City officials are working hard to justify the investment in the Power & Light District in the face of a grim financial outlook, the subject of this week's column.
Councilwoman Cindy Circo put on her hard hat and described the struggling bond issue on her blog as a $150 million sewer project."The improvements above ground are just icing on the cake," she wrote. Opining in The Kansas City Star, Councilman Russ Johnson went the Downtown Comes Alive! route, touting attendance figures at the Sprint Center and Bartle Hall. Johnson noted that convention business from May through July is up 28 percent from last year. What Johnson didn't say was that 2009, his baseline for comparison, was a pretty lousy year for conventions.
Kansas City hosted 32 major conventions in 2009, a fall-off from 2008 (37) and 2007 (38). One of the gatherings that went missing in '09 was the Wal-Mart Stores convention. The Wal-Mart hootenanny lasted for two weeks in January, not a time of year when exhibitors are tripping over themselves to book rooms inside Bartle Hall.
The Power & Light District was designed to appeal to conventioneers, but other big shows are following Wal-Mart out of town. Sam's Club, a Wal-Mart subsidiary, moved its twice yearly meetings from Kansas City to Arkansas in order to save money. SkillsUSA, the competition for blazer-clad vocational-ed students, is going to Louisville in 2015.
To be sure, the entertainment district is a nice feature to offer convention planners. But conventions are tough to land because cities across the U.S. have overbuilt their capacity to host them. The three-month improvement that Johnson highlighted may be fleeting.
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I was rather thrilled to discover this blog. I just wanted to thank you for this great write-up!! I most definitely loved every little word of it and I have you bookmarked to take a look at latest stuff you put up.
It's not making money. It's not a "great thing" to be paying out an 8-figure shortfall when the city's budget is shot.
With P&L, the city has essentially taken out a mortgage on a house they can't afford. People like you drive by and say, "What a great house!". People like me look at the numbers say, "They can't afford that house."
the reason we lose all those big conventions is becuase we dont have enough hotel rooms. but im sure you are against that too.
How come everyone in this city is so negative? we have a great thing downtown. looks 100% better then it was. everything has a cost. I would much rather have what we have now then what we did have. yea sucks it takes money to make money...but thats life.
He also mentioned how sales tax revenue has gone up relative to 3 years ago. Well, yeah. It had nowhere to go but up. Tell me about your NET tax collections. You know, after you pay the budget shortfall the city will be saddled with for decades.
He ended by saying something like "there's no buyer's remorse" for downtown.
Right. Ask someone who bought a condo downtown what they think of that purchase.
If the city council, mayor, chief of police, and police commissioners don't have an emergency joint meeting very soon to make some decisions about taking extraordinary measures to address the violence and murders taking place almost daily, the current $12 million bond payments will be the least of their problems.
What will the economic aftermath of a rolling gunbattle through the P&L District on a Friday evening be?
And more importantly, why isn't public safety for all the rsidents and visitors to KCMO a top priority?
I hope we'll hear alot more about this most basic purpose of local government during the upcoming mayoral campaign.
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