Parade Stadium Letter To The Editor In The Downtown Journal
Eye on the Park Board
As a co-founder of Park Watch, an advocacy group founded three years ago to monitor the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB), I have been attending Park Board meetings on a regular basis.
I am deeply concerned about Superintendent Gurban's plans for a new Parade Stadium. One of my many concerns with this new $1,808,500 Parade Stadium is that it is moving much too quickly. Construction is scheduled to begin this spring; yet it is not even known who will be using the new stadium.
Before construction of this project begins, there needs to be a clear understanding of exactly who will be using it and what the projected revenues will be. Superintendent Gurban also needs to convene the mandated Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC). All of this needs to be done BEFORE construction begins and not after. Superintendent Gurban's philosophy of build first, plan later is not one that guarantees a successful project.
I believe there are a number of critical questions that need to be asked. Here are three:
1. Why should the taxpayers of Minneapolis be expected to subsidize another professional sports team on Park Board property with Park Board funds?
2. Will Superintendent Gurban be able to direct staff to negotiate and write a lease with the [Minnesota] Thunder [soccer team] that is lucrative for the Park Board? The Park Board's lease (of which I have a copy) that was negotiated and written with Cirque du Soleil in 2005 ought to have been a lucrative one, but it was not. The cash payment to the Park Board was only $50,000, about one-third or one-fourth of what Cirque probably grossed from parking fees. (Yes, Cirque du Soleil got all the parking revenues.) As a result, the Cirque lease earned the Park Board all of $736 a day for the 68 days that Cirque leased the Parade site. The figure of $736 would be the equivalent of about seven Cirque tickets.
3. And, most important, with 50 percent shared use of DeLaSalle's new stadium, how great is the need for another Park Board stadium? Superintendent Gurban has not produced any hard statistical evidence that a stadium with $568,500 of amenities is a necessity.
Arlene Fried, Bryn Mawr, co-founder of Park Watch