I just attended a 3 hour EC Task Force meeting. Lots of interesting things happened, but the main things I took from the meeting were;
– The ECTF will probably endorse tearing down Howard Wood and building it in that location and
– They will recommend a 12-15,000 seat facility
I know we have been hearing these two things for awhile, but I think that after today’s meeting it is 99.9% set in stone, but let’s start from the beginning;
The meeting started out open to the public and they invited the Howard Wood Task Force to speak about their concerns, they basically came to the conclusion that they would get behind tearing down HW if they got a equal facility to replace it. While this discussion was going on I was amazed by how some ECTF members acted like money was no object. Darin Daby from the School board was very careful to say that they don’t have the money to move it, but also don’t have the money to keep up with upgrades and kind of made it sound like moving it was a wash. ECTF member Terry Baloun commented that the parking was needed. He said it costs $1200 to $1400 to build a hard surface parking space but it costs $17,000 to build a parking ramp space. He didn’t back that up with ANY evidence, but a city engineer(?) did back up the hard surface number, so I was suspicious. I did google it and the number I came up with is about $20,000. Daby mentioned it will probably cost about $20-$25 million to build a new stadium, but doesn’t have any hard numbers. The HWTF seemed to be okay with moving the stadium, but wanted what they have now with upgrades. Obviously there was no discussion of how it would be paid for.
This is where the meeting got interesting, they asked the public and media to leave, when we decided to stay someone had pointed out to Woster that it would be against open meeting laws and so he said it would be fine. Before the second part of the meeting started, Baloun tried to persuade us again to leave, but admitted he didn’t know the legality, so we were welcome to stay. He has actually very cordial about it, and I could tell he didn’t want any controversy. We were all pretty curious why they didn’t want the media and public there, then we found out why. Winkels surveyed the 18 member task force and he had the results of the survey. They will use the survey to put together there recommendations, that was pretty obvious.
Here are some of the results:
Should HW relocate? 15 – Yes 3 – no
Parking Ramp at HW? Â 9 – Yes 6 – No
30-32 Box Suites were suggested
Expand Convention Center? 16 – Yes 1 – No (by 75% square feet)
How big should it be? 12-15,000 seats with expandable seating for different events, and curtains to split it up if they need to. ( I found this interesting, because they can have the illusion that the facility would be used to it’s full capacity, when most of the time, it will probably not.
Some interesting discussion points;
– They have NO target tenant but said they will have an aggressive sales team selling the place.
– They mentioned that Fargo has been in the black since they have built the Fargo Dome because they built it big enough and that Sioux City has been in the red because they built it too small. (I had to laugh when I heard these arguments. First off, Fargo has a way bigger market then SF has, and as for Sioux City being in the red it is because they have too small of a market, even with taking 45% of there ticket sales from Lincoln and Minnehaha county they still operate in the red. That should tell us right there this facility will never make money or be used a capacity for years down the road. We should learn something from the SC comparison.
My conclusion is this;
– Don’t build a new EC at all
– Upgrade HW for $12 million in it’s current location
– Double the size of the convention center
– Refurbish the Arena
– Add a parking ramp
– and fund the whole project with a bed and booze tax. I think we are biting off more then we can chew.
Winkels mentioned to Staggers after the meeting they are shooting to do a formal proposal to the council and public in October. The next step of the Winkels group is to put together a cost performa report and different options.
“My conclusion is this;
– Don’t build a new EC at all
– Upgrade HW for $12 million in it’s current location
– Double the size of the convention center
– Refurbish the Arena
– Add a parking ramp
– and fund the whole project with a bed and booze tax. I think we are biting off more then we can chew.”
~l3wis
Very well said….and in line with what the typical SF voter thinks.
Warren Phear:
“Very well said….and in line with what this typical SF voter thinks.”
I fixed that quote for you.
L3wis,
Two problems with your conclusion, and I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but fuck it:
1. The Arena is next to impossible to expand seating capacity, due to it’s steel skeleton that holds up the roof. It’s built like a VW bug, and notice you never see those as limos?
2. You and the TF still come up with the “all our entertainment eggs in one basket” option and as the city grows we will be dumping more and more people in and out of that crappy location.
Also, one thing apparently no one brought up about Sioux City it they have paid off Tyson Center this year. So it’s obviously been busy enough to allow them to throw some $$ at the pricipal each month. This might be a down year, but I seriously doubt anyone in SC regrets building the place.
I tried to find the blurb from the SC Journal that I referenced a few months ago, but couldn’t.
I know the Arena cannot be expanded BUT it can be refurbished, and you can get creative with seating and acoustics, the reason I say I support refurbishing the Arena, is because I don’t support there plan.
I think they are trying to make SC look negative to have an excuse to build a bigger facility. I wish I could remember the model they are building their idea from but the building would pretty much be a rectangle dome (it was some college stadium). Maybe I will do a quick sketch.
So essentially the task force is just ignoring what the consultants have told them and going with their gut opinion yet again.
Brilliant.
I have to go with WP on this one… you put this to a public vote and it will go down in flames worse than that beloved indoor pool concept. Not only is the economy hurting (even locally) but Howard Wood has a lot of personal emotion tied to it so a lot of people will never support tearing it down.
Add to that the struggle with using the Arena, Convention Center, Events Center, and Ballpark all at the same time from a logistics perspective and I just don’t see it getting public support.
Maybe – and this is a wild idea here – the task force should actually mail out surveys to people instead of hand-picking those they want to quote when it comes time to discuss “public opinion”.
L3wis:
“I wish I could remember the model they are building their idea from but the building would pretty much be a rectangle dome ”
That’s super, a huge fucking concrete box. Maybe we could build some strip malls down the sides for the casinos and payday loan centers while we are at it. Can we be any more lame than that!
The original Arena was designed locally by Spitznagel and had some modern features along with the aforementioned structural components. It was designed to not only look cool, but be functional & safe for a very long time…ie the VW bug.
This is what a goddamn new Arena/EC should be, you friggin’ morons!!! (present company excluded from insult)
http://www.sedgwickcounty.org/arena/
Note this site also has ALL the info, including costs, that you could possibly want.
No. They are not ignoring the report. A TF member brought that up. She basically said, and TF member Jim Entenman backed her up, that the report was telling them the same thing the the report told them in 2005 when he was a member. So in a away they are ignoring the report ‘TWICE’. They don’t like the answer. I thought that was funny, because they have gotten the same report twice with two different task forces and they continue to blow it off. I usually can’t sit for 3 hours, but it was pretty interesting to listen to the members, some very sincere and honest, some, not so much.
They really screwed the pooch when they decided to tear down HWF. The idea is now doomed in a public vote. Not only do they want an ugly clone of the fargodome, but they want to tear down a Sioux Falls icon to do it. What a bunch of fucking group-thinking morons.
The location sucks, the size is all wrong, and with the shape you describe, it sounds like they’ll be aiming to have football as a major tenant – all the worst possible ideas they could have come up with.
Again, not only is the Fargo market bigger than the Sioux Falls market, but that facility was built because the college needed the facility for their football and hockey programs. If this city had a similar-sized university, then there would be legitimate reasons for this facility.
Instead, those giant curtains will never be pulled back. Arena-sized events will now occur in a building almost twice the size.
Not once has the Task Force mentioned how they plan on selling this far out ‘idea’ of tearing down Howard Wood Field and building a huge new Events Center next to all the other sporting facilities (minus the 10,000 seat Howard Wood Field Memorial Football Stadium).
It bothers me even more with the fact that they have limited access points at the location for traffic, plus there could easily be a Huge Convention Happening at the CC, a Storm or Stampede Game happening at the Arena, and a Canaries Baseball game along with baseball down near Covell Lake. Thats just one scenario of why that is such a terrible location. This is NEVER going to pass in the public. Honestly the whole task force is made up of greed and lies. Its absolutely ridiculous. And “We are using what the public has said to begin making our decision” is a load of crap, because the people who were at those meetings folks were AGAINST TEARING DOWN HOWARD WOOD FIELD, and either putting the EC down at I-29/229 or Downtown, like previous report said they should do.
What they don’t realize is that Sioux Falls is somewhat ‘special’ due to the fact that we use our Arena for more than just Minor League and Concerts. We have the Storm, Skyforce, Stampede, HS Basketball Championship, HS Volleyball, HS almost everything (most other states have HS tournaments at High School Gym’s), we also host Regional Conventions inside the Arena and not the Convention Center, we have the Summit League Tournaments, we could easily have other tournaments also like NBA-D, Stampede Hockey’s League, and the IFL Championships too, be we are limited. The site and the Arena itself are becoming so limited in space now, that it is almost impossible to have two events going on at the same time with the Convention Center and Arena. A special note too is the fact that the Convention Center is booked LESS than the ARENA. Now, correct me if I am wrong here, but why would we expand a failing Convention Center as much as the Convention Center Task Force wants to do, when it isnt even full as much as the Arena? Thats why in the City of Sioux Falls’ special case, we are one of the limited number of cities in this country that needs to have “Seperate” facilities like Spokane, Billings, and Evansville.
Darin Daby isn’t taken into account that the majority of students who use the facility at Howard Wood Field live south 26th/33rd Streets. Why would you move that stadium even further north away from all the High School’s? Its absolute nonsense, just leave it where it is, and build an Entertainment Center in a centralized location in the city.
“Instead, those giant curtains will never be pulled back.”
I thought the same thing.
I’d like to ask the task-farce one important question that I think is on all our minds here.
Not “what were you thinking”, not “why did you ignore the very well-paid people who told you to put it elsewhere” – no, the burning question we all need an answer to is this: Does it hurt to be that stupid?
BTW, not to change the subject, Ghost of DAD, when are we having the baby post!?
Maybe I’ll post something when I get home. I don’t have any pictures on my work computer.
Let the people that want it pay for it. I bet if that was the case it would be dropped like a hot potato.