Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Tapping the snooze button

From Crains Cleveland

Tapping the snooze button
Blog entry: August 28, 2007, 11:06 am
Author: SCOTT SUTTELL

Backers of a new downtown convention center/medical mart complex should give a read to this Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, which argues that urban leaders should “forget sports stadia and convention centers” because great cities “flourish on solid infrastructure.”

The piece, by urban affairs expert Joel Kotkin, notes that disasters in New Orleans and Minneapolis should focus the nation’s collective attention on infrastructure issues, “but if history is a guide, the rhetoric will be followed by another tap of the snooze button.”

Rather than deal with “the expensive and difficult task of retrofitting the sinews of commerce and communication — bridges, tunnels, roads, rail lines, ports, sewers, and drainage systems — America's urban powers focus on the ephemeral and the glitzy,” Mr. Kotkin writes. “They emphasize not brick and mortar, but sports stadia, convention centers, arts palaces, dubiously effective new light-rail lines, hotels and condo projects.”

The ultimate question here, according to Mr. Kotkin, “is that of priorities. Yes, artists and cultural institutions have always been hallmarks of great cities. But underpinning that efflorescence since the earliest times has been critical commitments to such mundane things as water systems, canals, dikes and protective walls — the economic infrastructure that supports the rest.”

In the past decade, according to a recent Brookings Institution study, “public capital spending on convention centers has doubled to $2.4 billion annually; nationwide, 44 new or expanded centers are in planning or under construction,” Mr. Kotkin writes. “But the evidence is that few such centers make money, and many more lose considerable funds. The big convention business is not growing while the surplus space is increasing. New sports centers add little to the overall economy.”

He adds, “Critically, misguided investments shift funds that could finance essential basic infrastructure. Pittsburgh has spent over $1 billion this decade on sports stadia, a new convention center and other dubious structures. Heralded as major job creators and sources of downtown revitalization, they have done little to prevent the region's long-term population loss and continued economic stagnation. Much the same can be said of Milwaukee's new Santiago Calatrava-designed Art Museum, or Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”

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