Why is the City of Richmond so fond of studies, such as the one pending study to find a better location for a new Coliseum? Have they ever done a study on the efficacy of all the studies?
The Times-Dispatch is reporting today that a group studying whether to renovate the Richmond Coliseum or build a new arena is focusing on four potential sites in and near downtown.
Why does it cost $150,000 to look at a few locations?
There aren’t that many options. Yet the City hires out-of-town consultants and pays them $150,000 to state what’s pretty obvious to most residents. This stuff is as simple as it seems. Do we not have faith in our elected and appointed leaders to make decisions on their own, who supposedly knows the city better than them?
And conducting this study seems like about a week’s worth of work. You look at the interstates. You check out what other similar-sized markets did, and talk to a few “business leaders”. Done.
A better study would be one that determines what the people of Richmond want. Like whether they want to borrow money through a bond offering to fund a new arena even though those same residents are not going to events at the Coliseum—at least not enough for that venue to operate in the black.
Aaron Kremer is the BizSense editor. Please send news tips to [email protected].
Why is the City of Richmond so fond of studies, such as the one pending study to find a better location for a new Coliseum? Have they ever done a study on the efficacy of all the studies?
The Times-Dispatch is reporting today that a group studying whether to renovate the Richmond Coliseum or build a new arena is focusing on four potential sites in and near downtown.
Why does it cost $150,000 to look at a few locations?
There aren’t that many options. Yet the City hires out-of-town consultants and pays them $150,000 to state what’s pretty obvious to most residents. This stuff is as simple as it seems. Do we not have faith in our elected and appointed leaders to make decisions on their own, who supposedly knows the city better than them?
And conducting this study seems like about a week’s worth of work. You look at the interstates. You check out what other similar-sized markets did, and talk to a few “business leaders”. Done.
A better study would be one that determines what the people of Richmond want. Like whether they want to borrow money through a bond offering to fund a new arena even though those same residents are not going to events at the Coliseum—at least not enough for that venue to operate in the black.
Aaron Kremer is the BizSense editor. Please send news tips to [email protected].
Well said.
Someone has to make a move.
It’s actually pretty simple. If something goes wrong (or if the decision isn’t popular), then the people involved can blame the people who conducted the study.
Until it ceases to be remarkably easy to siphon money from the government via this type of “consulting” the outrageously expensive studies will continue. I would bet that this assumption is an integral reason for the formation of Trani’s new think tank “to study pressing problems in Richmond.”
Anyone with over a 40 IQ can name enough problems in Richmond to fill a book. These issues don’t need to be studied, the need to be solved.
Perhaps a better “study” would be one on the impact of moving the coliseum venue from downtown. After years of effort to revive Broad Street and to create the environment that facilitated creation of the National, the Landmark, the Miller & Rhodes and John Marshall Redo’s, a renovated Marriot, and the collateral improvements, e.g Grace Street, Jackson Ward ala 2 Street, the Hippadrome, etc., why would we eliminate a substantial conuduit for the very visitors upon which these improvements depend? Moving the Coliseum from downtown would be another illustration of Richmond’s self defeating behavior of “spreading it around and watering… Read more »
Hampton Carver is right on the money. There is NO need for a location study. The only good location is downtown. I would add the convention center investment as well to the reasons to stay downtown.
Corporate welfare comes in many forms.
Its hard to keep the fire burning for the Future of Richmond and Trani’s dream unless there are new animal entrails to smear across the cave wall for all to devine the future from.
Couldn’t agree more with Hampton Carver’s comments!