Ok. I'm back from Denver and Invesco Field and a great tour and also meetup and walkthrough with Oreo of the great blog DemConWatchBlog.com Lots of news to report, which I will do in a separate blog.
But some teasing.
I learned that the total convention schedule is not finalized and that the media's premature in what it's reporting -- not that the Hillary Clinton speak date is wrong -- there's more to come.
Invesco Field itself is a huge and well-equipped facility that makes me wish Oakland would wake up and rebuild the Oakland / Alameda County Coliseum. It has miles of storage space, wide cooridors, and a new smell -- still.
I also learned that protest groups have filed suit to be closer to the convention than they are. But as you will see in my upcoming video from my trip, they're pretty close already!!
I also discovered that the best Spinach Salad's at Brooklyn's bar and grill next to Pepsi Center, and that the facility will become "The Politics Grill" by CNN. And while the link is informative on this matter, it does not do it justice as a video would. I even discovered folks working on turning it into the "CNN Grill."
Theu should have bloggers in it. Like us.
Stay tuned for that.
Comments
That's money that can go into the local economy.
Now before you say "there's no study that proves stadiums pump money into the economy" my simple response from my urban economics background is that the economists who do these studies -- like Roger Noll at Stanford -- are NOT urban economists.
An urban economist and an urban economic development specialist sees that as the "market potential" then asks why are there no places for these folks to spend their money before or after the game?
Let's apply that to the Oakland Coliseum.
There's no place on Coliseum ground -- like between the stadium and arena -- to go and eat or just plain hang out and listen to a concert or play with the kids. NOTHING.
That's stupid. Yet, it's a common way of thinking. It's why there are so many bad examples of stadium placement and design. Now next to Invesco is a whole retail and eating district that's just walking distance. In Phoenix, there's a shopping center that served as a great concert venue for pre-Super Bowl events at Super Bowl XXXXII.
But the Coliseum has zip.
Look, the problem with Oakland is that it lacks the will and the initiative to complete big projects. There's a really annoying lack of ambition in this town that shows up in it's very urban structure. It's a shame. And a shame that was advanced by bad urban development ideas, like Jerry Brown's 10K project, which is really if you think about it, a deal to allow residential developers to build whereever the hell they want as long as it's in downtown.
That's why we have the hodge-podge of condos here and there with no other uses around it in a planned fashion.
We allowed Jerry Brown to essentially force a "Houston Style" of development -- lacking real zoning criteria -- and we were too stupid to see it.
But I digress.
Sports economic development is what Oakland neeeds, not more talk about some deal that is 20 years old.
So the few football games are the reason to spend hundreds of millions of public money? No.
If the money is there then let PRIVATE enterprise take advantage, which is what capitalism is all about.Public financed stadiums have a terrible national record.
I am glad to see anyone come in and spend venture capital chasing $9 million a year... but it ain't gonna happen. Nobody in their right mind will countenance spending 50-100 million on the coliseum ( particularly after the Raider debacle) to get back $9 million a year in income to local business.
So please fight for the stadium! Just don't ask the taxpayer to fund yet another debacle. If you may recall, the current situation has us paying OUT $9 million a year.....
That's spending money that is a great justification for a new retail development right at the Coliseum. And I'm using YOUR numbers.
Again, I'm sick of simplistic thinking. The Coliseum's in a Redevelopment Project Area, the "taxpayer money" is already collected by the Oakland Redevelopment Agency.