It took awhile, but Houston finally has a plan for what to do with the Astrodome, which has sat empty since 2006 and is now all wrinkly. The Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation yesterday proposed that voters be asked to approve spending $270 million to convert the dome to a "multipurpose venue" for concerts, football, soccer, and hockey, while replacing the neighboring Reliant Arena with a $385 million exhibit space and 10,000-seat arena.
A consultant for Convention Sports & Leisure, which helped the sports authority develop the plan, spoke of how the dome is "an icon to the city of Houston," but still: $655 million?!? Admittedly, it's cheaper than the last estimate of redoing the dome, but it still sounds like an awful lot of money to spend for creating a multipurpose venue out of what was always a multipurpose venue, plus replacing an arena that is vacant precisely because there's already a new arena across town.
The Harris County body also included an option to spend $64 million to raze the dome and replace it with a park, and maybe that's the real goal here: Toss out a crazy-expensive renovation plan, and let voters decide once and for all whether they'd rather throw good money after bad or just cut their losses and demolish the place, iconic or not. Or maybe we're just seeing the beginning of a trend of building stadiums and arenas for nobody to play in.
from Field of Schemes http://www.fieldofschemes.com/news/archives/2012/05/4960_houston_propose.html
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