by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
If Argentina’s economy hadn’t gone south, Edward Scully would probably still be living in downtown Buenos Aires.
Now he’s living in downtown Jacksonville, and he’s “awestruck” by the changes he’s seen.
“I’m a Jacksonville boy,” said Scully, the new convention services manager at the Adam’s Mark Hotel. “Ten of the best years of my life were in Argentina. I was also never so happy as to be back in my own city.”
With a bachelor’s degree in marketing from the University of North Florida, Scully has worked at hotels in Florida, North Carolina, Texas and California. After a stint as general manager of a Holiday Inn in Conroe, Texas, he opted for a change of scenery.
“I left the States in 1993 and went to live in Argentina,” said Scully. “I had a small consulting business. I worked with people looking to understand franchises here in the States.
“They would receive preliminaries, and they didn’t understand all the words, so I’d go over it with them. I mostly worked with executives and brought presentations together.”
Scully found he was drawn to the country after completing a paper on Tierra del Fuego for an anthropology class at UNF.
He is also a certified teacher of English as a foreign language through the University of California and was a volunteer language consultant during his years in Argentina.
“I hated to be away from my family, but I went down and had 10 excellent years,” Scully said. “It’s a spectacular country, and the people are as beautiful. I have some of my closest friends down there; we maintain relationships by telephone and e-mail.
“But the economy collapsed, and the situation was very, very bad. There wasn’t a peso or a dollar in the street. I had no choice but to come back to the States.”
Scully was eager to return to the hotel business. He soon was pounding on the door of the Adam’s Mark, “and they gave me an opportunity” in the summer of 2002 to manage banquets.
Even more responsibility goes with being convention services manager.
“When large conventions are coming into the city, sales has already closed the deal,” he said. “They give it to me to make it happen. And there’s not a thing I don’t know about a hotel.
“One of my fortes is flexibility. I can do whatever the person asks me to do. If I can’t do it, I know who to ask.”
The bottom line on conventioneers’ requests is pretty simple.
“They want it hassle free,” said Scully. “That’s pretty much it. They don’t want to be bothered with anything.
“They come in the door, and they say, ‘Scully, this is what we need; this is what we’re doing. It’s up to you to make it work.’ ”
The Adam’s Mark, with more than 900 rooms, is equipped to handle just about anything that comes the hotel’s way, he said.
“No group is the same,” said Scully. “So we work quite a while out. We have a long lead time, because these are really big conventions, and we’ll have some last-minute changes.
“But there’s nothing we can’t handle. As long as we know in advance what they need, we can make arrangements for it.”
Scully’s parents live in Cedar Hills, and that’s the neighborhood he visited after leaving Jacksonville 20 years ago. He seldom, if ever, came downtown. Now he lives there.
“In Buenos Aires, I lived downtown,” he said. “I like the fact I can walk to work.
“I lived everywhere in the States from North Carolina to California. And I lived in South America. I was awestruck when I came back at how clean and organized the city was.
“Mayor [John] Delaney and Mayor [John] Peyton have done wonders for this city. When I actually came downtown, I was so impressed. The Skyway, the clean streets. People at 5 o’clock in the morning watering the plants along the road. The rivers clean.
“I can sit right here and watch dolphins play in the river. When I lived here before, they’d have to medevac them out, the water was so toxic. But it’s really spectacular now.”