Failed Events Center’s in our region

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Not to be a negative Nancy, but these two stories got me thinking;

FARGO – The revenue that was supposed to make Scheels Arena profitable never came. The mountain of debt cobbled together in a last-minute financing deal barely budged.

Oh, and one more;

The newest arena in the region, Kent’s ShoWare Center, has lost more than $1 million in its first three years. But city leaders remain optimistic about ShoWare, a key to downtown revitalization and Kent’s identity as the “capital of South King County.”

I had this ironically hilarious convo with a first time visitor to Sioux Falls from Minneapolis today at lunch who told me he couldn’t figure out why we wouldn’t build our CC and EC Downtown? I said, “Don’t even get me started.” There was much more to the convo, but I found it really funny that a first time visitor wondered why we would put these facilities in an undeveloped area.

New political coffeehouse opening Friday morning in SF?

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There has been a lot of talk about a new coffeehouse in downtown Sioux Falls;

Friends,

I am proud to announce the beginning of Josiah’s Coffeehouse & Café, opening this Friday morning at 6 am here in Sioux Falls.

Located in the new Lumber Exchange Building, home of CNA Surety on the East Bank of Downtown, we offer phenomenal coffee, a long list of espresso drinks and a full menu of made-from-scratch bakery items. We also have a full menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner – including unique salads, wraps, grilled Panini sandwiches and personal pizzas.

Our website is live if you want to see more – www.josiahscoffee.com.

Our menu can be found at www.josiahscoffee.com/our-food/josiahs-menu/.

We are open:
Mon – Thurs, 6 am-8 pm
Fri – Sat, 6 am – 10 pm
Sun, 8 am – 3 pm

And don’t forget, Friday night, across the street from Josiah’s at 8th & RR Center, is the first Downtown Block Party of the summer – from 6 am – 10:30 pm. Great food and entertainment will take place there. Stop by Josiah’s for pizza or other dinner items or coffee and our signature coconut cupcakes.

Saturday morning, come downtown to visit two great Farmer’s Markets – one at the Falls and one at 8th & RR.

Great things happening downtown.

All my best.

Steve H.

I talked to a politician this morning who contemplated the idea of starting a non-partisan political breakfast club at Steve’s place, I like the idea, you never know? Even Ellis was talking about it today.

SOS’s website; A gigantic mess

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I had a legislative candidate point out to me last night that the SOS’s website is a mess when it comes to searching candidate financial reports. No surprise, the state isn’t big on functionality with their websites. I had an IT person look at it and give me their 2-Cents:

So much for Powers being an expert web designer.  We call this an eye candy site.  It will blind you with glitz and no function.  Lots of blinking, 1990’s moving lists to nowhere, unlabeled icons, text headers not linking to anything and no ergonomics.  Wow what a mess.  Two things come directly to mind as I look:

1.       Sdsos.gov/elections/default.aspx is the elections page.

a.       The scrolling ‘2012 Candidate Filings’ box is not in any sort order, is annoying and does not link to anything useful.

b.      Links on the page are to ‘stuff’ with no explanations leaving you to guess what they are presenting.

2.       C.A.S.H. System <https://sdsos.gov/campaignfinance/default.aspx> was found to be the campaign / reporting link.

a.       Web standards for access links are not used, you have to figure out how to find the link to get to process you are looking for.

b.      Donation Search, try putting in a district number, such as 10.  The list of districts displays up, not down.  This may seem minor but it does not make the search process very ergonomic.

c.       Did a search for all donations in District 10, the presentation is not smooth and as you continue to use the system you get fewer results until you realize the ‘Clear’ search button must be clicked between searches to clear fields.

d.      Bouncing between fields is cumbersome

e.      Try screen scraping results with your mouse to highlight, it will not collect all data.

I guess they are ‘working on it’. Rumor has it they are manually typing in the paper filings instead of scanning them. That leaves room for inaccuracy. The biggest problem with this site is that NOT all of the filings are up yet.

Look at Minnesota’s site, very searchable.

We are only a few days away from the primaries and not all of the reports are up yet. This is unfortunate.