I have been wondering about this for awhile;
Skeptic that I am, I have to ask: Why the sudden energy behind a downtown location? And why now?
Could money be the answer?
“We should not build an arena simply to go to concerts or sporting events,” said Steve Hildebrand, well-known civic leader and political consultant, “we should build an arena to spur economic development.”
Agreed. But whose?
Over the past week, I am starting to wonder. Is Hildy making an issue out of this so he can get paid to consult the effort? We’ll see.
Personally I suspect a large part of the “sudden energy” is merely in response to Huether’s sudden energy focused upon getting it built.
We have been hearing about the downtown location for a few years now ever since the thing was envisioned. However when Munson was running things, everyone always saw this as a distant event – not something that would start within the next year or two. On top of that, it seemed Munson never got around to pushing one location or the other, so people didn’t have anything to push for/against.
When Huether came rolling in, he was pretty set on putting it at the Arena location, and once he had made that opinion known is when the downtown folks really started ramping up their efforts.
Do I think there is money involved? Of course – there always is, and nobody is going to spend vast sums of money to push one location over another unless they have a vested financial interest in doing so. This structure has the distinct possibility of creating some very wealthy people (and some weathly people even more wealthy)… and they all know it.
i think munson wanted it downtown, so he wouldn’t have to drive that far to z’kota.
I wonder if that Hairball show is sold out yet.
“This structure has the distinct possibility of creating some very wealthy people (and some weathly people even more wealthy)… and they all know it. ”
Does Huther or any of the council members own property near the current arena site ?
The downtown group’s point #1 is ROI, so of course it’s about money.
It’s about all our money, not just a downtown shop owner. The property tax values of downtown have nearly doubled in the last 8 years. With the new construction that has also helped push Excise and Sales tax revenues up as well. New shops = new employees so there’s another positive bump. New residential = new downtown residents so ditto again.
All of that is good news as it means less pressure to raise taxes elsewhere. Imagine if the opposite of this trend had occurred over the last 8 years, how would the City’s & State’s financial picture have been impacted?
Sy’s right. This IS about money – but it’s not any “special interests'” money – it’s about the tax-payers money – ALL of the taxpayers.
Rufusx and Sy are both correct. Sy is correct about economic impact and jobs and rufusx is right about who will have to pay for it. It will be an interesting debate once this gets on the ballot.
As far as I know, the Downtown group hasn’t raised any money for their effort. If Hildy plans to get paid for his work, who’ would pay him?
They plan to raise between $1-$5 million.
Sometime back, somebody said that the Mayor’s Office is non-political. Hmmm, seems odd that Steve Hildebrand is now being the BIG PROMOTER. Hmmm, does it seem odd to anyone else that he is a Democrat and so is the Mayor?
Just a thought.
There is all kinds of weird stuff going on.