My column today notes the proliferation of museums in Wichita — many of them wanting handouts — and proposes several more that perhaps should be funded by taxpayers, including the WaterWalk Museum, the Kansas Intelligent Design Museum and the National Accordion Players’ Hall of Fame.
WE Bloggers: Your suggestions for other overlooked museum ideas would be appreciated.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- donndublin on Open thread 11/24
- okobserver on Open thread 11/24
- Monkeyhawk on Open thread 11/24
- SolDevVB on Open thread 11/24
- ProudMan on It’s the stupidity about the economy
- donndublin on Open thread 11/24
- SolDevVB on It’s the stupidity about the economy
- outlander on Open thread 11/24
- Monkeyhawk on It’s the stupidity about the economy
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/24
15 Comments
I just want to know which one Pat Roberts belongs in?He represents everything that is old, bigoted and senile.
We need a museum of common sense, would be the only place it is found anymore.
Tracy, would that be the Flat Earth Museum?
Or perhaps the Rubber Stamp Museum?
Or the Museum of Expedient Political Delays?
Someday it could also be the WAX museum of all those guys who were charter members of the “I Heart Shrub Club”.
Museum of Wichita/Sedgwick County Solid Waste Management Plans
This one will require the new Arena and also the Coliseum as an annex to hold them all.
good one raptor.
John Prine has a song about how “it dont make no sense that common sense dont make no sense no more”.
Do ya think he ever lived in ks?
Anyone that like to “Whistle and Fish” is all right with me.Remember that ancient Prine tune?And man, I sure enjoyed it when I accidently saw him on Austin City Limits.
Oh, and we KNOW he:
“Used to live up in ChicagoWhere the north wind blows”
“Delivered more junk-mailthan the junk yard can hold”
The old train station would be a good site for the soon-to-open Museum of Ancient and Extinct Cable Companies.
How about “The REAL Cowtown Museum”, adults only? With weekly summer reenactments of midnight ladies running into the river naked. You probably wouldn’t even have to subsidize it. ; )
ya mean “fish and whistle, whistle and fish, eat everything that they put on yer dish….
I love that song too.
Johnny Prine ought to be paying us WE bloggers royalties, er, I guess that would be the other way around.
Maybe he should pay us WE bloggers a promoter’s fee. I wonder if we could get him to read this blog and/or jam with the WE blog trio at one of the meetups.
Heheheh. Maybe next year we can havd a WE blog 2 year birthday party with both Dave Barry and John Prine? Bono?
Melissa Etheridge?
heheheheh
I’ll bring the tater salad….
I suppose a good measure of a proposed museum is, would it be more or less exciting than Exporation Place.
For example, one suggestion I have would be a “Kansas Wheat Museum.” Here I suggest that various kinds of wheat seeds could be displayed for school children to see. Perhaps a “hands on” display where museum patrons are actually permitted to run their hands through freshly harvested wheat. Also there could be several five by five patches of soil in a controlled atmosphere where wheat could be sewn and museum visitors could watch it grow.
Another idea is a “Museum of Proposals to Return Downtown Wichita to the Glory Days of the Past.” Perhaps wax statues and biographies could be displayed of the 200 or so “arena cheerleaders” who were able to convince about 1/2 of some 165,000 Sedgwick County voters/taxpayers to vote to pay a quarter BILLION dollars for the proposed white elephant downtown ice hockey arena. This is especially important since most regular taxpayers now tell me they don’t want to pay for the arena and projected later operational losses.
So now that closer figures have been assembled for the arena — LETS ALLOW THE PUBLIC TO VOTE AGAIN, ONCE AND FOR ALL, ABOUT WHETHER WE REALLY WANT THE ARENA.
Thats the least we can do when playing with the public’s hard earned dollars — am I correct Sedgwick County Commissioners?
Classic, JWink. I truly admire your persistence. Without a doubt I believe that in the future, when the arena stands alongside Century II as a great community asset, you will still be championing the anti-arena cause with creative (read unfactual) reasons for its “failure.” One of these days I’m going to make a blogger meet up–I’m looking forward to meeting a fellow impassioned citizen.
Anyway, I like raptor’s museum of common sense. So I also offer, just because this is Kansas: The Museum of Tolerance, The Open Mindedness Memorial Center, and the Society of Ignorance Hall of Fame.
Shocker ‘07: I assumed you were attending summer school somewhere or in Florida on summer break.
I might remind you that, so far, I have been 100% correct on all of the arena issues we have discussed and you have been totally wrong. I suspect that your youthful zeal to support another ice rink for Ice Hockey enthusiasts causes you and other arena cheerleaders to lose your objectivity.
As you might remember, I have said all along that the cost to local taxpayers will prove to be closer to $ 250 million ($ 1/4 billion dollars) than the original figure of $184.5 million. You of course pooh poohed that even while the estimate was rising rapidly right over your head!
I can’t keep track myself since I, as a regular taxpaying citizen, don’t have access to the financial estimates like some of you “insiders.” However, I believe everyone agrees at this point that well over $220 million will be needed and this estimate is increasing by the day. It now appears my estimate of $250 million might be on the low side.
In addition, the “off-budget” expenses are going to be excruciating. I’m talking here of salaries of a lot of people who work almost full time on the arena but are paid out of other budgets. For example, Chamber of Commerce leadership, Downtown Development staff, City and County development staff, etc. These are all paid for directly by local taxpayers or heavily subsidized by taxpayers.
Also all kinds of infrastructure improvements will be needed and be paid out of city and county budgets such as improved streets, railroad overpasses in the arena vicinity, access roads to the interstate highways …. and storm sewers.
I suspect you are ready to eat your hat in apology for disputing me on the storm sewer issue. As you probably know, a storm sewer is an underground concrete sewer pipe or box that will transport rain runoff from the arena to the Arkansas River. In the case of the Arena, the storm sewer pipe will run west through the downtown business district, through the Riverwalk project, past the Boathouse to the Arkansas River. I don’t know who will be paying this cost.
Of course, the parking situation has never been explained to taxpayers. As we all know, only minimal parking, 350?? parking spaces will be provided on the site. Is this handicapped parking or parking for arena bigwigs? Remember the Kansas Coliseum provides some 4,000 parking spaces and is expandable to 5,000 spaces. I have heard that people will be asked to drive to the Coliseum and other satellite lots to be bused back to the downtown arena.
Another option is for private outside investors to build multi-level parking facilities in the area to leverage a profit off the taxpayers who financed the original arena facility. That would be an extremely cynical way to capitalize on the taxpayers funding of the arena.
Of course attendance at the arena has been grotesquely overbloated to justify the arena.
Last Saturday, the Aviators indoor football team played a game to less than 400 paid attendees.
Across the street, disappointingly, because I am a baseball fan, the average attendance is somewhere in the vicinity of 2,500 per game as I recall. I personally think Wranglers baseball and the NBC tournament offer great values and entertainment for Wichita fans.
The view from Lawrence-Dumont Stadium, adjacent to the Arkansas River, towards the tall buildings in the downtown Wichita skyline on a mild summer evening actually can’t be beat by many other experiences anywhere. Lawrence-Dumont does need some upgrading to make it more fan friendly.
Everytime I read the Wichita EAGLE, I am struck by the many competing needs for finances for many, many competing projects — all with a higher priority than the $1/4 billion dollar arena.
AND DON’T FORGET, AS I HAVE SAID MANY TIMES, I WAS ONE OF THE FIRST TO CALL FOR A MODEST ARENA TO BE BUILT DOWNTOWN FOR ICE HOCKEY ENTHUSIASTS. STEVE SHAAD CAN VOUCH FOR THAT.
MY PLAN WAS TO ESTABLISH AN ARENA FOOTPRINT ON THE EAST SIDE OF THE CURRENT ICE SPORTS RINK AT MAPLE AND MCLAIN, JUST SOUTH OF LAWRENCE-DUMONT STADIUM. THEN NEGOTIATE WITH PRIVATE SPORTS FACILITY INVESTORS TO ACTUALLY BUILD THE ARENA FACILITY. PERHAPS THE CURRENT ICE RINK WOULD HAVE HAD TO BE TORN DOWN TO MAKE ROOM. IT WAS POORLY DESIGNED ANYWAY AND HAS NOT MET ITS MISSION.
THIS WOULD HAVE PUT IT BY THE RIVER WHERE IT BELONGS AND IN THE WICHITA SPORTS TRIANGLE. IT COULD HAVE INCLUDED A LIGHTED TOWER RISING HIGH ABOVE THE ARKANSAS RIVER IN FULL VIEW OF THE HIGHWAY 54 “FLYOVER” FOR ICON VALUE.
I notice on TV just today that estimates of rebuilding the terminal at Wichita’s Mid-Continent Airport are way to low and millions more will be needed to do the job.
There are many more tax needs but I’m not going to attempt to itemize them here.
But, suffice it say, when Wichita’s “Ice Hockey big boys” saw the potential to develop the arena “in-house,” so to speak, at the one-way expense of the medium-level taxpayers, in order to enjoy the fruits of the “up-front” capital improvements money they just couldn’t let that opportunity pass them by. As everyone knows, government is vastly poor at conducting business because the incentive value is missing.
So, Shocker’07 and your fellow arena cheerleaders, its time to stop this arena foolishness. ITS TIME TO GIVE THE WICHITA TAXPAYERS AND VOTERS ANOTHER VOTE ON THIS MATTER AND THIS TIME PROVIDE ALL THE FACTS NECESSARY TO MAKE AN INFORMED DECISION.
WHAT ABOUT THIS?
Oh, Winky, sometimes you really crack me up. I get on these blogs just for sheer entertainment value anymore as much as anything else. You never let me down.
Your claim of being 100% correct in everything you say is laughable. What about the “90%” of the population you claim is now against the arena? My friends, coworkers, peers, acquaintances, are still for it and can’t wait till it opens. I will not argue with you if you meant to say 90% of the nursing home population is against it.
Your $1/4 billion dollar estimate is still incorrect. The tax is projected to raise $201 million, but what the tax raises cannot be adjusted significantly. We can’t just cancel the tax the day it reaches $184 million.
Your original storm water claim was that downtown would flood because of runoff from the arena roof. I still congratulate you on your creativity with this one. As my engineer friend told me and I related to you long ago, rainwater would be directed into the storm drain system. Sure, the city of Wichita is replacing the sewer underneath the WaterWalk site, but do you know for a FACT the county will not compensate the city for the portion of this project that is arena related?
We have already established that salaries attributable to the arena project are not significant (not even a million $$). And common sense tells you that. Besides, do you know for a FACT that transfers from the arena fund are not being made to the county’s general fund for this miniscule expense?
Street improvements, infrastructure improvements, etc are already part of the arena budget. Please remember that $200 million does not build us just the building–it’s for the entire project. The Central Rail Corridor project you refer to is not part of the arena project and cannot be counted as part of the expense.
There are over 10,000 parking spaces downtown available for the arena, compared to the Coliseum 4-5,000. Downtown is dispersed parking, so I am looking forward to avoiding the dangerous situation at 85th and I-135 when 6000 Thunder fans squeeze out of the tiny exits at the Coliseum. There are no plans to use the Coliseum’s lot as satellite parking for the arena. And the VIP parking–if these guys pay thousands of bucks for a seat, they DESERVE to have close parking. This is how it is done at any other arena in the country. It’s called reality–look into it.
Oh, so you’re not for private garages, but you are for private arenas?? Businessmen shouldn’t make money off parking but they should from arenas?? You’re contradicting yourself here.
I know you have called for a modest arena downtown. Everyone is well aware of that. But we already have a modest arena in this town. But modest is another way of saying “second-rate,” “shoddy,” “sucky,” or “cheap.” Why do we have to be modest around here???? Why do we have to limit ourselves, be down on ourselves, limit our potential, and settle for second best??? If we’re going to build a downtown arena like other cities have successfully, let’s do it RIGHT. Let’s have a FIRST CLASS facility we can be proud of. Let’s have something that serves as a symbol of our community that says, “Wichita is a great city, a first class city that is proud of itself.” Please keep your modesty to yourself, I would like to see Wichita strive for the best.
The new airport terminal will not be taxpayer funded, please get your facts straight. It is being paid for with federal funding and user fees.
You imply the Thunder (Ice Hockey Big Boys) had something to do with getting the arena campaign started. This is also incorrect. When Sedgwick County decided to renovate the Coliseum, the city of Wichita asked them to hold off on their plans and try one more downtown arena vote. The Greater Wichita Area Sports Commission was the impetus for the “Vote Yea” campaign, not the Thunder.
The facts were presented, the anti-arena crowd had their say (with incorrect information–remember the “Baloney” ad we had to run in the Eagle to counter your idiotic claims?), the vote was held and the voters decided. Get over it. You lost. Why don’t you use your creativity, intelligence, and passion to spearhead an effort to build your Native American Center and Research Library? I think that is the best idea you’ve ever come up with.
I hear there was a lot of opposition to Century II being built back in the 60s. Can you imagine Wichita without this landmark today? It’s unthinkable. That’s what the next generation will say about the arena as well. Today’s naysayers are tomorrow’s has-beens, and today’s visionaries are tomorrow’s heroes. You fought a good fight and you earned my respect, but now it’s time to be FOR something Jerry.