2025 Most Respected Leader: Paul Cramer, Be Our Guest

One destination solidly in the mix is The Classic Center, an award-winning venue comprising a convention center, theater and, most recently, the newly constructed 8,500-seat Akins Ford Arena. The Classic Center’s reputation is unparalleled in the hospitality industry, and its success locally and statewide can be attributed to a number of factors: the backing of the community, an engaged and active board of directors, and the consistent, visionary leadership of Paul Cramer, president and CEO since its opening three decades ago.

Building an Economic Engine

“What Paul Cramer and his staff at The Classic Center have done is create an economic engine beyond the University of Georgia,” says David Bradley, president and CEO of the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce. “When you look at communities of our size, you typically don’t have a theater space for 2,000 [people]. You don’t have a convention center that could hold 3,000 people who are in town for a weekend. But it happens all the time here.”

A Passion for Service: Paul Cramer and Jennifer Zwirn, chair of The Classic Center Authority board, at Akins Ford Arena. Photo credit: Windgate Downs.

More than 350,000 people walk through The Classic Center’s doors, attending 650-plus convention center programs or theater events annually. That number will grow exponentially with the influx of patrons attending events at the $151 million Akins Ford Arena, which opened in December 2024. The arena is home to the Athens Rock Lobsters professional hockey team and the University of Georgia Ice Dawgs club hockey team, and it also hosts concerts, sporting events and other special performances.

While the arena has enjoyed strong ticket sales across programming, the project wasn’t a guaranteed success. Bradley says early public comments suggesting the arena wouldn’t succeed or wasn’t necessary were similar to those made when The Classic Center was built in the 1990s.

Award-Winning Venue: The Classic Center interior. Photo credit: contributed.

Nevertheless, Cramer held firm and advocated for the enhancements, believing they would benefit downtown Athens and the entire region by enabling The Classic Center to offer a venue that would attract higher profile shows and performers. He was right. The economic development boost was immediate. Arena patrons ate at downtown restaurants and booked hotel rooms in the area. More jobs were created as arena and downtown businesses required more workers, many of whom were trained in workforce education programs Cramer helped develop over the decades.

I have found the hospitality industry to be one of the few [industries] where you can literally start at the bottom and work your way up. Paul Cramer

“Now there’s not a soul in this community who would not say The Classic Center is an incredible asset to the community,” Bradley says. “Likewise, I believe the same thing is going to be said for the arena, the expanded complex and the overall impact that The Classic Center brings to Athens and Northeast Georgia. I just think [Cramer] is resilient, and I think great leaders have to be resilient in their vision.”

Award-Winning Venue: The Classic Center interior. Photo contributed.

A Generous Leadership Style

Similarly, Jennifer Zwirn, an Athens business owner and chair of The Classic Center Authority board, noted that she found Cramer to be the consummate problem solver. Whether the situation involves funding a multimillion-dollar project or staffing an event, Zwirn has absolute faith in his ability to deliver.

“I learned very quickly that I could always bet on Paul,” she says. “He would not give up until he found a solution.”

Strong Ticket Sales: The Athens Rock Lobsters hockey team at Akins Ford Arena. Photo contributed.

For example, the total cost of the arena was $151 million. The Classic Center received $34 million from Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) funds to begin the project. Zwirn, a former banker, was impressed as she watched Cramer create a mixed capital stack, pulling together the balance of the total funding from different sources. Those sources included funds from a capital campaign that raised $2.6 million, bonds that were sold and backed by the citizens of Athens-Clarke County, and leveraging ticket fees, ground leases and even air rights at the arena.

But Zwirn is equally enthusiastic about Cramer’s generous leadership style. He is the prototypical servant leader – never asking subordinates to do something he isn’t willing to do himself.

“Just about everybody, from mid-level management and above, can hop up [on a stage] and speak or present or guide,” she says. “It’s part of how they train [employees]. I think the best example was when COVID happened, and they had trouble finding servers.”

At annual chamber of commerce dinners or other events, Zwirn recalls seeing Classic Center executives – including Cramer – guiding guests to their seats, waiting tables and clearing plates.

“When you couldn’t find temp workers anywhere, they rolled up their sleeves and started working so that nobody had an interruption in their service,” she says. “It blew me away.”

Working His Way Up

Service is Cramer’s passion; it’s what he loves about his industry.

“I have found the hospitality industry to be one of the few [industries] where you can literally start at the bottom and work your way up,” he says.

Trained By the Best: Paul Cramer, right, with his late boss Joseph Floreano, the longtime executive director of the Rochester Riverside Convention Center. Photo contributed.

Cramer’s got the dishpan hands to prove it. When he was 14 years old, he left his paper route to become the dishwasher at The Lobster Pound, a seafood restaurant in Albany, New York, where he grew up. He stayed at the restaurant, working his way in and out of the kitchen – bussing and waiting tables, tending bar, then back in the kitchen working as a cook – until he was 20. His uncle encouraged him to study hotel management in college, which he paid for by working numerous jobs at a convention center in Rochester. It was through his work at the Rochester Convention Center that he learned about a new center being built in Athens in the mid-1990s.

Cramer recalls that Athens hired his boss to consult on the center. “I would pick him up at the airport in Rochester when he came home, and he always commented on the nice weather, the nice people, the great leadership, this amazing college town,” Cramer says. “Eventually, they were looking for someone to lead the opening of the center in 1995. I asked his permission to throw my name in.”

Cramer says neither man expected anything to come of it, but when Cramer got the offer, he took it. Thirty years and five expansions later, he’s still in Athens and loving it. His greatest joy is in giving back to the community that embraced him with open arms. And now, with the Akins Ford Arena poised to present an additional 125 events, approximately 58 of which will be multi-day events, downtown businesses stand to benefit even more.

“By bringing people in from all over the state, [visitors] have to stay in our hotels and eat in our restaurants and shop in the stores,” Cramer says. “If you know downtown Athens, these aren’t giant conglomerates, these are individual owners that took a risk and invested in our community.”

Investing in the Next Generation

Restaurants filled with patrons and fully booked hotels are great, but it’s no secret that the workforce has taken a hit. And without workers, everything grinds to a halt. This is where Cramer’s love of the hospitality industry kicks into overdrive. For years, Cramer has taken a leading role in building a sustainable and robust workforce pipeline at every level of the Athens-Clarke County hospitality industry.

Resilient Leader: Paul Cramer at The Classic Center. Photo credit: Matt Odom.

Cramer transformed The Classic Center into a “learning lab” for people interested in making a career in hospitality. Along with industry partners, he developed several tracks, creating connections between those seeking work and those looking for well-trained workers.

Each summer, The Classic Center hosts 200-plus young people who apply to attend the Hospitality Careers Academy.

The weeklong event introduces students to the hospitality industry through an immersive, behind-the-scenes experience in event planning, encompassing marketing, culinary arts, purchasing, stage production and more.

For those ready to make a more serious commitment to their career journey, the Athens Community Career Academy offers a Hospitality Academy, giving high school students opportunities to enter the culinary arts pathway or the entertainment, sports and events management pathway. From there, students can transition directly to two-year programs at Athens Technical College, gaining hands-on experience in the hospitality industry, or pursue undergraduate programs at UGA.

The Classic Center Foundation offers scholarships to students planning to study at UGA or Athens Tech to pursue careers in hospitality, events, music or sports management. The Classic Center also provides scholarships through a fund created in Cramer’s honor in 2019.

Fifteen years ago, Cramer founded the nonprofit Bread for Life Athens, through the Career Connect program. It’s a 15-week training program for young people aged 16 to 21, designed to expose trainees, often those unable to attend school due to various reasons, to as many aspects of the hospitality industry as possible. Trainees work and earn while they learn and are typically hired upon completing the course. There are currently nine trainees in the program.

“There are days I’m stopped in and around town by one of the prior [Bread for Life] students. They’ll remember me, and they’re so proud that they’re now working at a restaurant or a hotel and can’t wait to tell me all the things,” Cramer says. “[Bread for Life] makes a big difference.”

The goal of all these efforts is to elevate jobs across the entire hospitality vertical – from housekeeping to management – letting workers know how valued they are while emphasizing the flexibility and portability of the jobs. Employees can start in hospitality but switch to other fields later in their careers. Cramer notes that constructing the arena required employees who had skills in developing plans for parking, ticketing and procuring food and beverages.

“All of those skills are 100% transferable to other businesses,” he says. “It’s exciting when you watch an employee walk in the door as an intern in the ticketing office, and then down the road, they are running my foundation or some other division.”

Creating Amazing Experiences

Fred Butler, the Athens Sales Center manager for Coca-Cola Bottling UNITED, describes Cramer as “more than a customer.”

Receiving Accolades: Jennifer Zwirn presents Paul Cramer with the Visionary Leadership Award at the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting. Photo credit: contributed.

“He’s a good friend, a leader and a steward of the Athens community,” says Butler, who serves with Cramer on the Athens Technical College Foundation board and in the Rotary Club, where the motto is “Service Above Self.”

“That’s Paul,” says Butler. “He’s never said, let me get credit for this, whether it’s Bread for Life or the foundation or a donation. If he can do something for others, the answer is ‘yes.’ Most of the time, when people do things, they want the light to be on themselves, even if they say they don’t. They say one thing but act differently when the camera is not on them. Paul Cramer acts the same.”

The Classic Center is a frequent award winner. It has received the Stella Award for Best Conference Center (Gold) from Northstar Meetings Group, an industry association, multiple times, most recently in 2024. This past February, the Georgia Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus presented Cramer with the Tom Kilgore Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Georgia Tourism Awards. The award recognizes individuals who demonstrate outstanding, lifelong dedication to Georgia’s tourism industry, a description that fits him to a T. Soon after, Cramer was surprised when his own Athens Area Chamber of Commerce presented him with the Visionary Leadership Award.

It’s exciting when you watch an employee walk in the door as an intern in the ticketing office, and then down the road, they are running my foundation or some other division. Paul Cramer

“It was an award specifically created for him because no one has done quite what he’s done,” Zwirn says. “It has been fun seeing him get accolades because he is such a person who works in the background. You’ve got these big, beautiful buildings that are always humming with people coming in and going out, coming in to visit and going to conferences. Then going downtown, getting coffee, shopping and walking the campus. I don’t believe there is a person in Athens’ history who has had a greater impact on the livelihood and safety of downtown.”

Learning Lab: Paul Cramer, third from left, with students who participated in Hospitality Careers Academy, which is offered each summer at The Classic Center.\ Photo credit: contributed.

The same excitement that drove Cramer from his paper route to washing dishes, from Albany to Athens, is what drives him today. Cramer likes to quote his dad, who told him that if he found something he loved, he’d never work a day in his life.

“I think that’s the key,” he says. “Every day I’ve been in the industry, I have loved what I have done. When you think about what we do, we create amazing experiences. Our job is just to lift that experience up and make it memorable, so [guests] tell 27 other people about it, and they want to come back again and again. And when they do, it helps so many people.”