The Buble concert was fabulous Friday night. The Kansas Coliseum? Not so much.
First, at the side of the venue I entered, there was one — ONE — person scanning tickets to let people in. It was ridiculous. I recently attended the Springsteen concert at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, and somehow 18,000 people seemed to get in faster than the 6,000 for the concert here.
Then, for some reason, my ticket wouldn’t scan. So I’m standing at the turnstile feeling like a reject from a line outside the most popular club in Vegas, and one of the Coliseum employees kicked me back outside to wait in shame in the fierce wind while he went to investigate.
And, hey, I’ve been (rather unbelievably) climbing the bleachers at Cessna Stadium lately, but the small steps near my nosebleed seats at the Colesium scared me so much due to the lack of handrails that I didn’t move the whole concert for fear of falling in the dark.
Now, obviously, the Coliseum is old and outdated, and we’re going to have the more modern Intrust Bank Arena soon. But my point is that my complaints are the sort that don’t really take money, at least not much, to fix.
When they open our sparkly new arena, I hope they remember it’s often the little things that mean the most for a concertgoer. A little friendliness, an ease of getting around — or just getting in – could add up to an experience that someone would want to repeat.
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Carrie Rengers says: “It’s often the little things that mean the most for the concert goer.”
Carrie, you mean things like a convenient parking place for your car?
You mean a safe place to run to through the dark adjacent alleys and neighborhoods?
You mean a fairly near place to run to for cover through a rain or snow storm after a show?
You have to remember that Britt Brown Arena (Kansas Coliseum) is out of ADA compliance. Sedgwick County has been sued on numerous occasions for ADA non-compliance. The worst of it is, it wasn’t design right for the acoustics of musical concerts. It was designed for agricultural events.
The Commissioners therefore thought of a plan to pay upwards of over $200 million (after bonds are paid off) to renovate Britt Brown and during renovations, the arena would be closed for almost 3 years. That mean no concerts, circuses, or any large event in our area for almost 3 years. And all of this without the approval of the taxpayers.
Then we had our vast community leadership step in. Everybody from business, labor, public, and private decided there was a better and cheaper way. And that was to build a new arena, while Britt Brown could be continued to be used during its construction.
The success of the downtown arena will be positively felt for several decades. This was the best voter participated infrastructure project to help us enter into the new century that we could have done.
The downtown arena saved our entertainment schedule, which has been proven to help and retain and recruit businesses (the closure of Britt Brown would have been a monumental mistake to business and young professional recruitment).
We also have save tremendous amount of cost. By collecting a sales tax, the downtown arena is not only paid for, with every penny being saved, the collection exceeded even the most optimistic expectations, and they made millions on just interest alone. With a 20+ year bond, tens of millions of dollars would have gone to line the pockets of bond investors, for which many if not all of them live outside the state of Kansas, meaning no return on the lost millions.
And we had the voters participate on the thumbs up and thumbs down. With the vote on a General Election during a Presidential Election Year, the greatest number of turnout was deemed necessary to gain legitimate public approval and it did with flying colors.
We need to thank the great leaders of our community for stepping up and preventing a disaster, and they prevented it by working diligently to have the downtown arena the best option for our community.
No need to worry, once the Downtown Arena is completed, any memory of Britt Brown will be wiped away as they tear down the old brown elephant, and the people of our great community with the pride of our new downtown arena will forever look forward towards a future of awesome entertainment experience that our new arena will deliver.
Joe! I hope that your predictions are correct.
ictBest: There you go again Joe, still trying to put lipstick on a sow … it just doesn’t work. With a web of mis-information like you just spun, I presume you are still serving as quasi-spokesman for the two remaining holdover county commissioners, Tim Norton and Dave Unruh. You pretty well ended any chance of Tom Winters winning his election.
But continue trying to put that lipstick on those downtown arena pigs.
Ben! Easy to make that prediction. Do you believe the Kansas Coliseum was a great asset and successful venue all these past 30 years?
If you answer “yes”, then the Downtown Arena will be the same. Why? Because it replaces the Coliseum. That simple.
If you answered, “no” to the first question, then your opinion would be inline with the Jdink’s, and that is to close and tear down the Kansas Coliseum and have no arena. Rely on the Coalition and Century II. And you have every right to feel that we don’t need a multi-purpose arena as large as that of Britt Brown for our community.
I just beg to differ.
My position in a nut shell was to spend $50 million dollars in SALES TAXES on the Kansas Coliseum to make it the #1 tourist destination in Kansas. All with great existing parking, wonderful access to the freeway, lots of restrooms and walkways, the RV parking on the perifery and access to the dog track property for a wonderful new use.
But you and the other downtown arena cheerleaders, most of whom have now left Wichita and left us with a financial drain of over 1/2 billion dollars for no improvement. Your group, in a haze of mis-guided support … seemed to think a white elephant downtown arena was the answer to Wichita’s downtown problems.
Sorry Joe and the you other out of town cheerleaders … you were flat out wrong and now Wichita must pay for it.
JWink … Thanks for keeping up the streak that no mention of the arena or downtown can pass without someone making it a lack-of-parking debate.
Indeed. It’s simply staggering how out of touch Wichitans are with the reality of attending sporting and entertainment venues.
Ever been to a Super Bowl? A BCS national championship game? Ever tried to exit a parking garage at a major college football game inside of an hour?
I can tell you from experience that the walk, by comparison, would get you from the Eagle to Lawrence Dumont Stadium. Easily.
There’s PLENTY of peripheral parking near the arena. The continual reappearance of the perceived – not real – lack of parking is a red herring.
“Ever been to a Super Bowl? A BCS national championship game? Ever tried to exit a parking garage at a major college football game inside of an hour?”
Is your arena hosting any of those?
In answer to your question Bill – YES, at least in part. College and pro football, college basketball, etc. As I recall transit was a aprt of the picture. We don’t have transit here in Wichita.
A side effect of trasit in day-to-day life is that people become accustomed to walking from the train station to the Sears tower etc. Wichitans do not share that lifestyle.
My parking question is this: If we don’t need parking then why did the County promise IN WRITING that parking would be included in the $184.5 million?
We have developed a possible plan to deal with the parking/transportation issue; however I don’t know that the County has that information.
BTW – what is the current projected opening date? January 2010 or thereabouts? Think they will be able to land an NCAA sub-regional?
I really look forward to the new arena; I try to avoid the coliseum at all costs. It is so dang uncomfortable! I do hope the arena encourages visitors to the Wichita area.
Since some of us have a propensity to complain (and I am pointing the finger at myself on this one) I would like to see a blog topic on what individuals think Wichita needs to attract more visitors, and discuss them. This is a great forum, and I have a couple things I would like to throw out there.
Visitors – I think one big push is to get those of us who live here to bring family. Instead of me going to CA to visit the in-laws for holidays bring them here. Highlight things like the Zoo that is WORLD-CLASS. My mother, who had worked with ZooAtlanta, was jealous.
Another approach – work with other communities in south-central Kansas to develop packages. Perhaps a quiet B&B in Pratt to go along with a noisy night in Old Town. Keep in mind that in many ways we are NOT going to compete head-to-head with Atlanta etc in their areas of strength, we have to have something different.
Business meetings – we should be able to attract more of those with mid-sized conventions. One of my frustrations with the Arena is that it has not been configured to be a convention center. And, at least in my view, we are more likely to get profitable use from a convention center than from an Arena.
Century II. We have wonderful events there – Music Theater, Symphony, Grand Opera, etc etc etc. Expand on that – they already attract visitors from the region. Perhaps some clever hotel owner might sell packages – theater tickets, lodging, dinner.
Improve outdoor access. Our river front is an asset that we don’t use enough. Tie that in with outlying areas.
Going a bit further out – hunting packages that can include lodging here in Wichita as well as in out-lying communities. For example – deer hunting in Kansas is just about the best in the country.
Just a few ideas – from a transplant.
With the very high prices for preseason games in the NBA and NHL home cities, most major league clubs are interested in filling smaller cities arenas for preseason games providing some relief for their season ticket holders. Wichita should aim for at least one preseason NBA and/or NHL game every year as well. While NCAA tournaments are grander, there is much more competition to land regional tournaments. I believe the new arena will land them, but not every year, most likely maybe one year in ten. Dream further than basketball, think in terms of tennis, volleyball, gymnastics, and wrestling too.
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[...] Casual regular Jerry posted a comment on Carrie’s recent entry about her experience at the Coliseum. Here’s what he said: Since some of us have a propensity to complain (and I am pointing the [...]