While I never agree with Doug, he hit the nail on the head with his latest blog post about the Fairgrounds.
Again, I gotta wonder. . who believes that the fair is such an albatross around the county’s neck..especially after it was discovered that the person responsible for the fiancial shortfalls is sitting in the pokie?
And he supplied this link explaining the terms of the deed;
The terms of the gift also stated that, “In the event of the failure of the grantee to hold such fairs or exhibitions for five consecutive years, then, in that event, the said premises and title shall immediately revert to the grantor or next of kin to the grantor, with the right of immediate possession.
And these questions still remain;
• Is one of the commissioners an attorney representing the company wanting to purchase the land?
• Did several commissioners receive political contributions from the company wanting to buy the land?
• Does the company that wants to purchase the land do the appraisal of the property?
• Would there be a posibility of a referendum for a public vote if the county commission decides to sell the land?
The local MSM media needs to start doing more digging before it is too late. Like I have said, if some company wants the land, sell it to them, but you better be building us a whole new fairgrounds (with the possibility of connecting it with a new Events Center) and the county better be getting yearly dividend checks from the quarry.
There are so many questions about this deal, and I smell a rat.
If they have money to toss to an attorney, how about fixing some of the county roads, and bridges?
Please don’t lump the Events Center in with the new or the old Fairgrounds or the Fair itself. That issue is convoluted enough as it is without adding yet another misguided component to it.
When the first group took on the EC, they had the Fairgrounds as a potential site. It was eliminated because they didn’t want to make traffic worse during the Fair if there were other events booked at the EC.
Yes, it is close to two interstate exits, but as I’ve stated before that doesn’t mean you are magically wisked in and out. You also want to have people visting your Events Center make their way in and out at a slower and more controlled pace so that they might actually see something in your town to stop and spend some money on. Why do you think Hy Vee puts their milk in the back corner of the store?
Beyond that, show me where in that neighborhood you would see any type of good collateral development of a shopping or entertainment district?
The only place that makes sense for a new EC is downtown, where it actually has the potential to pay us back before the bond term.
I’m not the one ‘lumping’ them together. I think a lot of people think they should be at one site.
Um, Hy Vee also puts their milk in a cooler right in front of the checkouts.
I shop at the ghetto grocery store downtown becuz I am old skool. I like having a limited selection and looking at weirdo’s like myself while I shop.
Yes, they put a couple SKU’s up front for the convenience factor, but look at where all the staples and the greater selection of items are located. The place is designed to get somone who’s going to drop $100 on a week’s worth of groceries to walk the entire store.
Another example: where’s the milk at in a convenience store?
L3wis:
“I think a lot of people think they should be at one site.”
Sadly, a lot of people are really, really underinformed on the topic. We need to beat down the “strip mall” approach to things as crucial as this.
Sy – Milk is a popular item which is restocked throughout the day, so you find it in a cooler which backs up against a walk-in where they can stock it from behind. This is true in a grocery store and a convenience store as well.
They sell a hell of a lot of bread too, but you don’t find that on the back wall of the store – because it doesn’t have to be in a cooler. It is about logistics – and having someone walk all the way to the back of the store is a bonus. Trucking cartload after cartload of Milk into the middle of the store to restock from the front would be a gigantic waste of energy and manpower not to mention the frustration from customers being blocked while the stockboy does his job every 20 to 30 minutes.
As to the larger concept that having an events center downtown will automatically result in more spending due to the longer route, I’d chalk that up to wishful thinking. Sure there could be a few people who see that beautiful dollar loan center so they stop in to get a payday loan, or maybe a few people will stop at eat at the Fryin’ Pan on their way by, but I doubt this would be a huge driving factor.
If you really are basing the location upon where it could result in the biggest economic impact from walk-by or drive-by sales then you better start pushing for it to be built near the Empire Mall on a one-way street which will force them to drive around the entire mall at 15mph before getting access to 41st street and/or I-29.
Costner, you are going to make my blog explode with a Sy bomb.