Kingston's LVEC: Yay or nay?
You'll have to forgive me for the intrusion of real-world concerns into our virtual world. My home-town, is well into the process of planning a "Large Venue /Entertainment Centre", a 6800-seat arena/concert venue.
In late 2003, the Mayor struck a Task Force to consider replacing our aging Memorial Centre. They decided that best place, only place for this huge project is in our crowded downtown, on the inner harbour.
Fast-forward 18 months and you now have two consultant's reports backing the Mayor's seeming obsession with placing a $40-million arena complex smack in the middle of 325-year-old city's crowded downtown. You also have a very active opposition group loaded with highly intelligent people who think nothing of devoting hours of time to combing multi-chapter reports with an arsenal of fine-tooth combs.
Bruce Todd, a retired engineer of some description, has managed to do some amazing things to each report as it comes out. First, he picked apart the draft business plan, and emailed the details of 15 glaring issues with it to every city councilor and to the local media. For a horrified laugh, check out Serious rookie mistakes in the Parking & Traffic Study. Given the errors and assumptions that the consultant made in that report (quite obviously slanted to support the project), I can't quite fathom how the project made it to the next step. Small-town politics, I suppose.
Next, he went to work on the parking and traffic study. This one is such a dog that the city only released the Executive Summary online. To get the rest (87 pages and appendices), one has to pay the city $0.21 per page for a photocopy. Bruce had some copies made and KCAL made the whole thing available here. It's again riddled with errors and false assumptions, not to mention primary school typos, Can you imagine submitting a multi-thousand-dollar report to a City and have a Table of Contents entry labeled "Conslusions"? The mind boggles. Bruce is in the midst of his daily "This is why the report sucks" series, so you'll have to read them at the KCAL site.
Why am I telling you this? To get it off my chest, mostly. I really, really despise the way Mayor Rosen is "getting things done" in this regard. Yes, I voted for him, but, I was looking for a leader for our city, not a strong man!
The sad part is that I truly believe that we do need a new area complex. However, I also think it needs to be on the Memorial Centre site: it would cost $29 million less to refurbish the Memorial Centre than it would to build the LVEC on Anglin Bay ($11 million vs. $40 million and counting), there is plenty of space available: something like 29 acres of land, and there's excellent access to the site from several major thoroughfare.
I simply don't understand why the site was dismissed out of hand so early in the process. Perhaps someone at city hall has something to gain from using the Anglin Bay site. I have no idea. Mayor Rosen had better watch out, though. KCAL is becoming a force to be reckoned with and with the ammunition that they're collecting, he's in for a hell of a fight.
In late 2003, the Mayor struck a Task Force to consider replacing our aging Memorial Centre. They decided that best place, only place for this huge project is in our crowded downtown, on the inner harbour.
Fast-forward 18 months and you now have two consultant's reports backing the Mayor's seeming obsession with placing a $40-million arena complex smack in the middle of 325-year-old city's crowded downtown. You also have a very active opposition group loaded with highly intelligent people who think nothing of devoting hours of time to combing multi-chapter reports with an arsenal of fine-tooth combs.
Bruce Todd, a retired engineer of some description, has managed to do some amazing things to each report as it comes out. First, he picked apart the draft business plan, and emailed the details of 15 glaring issues with it to every city councilor and to the local media. For a horrified laugh, check out Serious rookie mistakes in the Parking & Traffic Study. Given the errors and assumptions that the consultant made in that report (quite obviously slanted to support the project), I can't quite fathom how the project made it to the next step. Small-town politics, I suppose.
Next, he went to work on the parking and traffic study. This one is such a dog that the city only released the Executive Summary online. To get the rest (87 pages and appendices), one has to pay the city $0.21 per page for a photocopy. Bruce had some copies made and KCAL made the whole thing available here. It's again riddled with errors and false assumptions, not to mention primary school typos, Can you imagine submitting a multi-thousand-dollar report to a City and have a Table of Contents entry labeled "Conslusions"? The mind boggles. Bruce is in the midst of his daily "This is why the report sucks" series, so you'll have to read them at the KCAL site.
Why am I telling you this? To get it off my chest, mostly. I really, really despise the way Mayor Rosen is "getting things done" in this regard. Yes, I voted for him, but, I was looking for a leader for our city, not a strong man!
The sad part is that I truly believe that we do need a new area complex. However, I also think it needs to be on the Memorial Centre site: it would cost $29 million less to refurbish the Memorial Centre than it would to build the LVEC on Anglin Bay ($11 million vs. $40 million and counting), there is plenty of space available: something like 29 acres of land, and there's excellent access to the site from several major thoroughfare.
I simply don't understand why the site was dismissed out of hand so early in the process. Perhaps someone at city hall has something to gain from using the Anglin Bay site. I have no idea. Mayor Rosen had better watch out, though. KCAL is becoming a force to be reckoned with and with the ammunition that they're collecting, he's in for a hell of a fight.
posted by Gordo at 7/03/2005 04:42:00 p.m.
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