By Randolph Carney, concerned citizen
It should be no surprise to anyone that the downtown Lancaster convention center is having financial difficulties. The “integrated facility” is far too grandiose and expensive for its location, and the agreements which so tightly bind it to its “private partners” divert far too many taxpayer dollars to generate private profit.
A variation of the original 1998 proposal could have worked, had it been built. Even the oft-quoted $129 million hotel and convention center project would have been sustainable, given the heavy subsidy of the “hotel tax”. But public officials and civic leaders of all persuasions were seduced by the promise of substantial economic revitalization in downtown Lancaster; to the point that almost all were blinded to the ever-increasing demands of those who were behind this project. Some highly intelligent individuals chose to ignore overwhelming evidence that the proposal had grown to proportions that no longer made any kind of economic sense for taxpayers.
The fact that the convention center itself is doing relatively well is a direct result of the tireless efforts of people who had nothing at all to do with the design or implementation of this project. The staff and the board of the LCCCA has managed to successfully deal with the unnecessarily high costs of operating the “integrated facility” while legally bound by “agreements” that divert operating revenue from large portions of the publicly-owned convention center to the bottom line of the “private partners”.
As constructed, the downtown Lancaster convention center carries far too much debt to justify its economic impact on the area. There is no doubt that some economic benefit has resulted from the “integrated facility”; established businesses in downtown Lancaster do see increased sales and revenue when events are hosted there. But there has been no substantial increase in the value of real estate near the facility; in fact, Lancaster Newspapers recently negotiated a 20% reduction in the assessed value of much of their downtown real estate, partially based on claims that their new parking garage (built to support the convention center) has consistently lost money since it opened. With about $64 million in outstanding debt, plus annual operating losses approaching $1 million or more, there is no way that the costs of this project to taxpayers can ever be justified by the small amount of economic development it has generated.
Now, we the people are responsible for the costs of this poorly-planned fiscal fiasco. Our elected officials are tightly bound by the legal agreements made by themselves and their predecessors. Whether they – or we – like it or not, there is no longer any way for them to avoid making politically unpopular choices in order to start paying down this massive amount of public debt.
