Not sure why, but folks who attend concerts at the Denty have told me that it takes sometimes hours to get a cab from the place after a show. I’m guessing peeps have figured out that the gig economy isn’t so great.
With all this talk lately about the bad positioning of the Denty and Convention Center many are asking why do we have to move something when we can just figure out how to utilize it better.
Before the Denty was built there was talk about running public transit shuttles from downtown parking ramps to events. I think they did it a couple of times and it disappeared.
Instead of moving the convention center, why not just start running free shuttles from DTSF to the complex during concerts and conventions?
You could do it for free, or even charge a $1, and would get more people spending money in our town when they attend these events.
Another funding source would be adding a ‘parking’ fee to every ticket sold. I suggested to the council years ago that they should be charging a city ‘facility’ fee to each ticket that strictly goes towards the mortgage, but they argued the artists and promoters didn’t like it. Oh well.
So why don’t we do it? My guess is that the management of the Denty doesn’t want peeps who are driving from Mitchell to spend any of their money anywhere else except at the Denty.
We act like the Denty is in outerspace. If I had to guess, the Denty is about 2 miles from DTSF. This is doable.
Let’s admit it, building a CC and EC at that location was a mistake, but instead of spending $300 million to fix a mistake, why not work with what we have?