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I love letters to the editor by Roger. Not sure if you know, but Roger often speaks at the City Council meetings, you can’t miss him, he looks like Merlin the wizard, minus the robe;

A few years ago, we contemplated a new events center when Des Moines, Iowa, built one. Des Moines has three times the population we have, and three months after building it, the city fired all three managers since they were not able to fill it as expected.

Trust me Roger, there is a lot of people I would like to fire at city hall. But the first to go would be the Event Center task force.

13 Thoughts on “Responsible management running our entertainment facilities? Get out!

  1. Costner on August 31, 2009 at 8:28 am said:

    Shouldn’t a task force actually complete a task? After five or six years you might think we would actually have a clear vision of where the EC should go, what size it should be, and above all what the true purpose of building it really is.

    Is this supposed to be a multi-use facility? It is intented to be primarily for sporting events? Is it intended to attract large entertainers and concerts? Is it going to replace and/or supplement the existing Arena and Pavilion?

    It seems there is no clear vision involved here – one minute they tell us one thing, the next they hire a consultant who tells us the opposite. As much as it pains me to say it, they should just start over from scratch since they are just spinning their wheels and losing more and more public support as time moves on.

    On a totally unrelated note, you didn’t happen to be at Bracco on Saturday did you Lewis?

  2. COST- I haven’t been to Yucco’s since the first year they opened. Even the tap beer tastes funny. I do have a couple of twins in town though, poor fucks.

    They do have a clear vision for the EC, it’s just not what the public thinks. Watch the 2nd half of this program, Baloun talks about it;

    http://www.siouxfalls.org/CityLink16/Programs/Regular_Programs/inside_town_hall/ith_08_24_2009.aspx

    They mostly want the floor space for conventions. They think they are going to get all these conventions even though they don’t have the hotel rooms to accomodate them. Maybe they could set one half of the EC up for conventions and create a tent city on the other half? How’s that for convenience? I’ll have to agree with them on one thing, you can’t take everything a consultant says and set it in stone, BUT, the consultant was spot on about not having enough hotel rooms, and they should heed the warning.

    They also talk about not being able to use the facility to capacity for another 10 years (I think more like 15). That tells you right there we don’t need it yet, especially when you have the head of the TF making statements like that.

    If I were on the TF, I would do this;

    Double the size of the Convention Center, NOW, and when the population and hotel rooms catch up, build a new EC (7-10 years). And during that time, relocate HW and get it up and running before breaking ground on new EC.

    You don’t have to do everything at once.

  3. For the millioneth time, we didn’t “fill” the 6,500 seat Arena all the time when we built it back in the Recession of 19601-61, that isn’t what you build it for. Back then we had a population of 65K, so the place could hold 10% of the town.

    We build these things as economic development tools. They tend to make the pie a little bigger for everyone over the long haul. As the City grows, they will add or improve airline and hotel capacities along the way, as long as we have a decent facility to sell to the bookers & promoters.

    Think long term, 30-50 years, what do we want our City to look like and what areas do we want to upgrade and see built up, and no I’m not talking the city’s cornfields on the edges, those develop natually and don’t need the boost.

  4. L3wis:

    “I do have a couple of twins in town though, poor fucks.”

    Same mailman, perhaps?

  5. Costner on August 31, 2009 at 9:09 am said:

    Sy:For the millioneth time, we didn’t “fill” the 6,500 seat Arena all the time when we built it back in the Recession of 19601-61, that isn’t what you build it for. […]

    We build these things as economic development tools.

    True, but building a 30,000 seat EC would also be a economic development tool, and I think everyone would agree it would be twice as big as we would utilize even for the next 30 years.

    There comes a point that we need to build for purpose rather than development. I’m not claiming to know how big this EC should be, but the consultants seem to think it should be a lot smaller than the task force. The question is – who should we trust?

    I’m not sold on the ‘bigger is better’ concept since we have a hard enough time filling existing facilities more than two or three times a year.

  6. L3wis:

    “And during that time, relocate HW and get it up and running before breaking ground on new EC.”

    This is moronic, HWF needs a cosmetic update and some new features to make it comparable to Augie’s new stadium. The School board is aloready ready to spend $5.6 million on that, but not a penny more.

    A brand new HWF over tucked in over by the airport would be a waste and will add at least $20 million in unnecessary expense to the entire project. Plus no one is going to build any hotels or restaurant over there since it’s so out of the way.

    You are correct though on one thing, we should renovate both HWF and the Arena seperately of the new EC. They should be pushing the CC to the southwest towards Western, add a 200 space ramp, and also put a couple shops/restaurants into the mix to serve the traffic of all three facilities (HWF, Canaries, & CC). Build in some second floor space as well and you’ll hit that magic 100,000 sf number that the regional Convention bookers are looking for.

    You could easily do the above, and still build a $12K seat EC downtown for $15 million less than the current TF proposal, pay for it with B&B, and watch what happens over the next couple decades.

  7. Oh, and one other thing the TF is all fuct up on. They say they “need” all their space main level and that is BS. Every convention or trade show I’ve ever attended outside Sioux Falls usually has most if not all the exhibit space on the second level. You go up an escalator and walla! You’re there. Terry Ellis-Schmidt and Woster keep talking about the Ducks Unlimited convention or the Farm Show and how if you force people to go up a flight of stairs they will simply refuse and leave.

    Look at any airport in the country, all of them are second level and no one is unaccustomed to going up or down an elevator or escaltor to get through one.

    What another crock of shit that is driving us to a shitty project.

  8. Costner on August 31, 2009 at 10:35 am said:

    I have no problem with stairs or an escalator of course, but if you have to get exhibits in and out having the floor space at floor level is a much better solution. If it is properly designed it should allow for easy access.

    I think our existing convention center is actually pretty good, but it clearly isn’t large enough. We should be able to expand it while keeping HWF, but it might require Ribfest to be relocated to another parking lot elsewhere.

  9. Coster:

    “I think our existing convention center is actually pretty good, but it clearly isn’t large enough.”

    I agree, the sad part is back in ’96 many of these same opponents were demanding that we scale the CC back. I think it went through at least 3 rounds of revisions before this final design was approved. Each time it got smaller and less cool. I think the first version even had the food court they want to add back in today.

    So now here we are talking about adding on to a building that should’ve never been scaled back in the first place, barely 12 years later. We need to be certain we don’t have the same shortsightedness with the EC.

  10. CarterFlyer on August 31, 2009 at 7:46 pm said:

    W.T.F.
    What about this idea:
    Expand the Convention Center southwest along with merge the current arena into Convention Center space. Im all for a new remodeled Howard Wood or atleast a new, smaller stadium on the south central side of SF (Yankton Trails?). But thats not the point right now.

    Expand the Convention Center to the Southwest, Merge the Arena into the Convention center, build an Events Center Downtown (like Spokane did, seperate from their Convention Center), build the hotels and continue to add stores and restaurants downtown, then have shuttles between the CC/Sheraton and Downtown. Is it a dumb idea? Possibly.. Im just losing my mind from hearing all these nut jobs say “what we ‘need’ compared to what we ‘want'”.

    By the way. I can assure you, everyone I talk to no matter if its adults or students, think that Howard Wood is perfectly fine, and could use a facelift and doesnt need to be moved. Now EVERYBODY that I talk to in that same category also thinks that the current location where everything is for the sports and etc. is in the worst place possible for anybody coming in from the south, and east sides.

    Its just a mistake in the making (the Events Center plan they have):

    Epic… Fail

  11. CarterFlyer on August 31, 2009 at 7:48 pm said:

    By the way: Shouldnt the Big Box Center in your picture Scott be in the middle of an industrial park or cornfield? I mean, it only makes sense, since thats what the Task Force is saying… :-O

  12. They are smoking something. Quen Be De was gung-ho at the Informational meeting tonight about the retail tax increase proposal. Don’t be fooled by this, it isn’t about building a new EC, it is about raising our taxes. Everytime retail tax revenues go down during an economic downturn, the richie riches get scared that there may be a income tax, so they are quick to raise taxes on the poor to make up for the shortfall.

  13. And even with a record tax collection month of July (which included the last 4 days of June) the city is still down .4% from last year. In other words, we are not even breaking even yet. That and the 2009 budget is about $503 million.

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