As Casper noted in the 2023 interview, “In athletics, there was an off-season and they didn’t train all year around. There’s no such thing as off-season anymore, so that’ s changed their needs.”

Idaho State Athletic Director Pauline Thiros noted that Casper has always been flexible when it came to supporting the needs of the athletic department.

“George has been invaluable,” Thiros said. “He’s been a terrific partner to athletics. He’s really worked hard to ensure that our fans and our athletes have everything they need to be successful. I really appreciate George. It (his non-renewal) is kind of illustrative of the hard decisions our units on campus are having to make in light of the current budget situation.”

Many southeastern Idahoans may know Casper from their interactions with him and his staff at the many various events they have attended on campus. Having a largely consistent and dedicated group of permanent staff and part-timers has been the key to carrying off successful events, Casper told the Journal.

“I’ve always worked with excellent people,” he said. “We have a lot of consistency, there are a lot of familiar faces that you’ve seen over the years. The consistency is the key for us. Our group collectively has a sense of pride that we are going to deliver the best product we can.”

In the 2023 interview, Casper expressed appreciation for the many people that helped him learn and grow in the venue management business. They included former ISU Athletic Director Milton “Dubby” Holt, Ray Ritari, his first boss in the business, Barbara Hart, the long-time ticket manager who schooled Casper on the ticketing process, former athletic director Babe Caccia, and two long-time ISU staffers who were around when the dome first opened — former trainer Phil Luckey and sports information director Glenn Alford.

“All of those peopled were so helpful and so friendly in different aspects,” Casper said. “Anything I needed, a question or something I needed help with, they were always a tremendous resource for me personally. The thing about those guys (and gals) was that they were willing to help a young guy… They were all critical in my development.”

Sagendorf, the ISU vice president, said he doesn’t see the restructuring of event and auxiliary staffs leading to fewer campus events — rather, he sees the need for more events which will generate more income. He said the university is going to reduce the amount of appropriated funds provided to support such events and activities, and will need those events to be more self-sufficient in the future.

“Part of that funding is bringing in critical auxiliary revenue from ticket sales — we need more of those events, not fewer,” said Sagendorf, who added no decisions have been made on whether the university will be raising fees for outside uses of ISU facilities.

He did say there will be a more energetic marketing effort to increase the number of on-campus events, and the revenue generated by those events.

Sagendorf added that he hopes Casper will be a key contributor to the restructuring process in his last few months with the university.

“George is an important part of our organization,” said Sagendorf. “He has been a key leader. I wish George nothing but the best. He has been an absolute pleasure to work with.”