Task Force --- Feasible?
While everybody seems to have been inundated by images and stories related to VT, the wheels of community aggrandizement continued to churn. The MRT filed its latest report on the Convention Center Task force, and with that we are treated with some task force members questioning about how you're going to locate a 112,000 S.F. building in downtown without eminent domain.
If this thing goes through, I don't think eminent domain will be a problem so long as the City hires the same appraiser as the County when they determine the fair market value of the property. Who's going to fight when you get 20x what you paid for a building, or 5x what it is reasonably worth?
Though not reported in the MRT, it was reported on the radio that the Task Force also took a guided tour of the Horseshoe, with the architect for the Convention Center pointing out things like "level of finish" and function.
Additionally, since "Black Tie Affairs" are a potential top user of a "new convention center" lets not forget the competition for this all important demographic: the Performing Arts Center!
The committee's goal is to construct a $66 million performing arts center that will span across 100,000 square feet. The 10-story facility will include 2,000 seats, two balconies, superior acoustics and aesthetics. There also would be room for UTPB's music program, a 200-seat multipurpose venue, a lobby that could accommodate events of its own and added parking.
Just as an aside, did anyone else find it curious that performing arts center was first stated as a desire in 1968? I wonder if the dreamers in 1968 envisioned the Opulent Opera House of the Mesquite we're about to get?
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From the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"':
"The hunting or exhibition of wild beasts was conducted with a magnificence suitable to a people who styled themselves the masters of the world; nor was the edifice appropriated to that entertainment less expressive of Roman greatness.
Posterity admires, and will long admire, the awful remains of the amphitheatre of Titus, which so well deserved the epithet of Colossal. It was a building of an elliptic figure, five hundred and sixty-four feet in length, and four hundred and sixty-seven in breadth, founded on fourscore arches, and rising, with four successive orders of architecture, to the height of one hundred and forty feet. The outside of the edifice was encrusted with marble, and decorated with statues.
The slopes of the vast concave, which formed the inside, were filled and surrounded with sixty or eighty rows of seats of marble likewise, covered with cushions, and capable of receiving with ease about fourscore thousand spectators. Sixty-four vomitories (for by that name the doors were very aptly distinguished) poured forth the immense multitude; and the entrances, passages, and staircases were contrived with such exquisite skill, that each person, whether of the senatorial, the equestrian, or the plebeian order, arrived at his destined place without trouble or confusion.
Nothing was omitted, which, in any respect, could be subservient to the convenience and pleasure of the spectators. They were protected from the sun and rain by an ample canopy, occasionally drawn over their heads. The air was continally refreshed by the playing of fountains, and profusely impregnated by the grateful scent of aromatics. In the centre of the edifice, the arena, or stage, was strewed with the finest sand, and successively assumed the most different forms. At one moment it seemed to rise out of the earth, like the garden of the Hesperides, and was afterwards broken into the rocks and caverns of Thrace. The subterraneous pipes conveyed an inexhaustible supply of water; and what had just before appeared a level plain, might be suddenly converted into a wide lake, covered with armed vessels, and replenished with the monsters of the deep.
In the decoration of these scenes, the Roman emperors displayed their wealth and liberality; and we read on various occasions that the whole furniture of the amphitheatre consisted either of silver, or of gold, or of amber...
[All the whilst the Roman treasury was broke with currency debasement, rampant corruption and armies strewn throughout the Empire...]
As I have said before, Midland is but a small example of the extreme rich elite in this city using government money to build edificies to themselves as our government goes into debt to the tune of $1.7 BILLION dollars EVERY DAY.
Watch! as our nation slowly dies....
You're sorta chilling me here, ospurt as your making a lot of sense in a sort of "Black Helicopter"way . I can see a "Fair Market Value" given for these old properties as the eminent domain confiscation problem is headline news in major cities. But you seem to be suggesting a "reverse sting " upon the taxpayers here with the property owners making out like bandits for the inconvenience of losing title to their property .Hmmmmm
A&MGrad... that's a brilliant idea! Midland could really use a colliseum! Hopefully one that could be filled with water to allow for mock-naval battles and some underground pens to house exotic animals. Tell me that wouldn't draw in some out-of-town dollars. The PETA people alone would spend thousands on poster boards and black markers.
Thank you Me, but it really wasn't my idea.. it was the emperor Titus who thought of it. And as far as the new Midland marble and gold "Colliseum", that was Craddicks and a few other select individuals idea.
My thought was that we seem to be following in the Romas footsteps by allowing our fearless leaders to construct large, ornate edifices with brass plates on the side with their names on it - all using public tax money (mostly), while our country continues to go into debt to the tune of over one billion (with a "B") per day.
I really don't know what is more frightening, the public's general apathy and ignorance or our leaders arrogant disregard for our governments financial condition (broke and going into debt.)
After this 66 MILLION,....what's the NEXT,.... the NEXT, ..... and the NEXT????