The council will make there decision on the Events Center location soon;
The location for the Sioux Falls events center could be decided as early as Monday.
Councilors have filed separate resolutions this week – Councilors Greg Jamison and Vernon Brown for a downtown site and Jim Entenman and Dean Karsky for the Arena site.
If the decision is not deferred, they will vote at the Monday meeting. A second and final vote would be held June 20.
I expect some surprises. I hope the council sits down, talks about this in advance, and makes sure at least 5 councilors support one or the other location. It would be a shame to let the mayor pick the location by breaking a tie, it would folks.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh5xr1DkOGc[/youtube]
They are going to sit down and talk about this? Not a chance. We even have one councilor that wants the EC at the arena site, but wants to move the convention center downtown. Three of these councilors formed their opinion months ago and never had an open mind, one3 is there because 3rd time was a charm, and four of them actually are willing to buck the Mayor and have their own opinion. Right, wrong, or indifferent, this is a cluster. I love how Jim E says “we have never been this far in the process.” Yes we have – except the other task forces actually were going to have a finance plan in place for this investment before they spent a half a million dollars of our money. Where is that by the way? Get ready to vote for a bond-only plan.
June 27 the mayor will present the financing. Which will be bonds and I would assume no private money.
Entenman had these two gems in today’s Argus:
“I personally believe that we need to get off the issue of site,” Entenman said.
With a 17 point drop in support AFTER the AECOM report and before the Ethics Boards decision that amplified how little the Arena grows I’d want to move on quickly too if I was an Arena supporter.
“Really, the monkey is on the administration’s back right now,” Entenman said.
That sounds like the Council will kick the can back to the Mayor and let him live or die with the results.
Which makes this statement all the more astounding:
“The message from the people that I was elected to represent, it hasn’t changed one bit since I started campaigning to now. I think they are ready to replace the Arena, and they want a place that makes the most common and fiscal sense,” Mayor Mike Huether said.
http://www.argusleader.com/article/20110608/NEWS/106080306/Majority-want-build-events-center-Arena?plckFindCommentKey=CommentKey:b6703daf-57ed-41a8-9cad-d130d21ea5ef
Hasn’t changed one bit, eh? What’s changed is we aren’t talking about simply replacing the Arena, we have switched to talking about a $100+ million addition to our Convention Center, which Candidate Huether campaigned very hard against doing.
Candidate Huether campaigned hard against adding “no-frills” to the Arena/Convention Center.
What a huge slap in the face that was. He is advocating for an addition onto the Convention Center, not onto the Arena. I’ll tell you what, Conventions like to book facilities that provide their attendees and their attendees guests/partners a Center that provides amentities as well as space. Ease of access to various places around the
Center, and places for their attendees to do activities and explore the city they are in. Sioux Falls has none of that with the current location.
Huether must feel good about using the Arena neighborhood as the image of our city to attendees rather than Downtown.
The Arena location is fucking stupid. There is no other way to explain it. Even if you don’t build it DT there is 10 million other places that are a better location. Like Dawley Farm on the east side.
Sy distorts the results of the Argus Oct survey. It was not 57% of the total sample who supported the Arena site in Oct, only 57% of the 57% who supported building an Event Center somewhere. If you multiply the two, (57 x 57) you get 32% who supported the Arena site in Oct. Since Oct, support for the Arena site has increased to 40% from 32%, not declined by 17% as Sy suggests.
Support for the DT site has also increased since Oct, rising from 8% ( 57% x 15% ) to the 19% reported in Nielson Brothers Poll.
It appears public discussion increases support for both locations. Those who do not want to build an events center has declined to 25% from 33% since Oct.