RARE WHITE ELEPHANT SELL-OUT

In an article mostly about Steven Heacock, chairman of the Convention and Arena Authority, passing the tin cup for a capital fund to maintain the Van Andel Arena and the DeVos Place convention center, reporter David Czurak in this week's edition of the Grand Rapids Business Journal makes prominent mention of a curious fact.

This Saturday will be the first day ever that both the arena and the convention center are fully booked with events.

This is astonishing.  Never before have bookings ever overlapped at these two places.  That means there has been a lot of empty dates on the calender for both of these taxpayer-financed monuments to pyramid-builders Rich and Jay.  Whether or not this compares well to other cities, it does not change the fact that local taxpayers are on the hook for these facilities if they don't pay their own way.

So far only the arena has run in the black and has been subsidizing the convention center.  Moreover, the arena has plateaued in revenues; so the convention center is going to have take off lest it become an albatross around the necks of taxpayers.  The recent Brookings Institute survey on the over-capacity in convention space throughout the country is discouraging.  The fact that cities in competition with the Grand Rapids are giving away their convention space to keep hotels booked is even more discouraging.

To wit, the Brookings Institute warned:

"This analysis should give local leaders pause as they consider calls for ever more public investment into the convention business, while weighing simultaneously where else scarce public funds could be spent to boost the urban economy."

Too bad they didn't publish this three years ago.  We'll keep our fingers crossed that this coming Saturday isn't an unusual one.