No matter how long I keep looking at the baseball numbers for a downtown stadium, they don't make sense. Attendance is now about 3,500 a game. Let's say moving downtown could increase it to 4,500. If you say, well, that would be 300,000 people downtown over a five-month period, that would be one thing. But it won't be. It will be maybe 3,000 of the same people coming over and over again and a few thousand more who come occasionally.
And look at the number of Grand Wayne visitors. If we take them at their word that expansion has increased the numbers by about 100,000 a year, aren't we talking about the same kind of numbers envisioned for the Wizards? And these are mostly different people, not the same crowd coming over and over again. If there is magic in a certain number of downtown visits, shouldn't we have seen something already?
Comments
Shouldn't politicians listen to their constituents when it comes to spending their tax dollars? There is no partisan divide on this - absolutely nobody is for this stadium. This stadium will cost much closer to $50 Million than it will the proposed $10 Million. This city cannot afford that - and on top of that, do we need a new stadium built every 14 years?
How about a little planning? Nevermind, I won't waste my breath...
The polls I have seen asking Fort Wayne residents if they favor a new downtown Baseball Stadium range from about 2/3 against to over 80% against. None of these polls are "official"; but, I would not be surprised if these polls are accurate.
This SHOULD send a very strong signal to our elected officials; instead, they seem to be ignoring the public input.
Building a new Baseball Stadium downtown is a HORRIBLE idea and it should be discarded at once.
We keep spending money on questionable projects. The only way these project can be cost justified is when the Government itself "crunches" the numbers. When an independent Fort Wayne CPA, like Ron Reinking, "Crunches" the numbers these projects never pay for themselves. We should learn from this.
Even more importantly Fort Wayne needs to look at other issues that are going to come up in the next couple of years in Fort Wayne:
1. The Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) problem in Fort Wayne will have to be fixed. This could QUADRUPLE our sewer rates or it could be paid for with HUNDREDs of MILLIONS of dollars in bonds.
2. FWCS will most likely be asking taxpayers to support about 1/4 of a BILLION dollars of bonds to revitalize their schools.
Fort Wayne cannot afford to rebuild a perfectly good baseball stadium with the above projects coming down the pipe...
Fort Wayne must gets its fiscal house in order and pay off its existing bonds rather then pursue "Pie in the sky" projects.
Mike Sylvester
Libertarian
This stadium will be built primarily with private funds-not taxpayer dollars. Second, many people from surrounding counties may come to a bigger stadium. Randy Brown added seats to the Coliseum without adding additional parking. Consequently, there is often too little parking. These two facilities should not be sitting next to each other. And $5 million dollars to renovate it? Why not use some of those taxpayer dollars for other needed projects. Does the current fans justify spending $5 million dollars? I don't think so. I think we should build the facility downtown but it should be multi-use and combined with other projects such as a waterpark, shopping tower etc.