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[StanN]

How can we be subsidizing this with our tax dollars

http://www.stormontnoble.com/Properties/raleigh%20rendering.gif

while we are providing this for the next generation??

http://www.arlington.k12.va.us/schools/barrett/modular/MVC-008F.JPG

Can anyone explain to me the twisted values and priorities underlying these decisions?

[Wuptdo]

Let see, we may be getting this for $200 million dollars:

http://www.raleigh-nc.org/livablestreets/Images/SALISBURY2_per.jpg


But for $45 million dollars we also get this:

http://www.schoolconstructionnews.com/photos/pdf/2004/ModularSupp.pdf


I just don't understand Stan, how the priorities have gotten so out of wack. I am beginning to think that Wake County Commish's, School Board, Senior Staff should all be committed to Doretha Dix for a few months - than fired!

Oh, for the record, I don't have a problem with the Conventation Center per se. I just want the City of Raleigh to pay for it, and leave us county folks out of it. My understanding is that the "State" wouldn't approve the "bond expense" because the voters didn't vote for it and because of this, Wake County Government had to co-sign the agreement (at a higher interest rate as well :roll: ).

The needs of the few, outweight the needs of the many!

Wuptdo B-)

[StanN]

Your pictures are great. Actually, the initial cost of the convention center and subsidy for the Marriott is $200M. But over 30 years, counting a $2M/YR. operating subsidy and the interest on the certificates of participation, the total tax bill is estimated at $730M.

But what the hell, Cary get $1M for Baseball USA from the same pot of taxes. Sounds fair! Our contribution will be ~$150M.

And there's a rumor that private funds will pick-up the cost of decorative panels for the side of the conv. center. Aren't they generous!

stan

[Brent]

Stan, your pictures are worth a thousand words.

How, indeed, can we be doing this? No, I can't explain the twisted values. :P :evil:

[johnb]

Here's the question I would ask the Council.....
....you're attending a "convention" booked for the new Raleigh Convention Center....

How sad are you?

You could be in Vegas, St Croix, Tampa, but no, your cheap, tacky, and low budget employer/association/whatever booked your convention for Raleigh. No gambling. No beach. No naked dancing girls twirling flaming batons. Nothing. Well, not nothing, you do get the Durham Crack Market.

Imagine the suicides from all those despondent conventioneers when they actually get here and realize they're in Raleigh Freakin North Carolina.

How sad are the Wake County Commissioners?

That thing will never "pay for itself". It will never "revitalize" downtown Raleigh. It won't be used in any form, fashion, or capacity to justify the cost.

What complete boneheads. Stan, you're right. I'll go ahead and say it. The County Commissioners are as dumb if not dumber than the Cary City Council.

[StanN]

Spring 2004 Issue City Journal

The Convention Center Shell Game

Although Boston’s gleaming new $800 million convention center is set to open in a few months, so far it has booked only a handful of conventions. So dire is the facility’s outlook that it will need a $12–15 million annual public subsidy in its first few years of operation and may not reach its full booking potential for a decade, say Boston officials. Even that may be too optimistic, judging by what’s going on in Baltimore. There, a vastly expanded convention center that reopened in 1997 is finding it so hard to lure business that city officials are now searching for ways to make the facility more attractive, including spending millions in public money to build a subsidized hotel next door.

What is happening in Boston and Baltimore is not an anomaly but merely the latest chapter in what is turning out to be one of America’s biggest civic boondoggles. For more than a decade now, cities and counties have been rushing, at enormous public cost, to build new convention centers or add space to old ones, including a $191 million expansion of San Francisco’s Moscone Center, a $291 million new facility in Omaha, and a $354 million center in Pittsburgh. The increase in space has vastly outpaced the growth of the convention industry and often failed to generate the kind of economic activity predicted by boosters. Rather than energizing local economies, in fact, some convention centers are emerging as a drag on civic finances, requiring taxpayer operating subsidies on top of their huge, publicly financed construction costs. What’s more, the situation is only likely to get worse. Another eight to ten million square feet of exhibition space is scheduled to come on line within five years, an increase of about 15 percent in an industry where demand is barely growing.

Although those numbers should be sobering to any city contemplating building yet more space, in New York officials are plunging ahead with plans for the most costly convention project to date—proposing to spend a staggering $1.5 billion nearly to double the size of the Jacob Javits Convention Center. The proposal comes despite the chronic fiscal problems of both the state and the city and the absolute lack of any credible evidence that the expanded center would pay back such a colossal public investment.

Indeed, to finance the expansion, the state and the city, both already heavily indebted, will likely have to float huge debt offerings and may even increase some taxes.

New York’s headlong plunge into this new project is evidence that local officials rarely let the facts get in the way of their love of big projects. Back in the early 1980s, when the state and city built the Javits Center, there were far fewer convention centers and little actual data on whether the business that these facilities generated helped a city’s economy enough to justify the investment. New York officials saw Chicago’s giant McCormick Place bringing visitors into the city to fuel the local hotel, restaurant, and entertainment industries, and figured Gotham could compete for that business.

But today, after a generation of frenetic building and with much better data available, the inescapable conclusion is that few of these new projects are worth doing. Boston, for instance, spent nearly $230 million to renovate its existing convention center in the 1980s, and the result was barely a blip upward in its hotel occupancy, says political scientist Heywood Sanders of the University of Texas at San Antonio, the foremost expert on publicly built convention centers. Yet Boston officials brushed that experience aside and went ahead and built its brand-new—and already troubled—center anyway. Similarly, a vast expansion of Chicago’s McCormick Place, costing $1 billion in the mid-1990s, didn’t prevent a drop in that city’s share of major conventions. Meanwhile, Atlanta’s huge expansion of its convention space has done little for the city’s struggling downtown: a major retail project there, Atlanta Underground, has struggled to survive even as the city’s convention business has grown. “The payoff is not there,” says Sanders.

But local politicians have typically argued that their projects will work better than those in other cities—on scant evidence for such conclusions. New York officials, for instance, justify expanding Javits on the grounds that the city is already a major trade-show destination and therefore won’t suffer like other cities from significant new competition. Yet Chicago was an even bigger force in the business when it expanded McCormick, but still saw its market share decline. And even if a bigger Javits were to attract some new business, it is highly unlikely to generate enough spin-off activity to justify its enormous public cost (including the eventual cost overruns likely with such a gigantic public project).

Gotham officials are relying on the optimistic predictions of government-sponsored economic studies that an expanded center would create thousands of temporary construction jobs and up to 16,000 permanent new jobs, mostly in the hospitality industry. But political scientist Sanders argues that such studies tend to be unrealistically optimistic. For instance, says Sanders, one study used to justify expanding Javits does not take into account that the center doesn’t generate nearly as much hotel business as other centers, because many convention attendees already come from the New York area, and because New York’s high hotel rates discourage some conventions from using the city. Another word of warning: city-commissioned studies almost always wind up recommending convention centers—meaning that the industry of consultants who churn out such studies has a pretty lousy track record, considering the long list of underperforming centers around the country.

But politicians ignore such inconvenient facts. For them, building big projects is often far more engrossing than building a strong economy, because giant construction projects directed by government agencies offer opportunities to reward friends and potential supporters with plum contracts. Thus the original construction of the Javits Center was perhaps the quintessential New York boondoggle, an effort rife with mob influence, bid rigging, and cost overruns that brought the ultimate bill to $486 million, 30 percent more than projected. And the center has never fulfilled all the promises. When it opened, a New York Times headline proclaimed the widely held belief that the new center “kindles dreams for West Side,” but in 18 years, the center has had almost no impact on its neighborhood.

New projects also enjoy the support of private-sector interests likely to benefit from them. In New York City, a perfect storm of private interests is raging to push forward the Javits expansion, including the construction industry that would build it, the Wall Street bankers who would underwrite the financing, and a hospitality industry hungry to benefit from even a marginal increase in its business no matter what the public cost. The hotel industry has even signed on to a possible hotel tax increase to pay for the Javits expansion, when a decade ago the same hoteliers vociferously protested a rise in the tax, producing studies showing that the increase hurt the local economy. Small wonder that politicians often doubt the claims of executives that taxes kill jobs when an industry reverses itself as cavalierly as the city’s hotels are now doing. In fact, of course, the innkeepers were right the first time: after New York cut its hotel tax by six percentage points, hotel occupancy rates jumped to 84 percent from under 76 percent in just three years.

The Javits expansion, as expensive as it is, only partially encompasses New York’s grand design for the Far West Side of Manhattan. Hoping to lure the 2012 Olympics to Gotham, the Bloomberg administration also wants to build a domed sports stadium adjacent to the convention center, which boosters argue could provide hundreds of thousands of square feet of extra convention space when needed.

With a $600 million taxpayer contribution, the stadium would be an even worse investment than the convention facility. Numerous studies have already documented that publicly financed sports facilities don’t return anywhere near their investment. One study by economists from Stanford University and Smith College, for instance, estimated that Baltimore was receiving only $3 million a year in additional tax revenues or new job benefits from its $200 million investment in the Camden Yards sports complex. Even projects generally touted as successful often don’t turn out to be, under careful economic scrutiny. A mid-1990s study by urban economist Mark Rosentraub of Cleveland’s arena and baseball stadium, often held up as a model of how to build downtown sports facilities, found the projects created only 2,000 jobs at an average public investment of $160,000 for each job—an improvident use of public money.

The real role of government in stimulating development should be more limited than what New York is attempting with its Javits expansion and its stadium. Government’s role on the Far West Side should be only to develop the infrastructure necessary to encourage private development: to extend public transportation into the area and to change zoning codes to allow privately financed office and residential construction there as the need develops. To do any more would place far too much taxpayer money at risk and would put government officials in the role of trying to predict what the market wants—a task government is ill-suited to carry out. But New York State is contemplating the exact opposite—balking at extending the Number 7 subway and, presuming to know better than the market, threatening to use eminent domain to take the land for the Javits expansion away from developer Larry Silverstein, who has other plans in mind for it. The state’s vast, monolithic scheme could well repel rather than attract high-value commercial development.

Meanwhile, the hospitality industry has learned that it can sit and wait for local government to finance its dreams these days. The Javits expansion, for instance, was originally tagged at a “mere” $1 billion but grew costlier when the center’s board stuck in a publicly subsidized hotel as part of the building frenzy. The hotel supposedly needs to be built with public money, because so far no private hotel company has been willing to pay to put up a property on the Far West Side.

The Javits hotel scheme is not unique by any means. Publicly financed hotels have now become the latest craze in the municipal convention-center wars. Cities like Dallas, Baltimore, and Knoxville are all contemplating building them, on the theory that these properties will help boost sagging convention-center business. Though hotel companies won’t finance these properties themselves, because they know they are unlikely to repay their investment, they are more than willing to move in and operate them after government has built them. The result is a version of the rat and cat farm: we use tax money to build a convention center that supposedly will stimulate the hotel industry, and then use tax dollars to build a hotel that supposedly will stimulate the convention industry.

The nationwide convention-center fiasco is striking testimony that much government-centered economic development these days is a “me-too” affair that involves spending public money on what others are doing, regardless of market dynamics—perhaps because politicians who benefit from these projects can avoid blame by claiming that they were only doing what other cities were doing. New York State seems especially infected with this disease right now. With its huge public complexes in Albany and its vast string of publicly constructed state universities, the state has always specialized in state capitalism, and it is not to be outdone in the area of convention centers. In his state of the state address, Governor Pataki advocated not only the Javits project but a new $185 million convention center in Albany to replace its existing facility and the modernizing of another facility in Lake Placid. Soon after, officials in Erie County renewed their lobbying for a publicly financed center in Buffalo, while in Syracuse, a group that has put forward a far-reaching plan to remake that city added a convention-center proposal to its agenda, too. These proposals would join an estimated 40 or so convention projects already under way in cities throughout convention-center-glutted America.

While politicians and private businesses push such efforts, resistance from taxpayer groups is growing. The Texas chapter of Citizens for a Sound Economy, the national taxpayer group headed by former House Majority leader Dick Armey, is opposing a publicly financed convention hotel in Dallas. Knoxville citizens will soon get to vote on whether to spend tax dollars on a new convention hotel, after opponents of the effort collected thousands of signatures to get the issue on a ballot. In Raleigh, North Carolina, government supporters of a new convention center are trying to avoid a vote on public financing for the project—which they are sure to lose—by proposing alternate but even more costly financing that doesn’t require a referendum.

The mounting opposition shows that the public understands what a fiasco the convention-center business has turned into all around America. If only urban leaders could figure that out, too.

[washere]

EGADS!!!

I tried engaging my dear husband on this subject earlier this evening, and it turns out he hasn't ever heard of the project :roll: .

John, you'll take care of this for me, won't you :wink: ?

[StanN]

Here's how one "watchdog" over the public purse sees the convention center. The N&O likes the idea but not the execution. What could be behind their motivation. What is your reaction?

Published: Oct 16, 2004
Modified: Oct 16, 2004 6:32 AM

Center lacks luster

By DENNIS ROGERS, Staff Writer

Two words describe the $192 million convention center going in to downtown Raleigh: "ho" and "hum."
It looks like what it is, a public building designed by a committee for a committee. The best thing you can say is that it's like the blind date Mayberry's Andy Taylor and Barney Fife set up for gullible Gomer Pyle. Mary Grace Gossage was nice -- real nice -- but in the looks department, she was nothing to write home about.

The convention center design is nice, too. And if you were to build it anywhere in the country, nobody would be offended.

But they wouldn't be very excited, either.

It's like Charlotte, a perfectly nice city, but there is no "there" there, no sense that it is the largest city in North Carolina. It is just a nice, ho-hum town that could be anywhere in the country. Like the design for our convention center, it is totally inoffensive. And boring.

Ride past the BTI Center for the Performing Arts some night when the symphony or a play is in town. I guarantee you'll look at it and proudly say, "What a beautiful building."

I'm not an architect, but I've encountered a few buildings that make you glad you lived long enough to see them. The Empire State, Chrysler and Guggenheim Museum buildings in New York are three. Dorton Arena is another. So is the Blue Cross and Blue Shield building in Chapel Hill and the old Burroughs Wellcome building in Research Triangle Park.

What they share is a "Wow!" factor. It is hard to define but you know it when you see it. And I don't see it in the drawings of Raleigh's convention center. Here's hoping it looks better in person.

Beauty does not necessarily cost more than homely. It just takes imagination and a willingness to take a risk. Those things, like the "Wow!" factor, are hard to come by in Raleigh.

I once suggested that if Raleigh were a color, it would be beige. It if were a car, it would be a Plymouth. The convention center will fit perfectly with our existing blandness.

And that's what's wrong with it. It shouldn't fit in with the rest of downtown. It should stand out. It should make waves. It should irritate as many people as it delights. That's when you know you're on to something magnificent.

A $192 million building should send a message to future building designers and business prospects that Raleigh appreciates innovation. We should be a place where the best and brightest are eager to come because we'll take a chance.

Instead, we've hired perfectly competent architects and forced them to satisfy a committee of elected officials.

I think it was Bill Cosby who said, "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." That's what we're doing with the convention center.

Imagine what we could have had if we'd held a worldwide design competition. Some of the best designers in the business would have outdone themselves to work here.

A convention center is more than a meeting place. Good or bad, it will be the crown jewel of our downtown for a long time.

Sadly, it's looking like we're getting a $192 million rhinestone instead of a sparkling diamond that would take our breath away.

Columnist Dennis Rogers can be reached at 829-4750 or drogers@newsobserver.com.

© Copyright 2004, The News & Observer Publishing Company,
a subsidiary of The McClatchy Company

[Wuptdo]

Some of us have been banging our heads on this issue for several years, but we are just a few cries in the dark. Even the all powerful WCTA got blown out of the water on this issue. They waited almost 10 years for the "right" political climate (Meeker and his cronies), since the last time the taxpayers got to vote on this issue (and rejected it!). It is amazing what a few, very determined, property owners and associations, can do with your money in this State.

Wuptdo B-)

[StanN]

It's amazing to me that the WCTA hasn't spoken out or, for that matter, the Citizens for A Sound Economy. The likely reason is that these groups are supporting Kenn Gardner for County Commissioner and don't want to call attention to his leadership role in the Convention Center. Lets wait and see if they become more active after the election. My guess is that Gardner has resworn allegience to not raise property taxes and to seek to keep funds going to WCPSS at a bare minimum.

Stan

[Wuptdo]

Stan,

The WCTA has been fighting this for over ten years; i.e., recinding the tax on Hotels & Meals, because voters turned it down in 1992(?). However, there was just too much "free" cash coming in and we all know what politicians like to do with "free" money. Anyway, WCTA was trying to kill this at the Raleigh level over two years ago. It was noted that someone/something very strong was keeping this alive. Anyway, the backstab of Ken Garnder and the rest of his cronies at WCC was a surprise to many. He doesn't like talking about it, and hides behind it the story that it will be an economic engine for Raleigh, and if Raleigh prospers, we all prosper. What is really interesting is the relationship between Raleigh's City Manager and WC Manager. :roll:

The WCTA has lost two major battles in the last couple of years (Convention Center and last School bond issue). In my opinion, they are dying a slow death as an organization. Russel Capps is keeping it going, but he looks tired. However, there seems to be two bright lights of leadership and organization on the horizon, one from Cary, the other from Raleigh. I digress.

The only hope in stopping this trainwreck (Convention Center) now rest with the State Treasurer. If he denies the class "B" bond issue, then the project dies (for awhile). Funny, if they would of let the public vote on the issue and it was approved, they would of been able to get class "A" bond financing. I don't know about you, but at times like this I sure glad we have a "representative" form of government to make those "tough" choices for us. :roll:

Wuptdo B-)

[Cathy]

Very, very well said, Wuptdo!!

Those high interest Certificates of Participation are a baby brother to Tax Increment Financing Bonds. Higher interest, no voter approval required.

The TIF Bonds scheme just adds a more interesting twist to it all. It creates a Redevelopment Authority to oversee the TIF District and this "Authority is endowed with the power to use eminent domain to clear the land of "non-comforming property owners" so there is a clean slate for their preferred developer.

Cathy
www.noamendmentone.org

[StanN]

Published: Oct 18, 2004
Modified: Oct 18, 2004 7:13 PM

Capital's big step
The approval of a design for Raleigh's new convention center is a welcome turn along what has been a rough road to action


Raleigh has long needed a better downtown convention center, and on Thursday, City Council members and Wake County commissioners approved a final design for the new complex that should answer that need. It is slated to open in February of 2008, and now that a date has been assigned for the grand event, it's possible for everyone to breathe easier.
It's difficult to envision in the mind's eye what the center actually will look like, although drawings of the building are promising. This much, however, is certain: the Capital City ought to have a convention center that is well beyond bare minimum. The current Civic Center doesn't meet that standard.

The city has state museums of science and history, all the sites of government, cultural venues, a rich history of its own, a steadily improving downtown. The absence of an adequate convention facility has long been an obvious handicap to the downtown getting that "last piece of the puzzle."

For years, a convention center proposal sort of sat on the table, a victim of politics and a failure of early advocates to build support for it from the ground up. Residents, particularly those concerned about any possibility of higher taxes, seemed to resist spending that kind of money (current price: $192 million) on the downtown area, though it comes from the city and county hotel/meals taxes. Why, some said, should we invest in that area when we never go there? The answer was, and is, that a downtown is more that a geographic location. It is, or should be, the beating heart of any city of size. When it is thriving, its energy spreads to the entire city. And people from all over the city will want to gather downtown -- if they have a place to gather and a convenient place to park.

Raleigh's downtown has been busier in the last few years, and the decision on the part of Progress Energy to undertake a huge investment was an important step.

With the convention center now in sight, however, the downtown is due to enjoy another big lift. The center could prompt all sorts of other development, from residential to retail centers to a movie theater. Crucial in expanding the plans will be adequate and accessible free parking. Also important will be a commitment to make the new facility a first-class operation.

As construction moves along, some overages are to be expected; the council should not cost-cut to the point of making this building a plain box. Competing for conventions is, after all, a serious business, and though Raleigh has much to offer out-of-town visitors, it's still going to have to provide the amenities conventioneers want and a reason for them to come here instead of somewhere else.

At least now, the city can see the day when it will have all it needs to make its case.



© Copyright 2004, The News & Observer Publishing Company,
a subsidiary of The McClatchy Company

----------------------------------------------------------------
My letter to the N&O

In your lead editorial today, 10/18, you present the vision of the new convention center leading downtown Raleigh to greater heights, Lets hope you are right. If the reality of the over-built convention center market or rising construction costs leads to over-runs, as you suggest, who picks up the bill? Will it be the 80% of us who rarely go downtown but are picking up most of the $730 million cost (including interest and subsidies) from our taxes over the next 30 years? Its likely true that downtown land owners and businesses will benefit. But what are we to conclude from the fact that there is not a penny of private capital is at risk? How do you think the majority of us will feel if we are asked to pick-up the bill for the over-runs of which you are so tolerant? Will the N&O and other downtown interests be willing to bear the cost for the operating subsidies and over-runs? Why isn't there a special tax overlay zone so that those benefiting pay their fair share? I understand the hotel and meal tax could not be used for schools, but how do we explain to the children of Wake County the values of government that supports what looks like a palace to most, while they are housed in trailers? Aren't you uncomfortable with the contrast? We count on the N&O to be the regional paper of record. Yet your editorial makes the N&O sound like a booster for a single town in the region rather than presenting a balanced picture.

You have rubbed salt in a wound.

Stan Norwalk
919-363-4685
stann@nc.rr.com

And a PS I had no room to include: The N&O endorsed every WCC who voted for this travesty. Did their self-interest determine their endorsements???.....stan

[Brent]

Good letter, Stan. Too bad your postscript point couldn't have been made in the letter.

I'll put some private capital at risk: I'll bet ten bucks that the convention center will be a major money-loser for its first 5 years of operation. Anyone outside of the N&O editorial staff who will take the bet?

[Wuptdo]

I amazed how this whole issue has been by-passed by the people running against the current batch of WCC's. Where is the debate; why does nobody remind the public of this boondoogle! I have talked to some of my neighbors about this for the the most part they don't have a clue about really what's happening with the schools, conventation center, and TTA. They were impressed that I was so well informed with local issues. Is this apathy what all politicians count on to get elected?


Is there not a White Knight who will be the hero to us Serfs?

Wuptdo B-)

[Brent]

Is this apathy what all politicians count on to get elected?

Clearly, unequivocally, yes.

[StanN]

Wup,

The first phase of the convention center battle has been lost. The next phase will come when there is a major construction over-run or after 2007 when the operating subsidy is larger than anticipated. We have to prepare now so that not 1 cent of general fund money is touched. That will come right out of the schools' budget. The key now is to vote for commissioners who will raise a big stink when that happens - Yvonne Brannon for one. Kenn Gardner was the leader of the pack. For this and many other reasons he deserves to go. A big vote in Cary against him will get attention from the Republican majority that they cannot continue to treat Cary as their private cash cow.

stan