No money for your rink, Mr. Gunlock
From, let’s sneak a tax hike through the backdoor, to no, we can’t afford your dream Mr. Gunlock (of RG Properties) County Administrator Deb Feldman must have felt the heat after one public discussion on where to build an arena.
Montgomery County should not pursue a hockey arena and events center at the proposed Austin Landing on the county’s southern border, according to a recommendation that is expected to be made Tuesday, Feb. 24, by County Administrator Deborah Feldman.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that there will be a downtown arena either, but, at least we won’t be paying for more sprawl with a tax hike.
Now, we have to wait for the previously non-existent “plan b” to surface, because we just heard from Joe Tuss that we need some kind of attraction at our new intersection.
How about something usefull like free fibre optic lines or something like that.
A suburban sports arena isnt too outrageous because a developer did this in Sacramento, built the Arco Arena and then bought the Kansas City Kings and relocted them to Sacto. But it was his development as far as I recall.
For here, though, the cause and effect of a suburban hockey arena as a way to draw business to an office/light industrial development never made too much sense from the cause & effect standpoint. Imagine the dicussion:
RG & County: “Mr Businessman, relocate to my office park becuase it has a hockey arena!
Mr Businessman: “So this helps my business how?”
What happens when Northern Warren County builds an arena, gets a hockey team, and is successful? Do we blame City of Dayton for not being aggressive, or do we cry (like we did with The Greene) bc neighboring counties are being more creative and competitive to take Montgomery County money to other counties?
City Of Dayton – Wake Up! Move Forward! or it will be too late!!!!!!!!
Warren County already is planning an events center of sorts for performances, not sports.
When did it become taxpayers responsibility to build the arena so a propietor could lease it, get rich as hell and walk away when there is no longer interest in the offering?
@SWrick- isn’t that exactly what we did with the Dragon’s stadium?
The Dragons havnt walked away yet.
But if they do there will be a tough time to re-use a ball park since they are designed around a specific game.
In theory an arena can be multi-purpose.
But you have to give credit to the county in that they had someone actually do an economic analyeses that told them how much this would really cost, indenpenent of RG Properites. Right now all you have is the Bombers’ owner giving you a cost. You don’t have any independent estimate.
Major league teams do it all the time.
If you want to be a big time city you need big time sports. Minor league stuff works the same way, kind of.