This is an excellent piece, very insightful.
This entire series should have its own website and as things deteriorate, people can be directed to it to see what really happened and how this debacle came to be.
I would add that when I read Dale High’s remarks, I don’t get “if you build it, they will come” but rather “if you build it, I will get them to MOVE”.
It sounds to me like Dale went out to his corporate buddies and asked them to relocate the business they were already doing at the Host, Willow Valley or the Eden and patronize the his downtown hotel & CC. He may have even had some success in doing that as CC backers say they are doing great while countywide statistics point to little or no industry growth. In other words, we are merely redistributing the wealth on a County level, taking from the private and attempting to feed the public.
If that is true, it also calls into question Senator Armstrong’s “clarification” of the Act (the 3rd Class County Convention Center Act). For those without a program, the centerpiece of the litigation brought by the hotels was a clause in that Act which basically said that counties with CCs could not build a public one under the Act. Gib “clarified” that as part of a Flag Day Proclamation to say that those counties with a public CC could then not go and build another one under the act. In essence, Gib was saying that a public CC, the government, should have protection from itself, or future governments, rather than provide that protection to private entities.
Hard to believe that this project was championed and pushed through by Republicans.
