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.