Community thread

3 Comments

  1. Mrage
    Posted September 13, 2007 at 3:39 am | Permalink

    http://www.kansas.com/101/story/173719.html

    Downtown development and health care were the two big focuses Wednesday for a group of Wichita business and government leaders in this northeast Florida city.

    The group of more than 50 people are here to learn how this northeast Florida city developed and implemented a comprehensive, multifaceted plan for growth. The trip — for which each person attending paid $1,500 to participate — is sponsored by Visioneering Wichita and the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce.

    Most of the morning was spent listening to officials from Jacksonville’s city government, Chamber of Commerce, convention and visitors bureau, and economic development group.

    At those sessions, attendees learned how Jacksonville’s city leaders sold voters on a $2.25 billion downtown infrastructure project. The project — paid for by a voter-approved, half-cent sales tax increase — resulted in the construction of new central and branch libraries, a 14,000-seat arena and an adjoining Double-A baseball stadium. It also included money for other infrastructure, such as downtown roads.

    Voters approved the infrastructure projects for several reasons. They had city leaders who were passionate about the project and the trust of the citizenry to carry out what those leaders said they were going to do with the tax increase, said Richard Mullaney, general counsel for the city of Jacksonville.

    ………..

    What will be learned in Jacksonville where citizens trust their politicians to spend $2.25 Billion?

    Are we getting worth out of spending $200 Million on the smallish Arena? Many don’t trust our politicians around here.

    More so, we don’t trust each other as community citizens. It shows up in our voting patterns.

    Consensus here will never be overwhelmingly positive on any civic project. Many don’t trust actions of others in their behaviors. Some argued citizens couldn’t control themselves from going into a Casino.

    We turned downed development money recently in the Casino vote and improvements like a new Library comes from what City budget? How to afford fixing Century II in seating and acoustics.

    City could float their own sales tax idea sooner than we imagine.

    I failed, but tried to influence corporate friends about needing a larger seating capacity downtown Arena.

    We need 18,000 seats for basketball is the term. We’re only going to have 15,000.

    Neighboring states Arena’s have 18,000 seats or little larger.

    Jacksonville Florida has a smaller 14,000 seat Arena and proud of it. They will get a 2010 March Madness game I think. What about their future bidding after that?

    We’re not opening until 2009. It could be five years before being considered a facility to hold March Madness games.

    WSU has to qualify to trigger that consideration and the downtown Arena has to be busy often for other events.

    Can we attract KU to play one game a year in Wichita? Craft together WSU and KSU four or six team tournaments on occasion. Those games on cable or national TV with a 15,000 seat Arena?

    The Big 12 requires 18,000 to hold their men’s basketball tournament.

    Tulsa doesn’t have a Big 12 team is trying to win that event some day in the future. SMG guides their facility.

    SMG won’t be bidding the Big 12 to have the event here in Wichita.

    Yesterday someone provided this statement…

    Mrage,

    I wholly agree with your points, but the capacity of the arena is not going to change at this point. We are far too evolved in the process. The site planning, engineering, and architecture is all completed. The entire project bids at 4:00 PM at which point we will have a legally binding agreement with a contractor.

    Nothing drastic is going to change at this point unless we go back to the drawing board, literally.

    Posted by: Another underbuilt Wichita/SG Co project.

    Nothing drastic happens in Wichita in our civic projects. We don’t believe. We have more doubters who help keep this city as it is.

    I’ll go to Arena events. Won’t we miss the experiences that will pass Wichita by because too few seats in the Arena?

    Aren’t we losing events because Century II is old and needs updating. Lost that Bowling tournament.

    “I guess I’m very encouraged to hear that you don’t need 20,000 seats to get (an NCAA tournament),” Tim Norton said.

    I never argued we needed 20,000 seats. I know we need 18,000 seats to be satisfied with the downtown Arena. Some won’t be satisfied until a Corporate puts their name on it, takes much financial responsibility of the Arena.

    Many complain about the location downtown and some feel its too small in seating at the same time.

    SMG still hasn’t announced publicly what events could happen in the downtown Arena.

    Who says SMG will be proud to do business marketing in a community full of so many doubters?

    Prove the Arena to me, KU agrees to play one basketball game a season downtown. ( against any top 30 university hopefully)

    Do they require more seating capacity? I can’t wait until SMG announces that, if it ever happens. I think its more possible if we had 18,000 seats.

    I am done with all Arena discussions. I’ll wait and see from now on.

    Because of local corporation inaction some civic projects are less than they should be.

    “There’s a can-do attitude here,” said Brad Elliott, chairman of Equity Bank in Jacksonville.

    What did INTRUST and Fidelity Bank demand of our citizens here recently, a lot of Can’t Do That, NO!

    There is a huge difference between Jacksonville and Wichita

  2. Ben
    Posted September 13, 2007 at 9:47 am | Permalink

    Well Mrage – you got your Arena. You kept telling us all about how you were going to get all those corporate leaders on board. Remember that? Well, what happened?

    Another difference between Wichita and Jacksonville is that in Jacksonville the City works WITH the surrounding communities. Here we have people like you who hate the surrounding communities and say you will botcott them. A racino in Sedgwick County would have been a benefit. YOU opposed it because you oppose anything that is not downtown.

    Downtown should not try to operate in a vacuum. It needs to rely upon its surroundings. And, proposals for spending downtown needs to be shown to benefit residents of the surrounding area.

    That is how they do it in Jacksonville.

  3. Ben
    Posted September 14, 2007 at 9:27 am | Permalink

    More on Jacksonville: In today’s Eagle they discuss secondary and post-secondary education/training. Where Wichita has dropped the ball has been post-secondary. When the decision was made to eviscerate Vo-Tech I was one who protested the decision. We are finally just beginning to undo that mistake.

    When I ran for legislature many years ago my main issue was to bring together the four regional CC’s (Butler, Cowley, Pratt, Hutch) with Vo-Tech and WSU to develop a comprehensive post-secondary and continuing ed system. This is what is done elsewhere including Jacksonville. Unfortunately ‘turf battles’ between the institutions have tended to preclude such cooperation.

    Hopefully we will finally begin to move in such a direction.