Meet Your $950,000 "Green Space"

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They want you to believe that demolishing Roberts Stadium is in the best interests of the city financially. They want you to believe that paying to demolish the facility, constructing something new on the lot, and then maintaining this new project will benefit the taxpayer. Like we've seen a countless amount of times these past few years, our city is proving this theory wrong by their own work.

Last Thursday, the Courier & Press reported on a "green space" being constructed in the back 40 parking lot downtown...

http://www.courierpress.com/news/2012/mar/29/no-headline---ev_back40/

"As the Building Authority's project began, officials at the Evansville Water & Sewer Utility asked if they could create green space to capture stormwater runoff and underground detention chambers to store that runoff.

The green space component of the project is estimated to remove about 6 million gallons of combined sewer overflows, according to city officials."

That's great but how much is this going to cost?

"The $950,000 project on the "Back 40" lot prompted the closure of half of the lot March 22."

$950,000? But weren't green spaces suppose to be the cheap alternative to demolishing Roberts Stadium? The important things to realize with this project are the following...

1. This isn't really a green space. It's a parking lot with green space components scattered throughout the lot. If a true green space were constructed at Roberts Stadium, we would have to add much more green space components which would cost even more. And that doesn't include the hefty maintenance bill.

2. This plan goes completely against the 2001 master plan. If we implement a master plan around Roberts Stadium, we better make sure there are a few legal requirements added to it or else it won't be too long before another city leader pitches it in the trash.

3. This "green space" has no intention of ever making any money nor will it ever come close to making the $950,000 invested in it. Why is a green space even being considered as a financially viable option for the Roberts Stadium lot?

4. The Roberts Stadium lot is much, much, much bigger than the back 40. $950,000 would be a drop in the bucket for the amount of money it would cost to build a green space on the entire Roberts Stadium lot.

5. Raising the floor at Roberts Stadium will allow us to eliminate the water pumps that have to pump all of the water runoff into our city sewers. Isn't this a "green space component" anyways?

For the past two years, they tell us they have no money to scale Roberts Stadium down to a mid-sized arena. They have claimed there is no money to raise the floor and renovate the HVAC system ($400,000 to $500,000), demolish the precast seating sections ($85,000), and repair the roof over the concourses ($50,000 to $100,000). But at the same time, they have $950,000 for a green space parking lot?

If our city scrutinized the other projects they take on like they have Roberts Stadium, our city would probably be a utopia. We wouldn't be wasting billions, not millions, on an interstate that is failing to create an adequate amount of jobs while contributing to urban sprawl, we wouldn't have a public school in the boondocks, and we wouldn't have the Civic Center cutting off Main Street.

If we are ever going to remove the 50 + year pal over Evansville, we have to change our mindset. We cannot allow our government to make crucial mistakes such as demolishing an arena that has already attracted multiple financially viable tenants, trade show investors, and those interested in intangible benefits like a disaster relief area in favor of a "green space" that makes no sense, serves no purpose, and will drain Evansville's finances.

If our city leaders truly want to grow Evansville, they will finally make the correct decision by taking advantage of Roberts Stadium's enormous potential as a mid-sized arena. They will avoid the costly mistake of constructing an expensive green space that has no revenue components to it.

It's pretty simple: SAVE MONEY, SAVE ROBERTS STADIUM!