Augusta civic center complex management company Global Spectrum is looking to right a past wrong.

General Manager Monty Jones wants to woo back the North Georgia Annual Conference of United Methodists, which gave up on the James Brown Arena in 2002 in one of the old Augusta-Richmond County Coliseum Authority's starkest embarrassments.

Mr. Jones, Mayor Deke Copenhaver, Coliseum Authority Chairman Cedric Johnson and Augusta Convention and Visitors Bureau Vice President of Sales Peggy Seigler met Tuesday morning with Gary Dean, Augusta district superintendent for the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Mr. Jones said at a Coliseum Authority meeting later in the day that he's hoping the conference will reconsider Augusta now that the civic center has a more positive public image.

It's being professionally managed, and this year the state Legislature revamped the authority board, replacing all of its members and reducing the number from 12 to seven.

Should the Rev. Dean be successful in lobbying to return the conference to Augusta, the earliest the city could get it back would be 2014, Mr. Jones said.

When the four-day conference took place in Augusta earlier in the decade, it brought in 2,500 delegates and had an estimated economic impact of $2.5 million.

In June 2002, delegates arrived at the Civic Center -- since renamed the James Brown Arena -- to find meeting rooms and coliseum space filthy and littered with trash.

The group also complained of rude catering staff, late meals, and bathrooms being dirty and sometimes nonfunctional.

Conference volunteers had to help serve food and beverages.

Later that month, the Coliseum Authority voted 6-4 to fire General Manager Reggie Williams over the debacle and to refund the Methodists the balance of a $54,000 civic center bill.

But Methodist officials said they had lost confidence in the civic center's leadership and decided to move to Athens.

The conference has been held there in the Classic Center ever since.