It’s “Who’s going to blink first?” time in the bizarro world that is Louisville trying to accomplish anything that requires civic consensus — like building a bridge (or two!) or an arena.
As this is being written, the latest arena news is that the state House has voted in favor of allocating $75 million for the arena, but only if it’s built on the former Water Company site downtown. The reigning speculation is that either the Senate or the governor will remove that site-specific language, leaving the LG&E riverfront site the presumptive choice.
Here’s hoping that by the time you read this, someone will have blinked, or at least winked, and we will all know where our new multi-purpose arena is likely to be built — or not. But right now, it looks like the powers-that-be are going to stay locked in their staring contest for at least a few more weeks.Much as my guardian angel tells me to stay above the fray, I feel this strange compulsion to shout something loud or grab somebody by the lapels and shake him, but good.
But what exactly to shout, and who to shake?
It does feel like there’s been a good measure of disingenuousness on display in this affair. The most egregious example of pretension of wounded innocence has to be laid at the feet of the LG&E site supporters, who claim that the Arena Task Force, appointed by the governor, studied every option in exhaustive detail and voted — 16-to-1! — to recomm/files/storyimages/the LG&E site. The experts looked at it and made a decision, they say. Case closed.
Well, no, it didn’t work quite that way. I think it worked more like this: A faction of the task force, led by the U of L contingent, says, “We won’t play downtown unless it goes here,” leaving the task force without a lot of options, since U of L’s basketball program is the main tenant. So the task force — and this was the key mistake in the process, in my opinion — agrees to drop all discussion of the Water Company site, the only other downtown location that posed any real threat to the riverfront site. That decision left a huge question mark hanging over the task force’s recommendation.
I was astounded when I read the final task force report and found no substantive information about the Water Company site — no cost estimates, no breakdown of economic impact, no analysis of parking needs or traffic flow. For the purposes of the final report, the location that had been the main focus of downtown arena discussions for a decade or more might as well not have existed.
That felt an awful lot like a purposeful squelching of information so as not to have to answer some difficult questions, which in fact are exactly the ones now being asked, namely: “What is so superior about the LG&E site that it justifies spending an extra $100 million to get an arena of the same size with the same internal amenities?”
(The standard response to that question by LG&E site supporters, by the way, is that the riverfront site has more “sizzle,” “pizzazz,” “wow” and “synergy.”)
It would have been far better had the task force tackled that question head on and provided some substantive answers in its report to the community. Had that happened, the aggrieved posture of the riverfront site supporters might be worthy of some sympathy.
For those of us who wanted to see that head-to-head comparison between the two downtown sites, the David Jones/John Schnatter-funded study (or “the 17-day wonder,” as Gov. Ernie Fletcher recently belittled it) was a breath of fresh air.
Which brings us to the out-of-character role The Courier-Journal’s editorial page has played in the arena drama. It’s no secret that former C-J publisher Ed Manassah had a soft spot for the LG&E site — after all, he was the one who first publicly suggested that location. But the Courier’s perfervid advocacy has been above and beyond the call of duty. It makes you wonder when the same journalists who constantly harp about sunshine laws and making government transparent are now in the awkward position of being on the side of the team that’s trying to stifle open discussion and dissent.
Another oddity in this debate is that the original rationale for putting the arena downtown in the first place — to make it a livelier place — seems to have morphed into a new set of objectives. Now, we’re being told by LG&E site supporters, the most important factors in deciding where to put an arena are: 1) maximum visibility from our interstate highways and Southern Indiana, and 2) getting rid of an old and heretofore mostly unobjectionable building on the riverfront. (Please note that the plan to put an arena on the LG&E site would not remove the electric substation tucked against the Galt House on the west side of Third Street, although it does propose to shrink it and put it inside a structure.)
Let’s hope that at some point we get back to the original questions that most Louisvillians thought were the ones that needed answers, like: 1) Which site will add the most to downtown’s vibrancy? 2) Which spot provides the best parking potential and traffic flow in and out? 3) Which location fits in best with downtown’s existing hotels and convention facilities? Not to mention 4) Which site is the least expensive to build on?
When I look at it in those mundane terms, the Water Company site beats out the LG&E site even before we get to the cost savings. If U of L or the governor or the mayor or Greater Louisville Inc. wants to argue otherwise, fine, but let’s at least bring the argument back to the real world that most of us live in so we can base this decision on something a little more substantial than sizzle, pizzazz and wow. \
— Dan Crutcher
