WHITE ELEPHANTS AND BLACK HOLES

The Grand Rapids Business Journal that Billboard Magazine ranks our very own Van Andel Arena as the top grossing venue of its size in North America during the first six months of this year.  Not only that, the Van Andel ranks third in the entire world.  Pretty impressive.

That's good news for us taxpayers stuck with the bill for the place.  Or it would have been except that our local elected officials have lumped the Van Andel Arena in with that money-losing white elephant called the DeVos Place Convention Center.  Both are now a package deal for taxpayers since the City of Grand Rapids and Kent County put the facilities under the supervision of the Convention Center & Arena Authority (CAA).  So the profit the Van Andel produced for taxpayers has been sucked down the financial black hole of the DeVos.

Well, not all the profit.  A smidgen remains.  About $400,000 is leftover for the taxpayers at the conclusion of the CAA's fiscal year ending on June 30th.  That, folks, is a pitiful return on the couple hundred million dollars of public investment our politicians have shovelled into the arena and convention center.  Just to show how skinny that margin is, it would be like saving only $150 out of a $75,000 annual salary.  Not a lot to brag about at the end of the day.

Perhaps we can take some solace in the fact that others, if not the taxpayers, are profiting from the Van Andel and the DeVos.  For example, the CAA has hired SMG Corporation of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to manage both facilities.  SMG earned $604,000 in FY 2004, and another $652,000 in FY 2005.  Not bad wages for skippering a leaky ship that is expected to produce even less money for the taxpayers by the end of the current fiscal year.

Of course, we wouldn't have named these places the Van Andel and the DeVos if the Amway clans didn't have their fingers in the till.  The Van Andels and the DeVoses also got their share of the loot generated by the arena and the convention center through sport teams, promotions, concessions, and ticket sales.  Now, dear readers, you really didn't think the Amway gang donated money to build these facilities out of the goodness of their hearts, did you?  What they coughed up was in effect a downpayment on these facilities, if that.  In exchange, you the taxpayer got stuck with the mortgages while they got the inside track to make money off these places.  Meanwhile, no apologies from the pyramid-builders about the absence of Amway convention-goers that were supposed to keep the DeVos Place convention center in the black.

Nevertheless, the Van Andels and the DeVoses don't have to worry about hanging onto their plums when the CAA's chairman is Steve Heacock.  He is a former partner of the DeVoses' favorite attorney, the Fixer Charlie McCallum, and current pal of the Van Andels for whom he moonlights as chief administrative officer of the Van Andel Institute.  If that raises eyebrows, then maybe we can have some confidence that the CAA's books are in the sure hands of Birgit Klohs.  You know her, protege of the late Jay Van Andel and now one the biggest boosters of the Van Andels' bio-tech boondoggle for River City.  Hmm, maybe that isn't so reassuring now that I think about it.

OK, sure, lots of conflicts of interest at the CAA.  No worries, people.  The CAA's chief counsel, River Rat Dick Wendt, knows all about scrubbing the stink off problems like that.