In a mad rush to stave off elimination of the Rio Nuevo pot of money, the Tucson City Council has announced a redirection of the priorities for spending the $80 million they cashed in just before the New Year from bonds they sold, desperately, at a premium.
Now, rather than funding for more design of museums and for construction of the Convento (known by some as the mud hut), the city will spend what might be the last Rio Nuevo money it ever sees on an arena and convention hotel.
Do it Right or Don’t Do It at All!
To fans of the much-needed hotel, this is a very late, only-barely-better, better-late-than-never situation. It would be more persuasive if it weren’t such an obviously desperate maneuver to save the TIF and the Gem Shows at the same time.
I have yet to meet a fan of the arena as the city has proposed it.
From casual conversations with real people to reading the on-line comments and blogs, there seem to be two schools of thought on the arena that the city seems to want to build so desperately: either build it bigger or don’t build it at all.
It’s puzzling that the city would spend $130 million on a new arena that only gives Tucson 2,000 more seats than the crappy “Madhouse on Main”, as the Icecats coach calls the Tucson Arena. I know, I know; it’s not just the number of seats that makes the crappy arena uncompetitive. It’s the ceiling height, the lack of amenities, the lack of decent locker rooms and green rooms, the lack of luxury boxes for Rich Singer to feel important in, and the smell. 
Nonetheless, with a growing city (albeit economically under-performing its population), wouldn’t the 12,000-seat arena be obsolete the day it opens?
Apparently the UA has made it clear that it is not moving the basketball Wildcats out of McKale Center, but even so, there are opportunities for national-level sporting events that would surely be out of reach of an arena so small. There are AAU events, NCAA events, Olympic qualifying events.
Sizing to the Sweet Spot
The city’s argument against a bigger arena is that it can’t afford the cost of construction. But if the operating revenue of a bigger arena justified the cost, the cost wouldn’t matter, would it? If you were in the private sector, and were trying to decide how big of a plant to build, would you limit yourself to building a smaller factory that could only produce enough output to serve a limited area if you could cost-effectively produce enough to serve a much larger market and make larger profits by building a bigger factory? Of course not. You would find the sweet spot.
There may be multiple equilibrium points here. It’s conceivable that 12,000 seats is more cost-effective than 15,000 seats. City officials seem to be making that argument, and they may be right. The new revenue brought in by a 15,000-seat building may not be enough to justify the additional cost of the 3,000 seats. 
But, perhaps a 17,000-seat arena opens up a whole new set of revenue opportunities not available at 15,000 seats, and an arena of that size, while costing significantly more than $130 million, would pay the city back more handsomely than the Little 12,000-seat Arena That Couldn’t. Perhaps the additional revenue would be enough to justify the additional cost. Perhaps not. I don’t know. You probably don’t know. The point is, the city had better know what its options are, and it had better be able to explain why it has selected the option that it has.
Explain it to Us-Who Knows, We May Even Support It!
This would be called Leadership. Understanding the full implications of the various policy options open to you, evaluating the best deal for the current and future needs of the community, and then communicating to the citizens/taxpayers why the optimal option was selected over other alternatives.
Let’s say you’re the mayor of such a city that was considering building an arena. Go on TV. Write guest opinions in the newspaper. Hold a town hall meeting and televise it. Tell John C. Scott and his listeners about it. But don’t just do the cheerleading bit. Explain the logic and the thought process and what the implications of the alternative scenarios were and why you reached the conclusion that this alternative was best for us.
What’s the Real Reason We’re Doing This?
Also, while you are at it, tell us what we are getting out of the arena you are building for us. Minor-league hockey? Arena football? More and better concerts? Monster truck rallies? NCAA gymnastics championships? Sweet 16 basketball? Preventing the tribes from building an arena outside the city limits? Or perhaps, just more exhibit space for the expanded convention center you also seem hell-bent on building. Is the arena necessary in order to make the hotel work? (If that’s the case, then you’d better extend your presentation to tell us how and why the 525-room hotel is necessary and whether it is truly feasible.) Just tell us, we’re adults.
If the threat of losing the Gem Show will truly be abated by building the hotel, then tell us that. I just want to know. Use a flow chart if you have to. And don’t have Greg Shelko, Rich Singer, or Glenn Lyons explain it. You do it. You’re the mayor.
Whatever you do, don’t spend $130 million of our money just to prove a point. Or just to save a bunch of diverted state tax money you no longer seem entitled to spend based on your track record to this point.
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Good article. As I see it, nothing less than probably 17,500 seats is going to draw acts and events that tucson can’t draw now.
However, even with that size arena, you have to get private management in there running it with a strong share line, ie you must book x amount of events, but if you book more events than this, there’s a bonus for you.
When I see concert tour souvenir T-shirts, I’m always amazed at how many obscure cities and towns these major acts play, but they skip Tucson, America’s 30th largest city. That tells me that the city’s TCC management isn’t even trying very hard.
Excellent column, especially the part about leadership!
If the city hadn’t wasted several years and, depending on who you listen to, either $66M or $150M (including Shelko’s claimed $94M of private investment on top of state tax revenue) maybe they could have built a bigger arena. They sure as heck would have had maybe twice the $130M.
Instead they frittered it all away on stuff the state NEVER approved as part of the deal.
I agree, adding 2,000 seats doesn’t seem to be the ideal use of such a large outlay. Doesn’t seem to anyway…maybe there is logic behind that decision but based upon what I’ve seen so far one could understand my skepticism. I agree it does seem like a hail mary play at this point. Once you have seen the hail mary bond fiasco and the hail mary crane stunt, you don’t put anything past these people.
Think of all the dough they spent on the Fox and on the UA “Bridge that turns into a Museum” (thank you Sen. Gould for that great sound bite). Even if they do somehow make a go out of this there should be some serious turnover on the City Council over this. Absolutely disgusting and this whole project has been nothing short of the city giving a big middle finger to the taxpayers.
Lots of good questions about the arena here. Let me address size. Arenas tend to come in three sizes, small, medium, and large. Small is about 6,500 seats. These are inexpensibe buildings that fit minor league hockey well. Medium sized venues are like the 12,500 seater that we have proposed. Large buildings are all about 20,000 seats.
The medium sized building is right for Tucson. It will fit minor league sports well while being big enough for 85% of the concerts on the road.
Why does everyone jump from 12,000 to 20,000? Because if you go much above 12,000 you need a second concourse. This is the guest walkway around the building and all of the vertical access infrastructure like escalators and elevators. To justify this huge cost 20,000 seats are built. For this reason a 15,000 seater rarely gets built. If you build 15,000 seats without a second concourse it is not customer friendly.
Even if we could afford 20,000 seats I would not recommend it for Tucson. Our concert promoters told us not to do this as did our feasibility firm. 20,000 seats would hold the biggest shows on the road but they would continue to go to Phoenix and not Tucson. The reason is simple, more ticket buyers. If an act has two dates for AZ they will play them back to back in Phoenix. Much more cost effective for them.
Some say that we should build 20,000 seats for the future. The question then becomes: Will we ever have a greater population than Phoenix? Most respond, “I hope not”.
Further no one wants to play a half empty house, including concerts and minor league sports. So we would miss out on the biggest acts and run away others.
Finally the relationship of the arena to the hotel and convention biz. Our current arena gets in the way of conventions and convention use gets in the way of concerts.
35 plus years ago it was the trend to build these facilities all smashed together. That way you could use the arena floor for conventions when a concert isn’t booked. But conventions book before concerts.
Today the arena is used about 150 days a year but a full 75 of these days are convention and trade show use. If we build a new arena that is removed from the convention space 100% of the calendar will be available for arena style events.
If the old arena is renovated into purpose built exhibit space it will be far more attractive to conventions. This would help fill the hotel and vise versa.
Hope this helps.
Rich
Iron Viking, your comment about poor management at TCC is most timely:
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/breakingnews/111483.php
This is just the latest of many examples of events that have been double-booked by TCC staff, particularly at the Music Hall and Leo Rich Theater. There have been articles in the Daily Star in the past about this, and undoubtedly there have been more incidents that have gone unreported. This has resulted in much confusion, frustration, consternation, lack of trust, and lack of confidence in our convention center and our city on the part of exhibitors and promoters, and probably lost future business.
These are the kinds of mistakes that happen when you drink your lunch.
The bottom line is that the theater venues should not be managed by the convention center staff. If the city actually builds a hotel down there, they should have private management run the convention center, and they should also spin off management of the MH and LR to a private company that knows what it is doing.
What are cities of comparable size that are ahead of the curve doing? Based on our growth, why would we want something that would be outdated by the time it was completed? We already have an ineffective highway system in (around) town that is constantly being upgraded but just can’t seem to handle the volume during peak hours…
I appreciate Rich Singer posting a comment and signing his own name to it. I believe that those of us who are private citizens are entitled to use anonymous handles and nicknames if we choose, but contributors who are paid with our tax dollars are obligated to identify themselves, as are those paid to blog on behalf of other clients.
I am sure that Joe Higgins is pleased to see a mover and shaker of Rich Singer’s stature is reading the blog.
What is NOT said is often as telling as what IS said, and what Mr. Singer does not discuss indicates that amateur sports are not on the radar screen as part of the potential program for Tucson’s arena. There is no mention of amateur sports, just a small reference to minor-league professional sports.
Other cities have carved out niches for themselves in the amateur sports realm. Indianapolis comes to mind, and Omaha now with its Qwest Center. Tucson has done well occasionally with small-scale amateur sports, and now the MTCVB has a full-time staff member (one of 60, right, Clothcutter?) devoted entirely to recruiting amateur sports. I believe the TCC Arena and Exhibit Hall hosted volleyball and other sports last year. Great for bringing coaches, players, and others in to town for room-nights and meals. With a great facility, perhaps Tucson could compete for amateur sports with national stature–something that the Bureau and other Clothy organizations can rally around as they do professional golf. And, I’ve never heard indoor soccer discussed as a possible use for our arena.
If amateur sports as a significant use for the arena have been considered and discarded for good reasons, that’s fine, but it would be nice to hear about what the city determined were NOT feasible options, as well as hearing about concerts and hockey. Too often policy gets made because someone in a position to set direction early on had a predetermined concept that was never challenged. The arena dialogue has seemed to be uni-directional from the beginning.
My point is not to dismiss the medium-sized arena, but to point out the lack of real information available to the average Tucson citizen and the lack of community discussion on this important issue.
Perhaps 12,000 seats is a good, cost-effective size for our city that has a poor track record of supporting much of anything other than UA basketball. However, too often when the projected arena size has been discussed publicly, that number has jumped around, often being at the high end of a range that starts at 10,000 capacity. I’ve seen 10,500 thrown around, 11,000, and 10-12,000. Seeing numbers closer to the current capacity of the “Gulag on Granada” makes people nervous.
Several readers of the Arizona Daily Star editorial on the arena said that it makes no sense to build an arena on faith that it will attract minor-league sports franchises and other users. Given Tucson’s track record, and the general uncertainty about the uses of this proposed arena, lining up users in advance doesn’t sound like a bad idea.
I truly hope that a new arena can be built and that it will serve Tucson well for many years. What we have now is truly appalling. If it’s a financial choice between moving the Historical Society and its 5,000 annual visitors to a new building by the river and having an appealing arena in downtown, give me the arena and a $7 beer!
The largest a minor league hockey venue should be is around 8k seats tops… Minor league hockey prefers smaller 5-7k seat arenas. For concerts up to another 2k seats can be handled easily above the 8k.. Concerts will book a 10k seat arena, but the big acts will always book Phoenix before Tucson… Watch what Evansville, IN is doing, Tucson would do well to follow their example… Evansville is under no illusions, fully aware Indianapolis will get the best acts…
If you build a very nice new arena, minor league hockey will come… I say reach for 8-10 seats if you are building downtown, and 6-8k seats if you are NOT building downtown…
If you are going to host a major college or pro basketball program, then aim above 15k… Otherwise, don’t bother….