IS IT TRUE February 27, 2013

1. Chief Bolin still hasn’t answered my question in this, so I’ll ask Joe Wallace if he knows…

   If this is, as they say, only about finding out contact info for absentee landlords, why don’t we just give police access to the Treasurers Office files? They have to send a tax bill every year, even to so called absentee landlords, do they not? The Treasurer should have all the info they need, should she not?

   • Great question, come to the meeting and ask in an open forum. People are tired of arguing with you Mr. Linxy. No matter what answer you get, you twist it into some other rant. So get used to being ignored.

   • I just called Susan Kirk… She confirmed the Treasurer’s Office can look up ANY property owner in this City’s contact info if you give them an address.

     The information Chief Bolin and Co. insist they need every property owner in town to pay for would simply be a DUPLICATE database to something that already exists.

     This begs the question…what’s the true purpose of this? Why the rush? Why not give it a year until it’s better studied and more people can look at it or even put a referendum on the ballot?

     This reminds me of how Nancy Pelosi would give Congress a 1000 page bill and tell them they only had 20 minutes to read it before voting on it.

2. LANDLORD REGISTRATION FEE

   What is really driving this issue:

   http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/lawmaker-seeks-to-prohibit-rental-registrations-inspections-fees/article_c8d995ad-9459-5838-9083-00d2341c62d2.html

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3. The information you suggest is alrady availabile to the EPD. It is public record and is available by going on-line.

   The problem is not only with absentee landlords, it also lies with local landlords who don’t give a darn. There are also local non-rental uinits who are making their neighborhoods look like trash.

   Just drive Bellemeade from Green River Road to Weinbach Avenue.

   • “There are also local non-rental units who are making their neighborhoods look like trash”. “Just drive Bellemeade from Green River Road to Weinbach Avenue”? Please provide examples. I’m don’t recall any homes that particularly stick out. I think you’re confused on which side of 41 you are driving.

4. Hey Jordan, please check UE attendance in Division 2. I bet it was higher than it is this year back to the days of playing in the Armory. That should be a real telling statistic about the value of an arena at the box office.

   • Could it be possible, win or lose, that people in this area do not want to pay the money to be “entertained”. Let’s face it, television (ESPN, Foxsports, etc) have turned college basketball into “NBA Lite” and we all know that the NBA is pure entertainment.

     Ticket fees, for the most part, to anything at the Ford Center (be it concerts or sports) are ridiculous. Especially, when you consider what you get in return. Don’t even start on the concession prices.

     • No it’s not possible. Attendance at Icemen games are well over 5,000 which is pretty impressive given that they are in 2nd to last place in the ECHL. They only drew over a thousand at Swonder.

       NCAA attendance is growing not shrinking and the only time attendance totals shrink among the top 8 conferences is when a team decides to downsize in favor of adding luxury suites like Tennessee did with Thompson-Boiling Arena a few years back.

       There are a lot of things that have their place in the Ford Center. It is a hockey arena that has a hockey sized floor with all the bells and whistles to meet modern concert needs. Although it may not be possible right now, there will come a time when Downtown Evansville will grow again and the Ford Center will be one of the catalyst that helped it although it’s still going to take other capital improvement projects to get here.

       But at the same time, there are a lot of events that don’t fit the Ford Center market. Roberts was a basketball arena, a field house, that had a basketball sized floor which would have only been expanded slightly on the south end to meet the requirements of indoor football. Neither indoor football, nor minor league basketball, nor indoor soccer, nor the Boat Show can afford the FC prices nor do they need any of those bells and whistles and not to mention that each time something like that would go in there it would have to kick out a bigger event.

       One thing that cities like Tulsa, Grand Forks, Grand Rapids, Wichita, and now Souix Falls are learning is what people like SMG and Venuworks have been telling them- Your facilities don’t compete against each other, they compete against other cities for tournaments and events. When a performer,entertainer, investor, etc, etc looks into a city, they look at all the facilities as a package being offered by the city. With that package, they can decide if the city has a venue that meets their needs better than another city does. If not, they go elsewhere. When you demolish a mid-sized arena, you are not doing your new premier arena any favors, you are just running off business and cramming square events into a round arena.

   • I would really, really like to do that because attendance totals were actually higher when they were Div II (known as college division back then) then when they made the jump to Div I. Attendance was over 10,000 in those days and the largest crowd at Roberts came when UE played KY Weselyan that drew over 13,000. But unfortunately, the NCAA didn’t start officially tracking attendance until 1978, the year UE made the jump. I’m going to try and post that link once more and see if the CCO server will allow it

     (http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/NCAA/Resources/Stats/M+Basketball/Attendance/index.html)

     Also, here is a sports illustrated article from 1965. This is a MUST READ…

     http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1076904/index.htm

     Several quotes in that article that make me want to drool…

     “It is the Ohio River, however, that dominates the vista, as it curves mischievously into a fishhook, forcing the streets to run all which ways—mostly, it seems, into railroad tracks.”

     “The Purple Aces wear uniforms of orange, bench capes of blue, red, green, yellow and silver and their fans dress all in red, but there is no confusion about the basketball. Evansville is ranked No. 1 among the small colleges, just as it was last year when it went on to win an unprecedented third NCAA college-division title. The Aces have two All-Americas, Jerry Sloan and Larry Humes, and have won all 18 of their games this year, not only against schools their own size in the Indiana Collegiate Conference but against such major-college (technically known as university-division) opposition as Northwestern, Notre Dame and Iowa (which beat the national champion, UCLA).”

     “Even more impressive is the reaction to the team, for the Purple Aces have become the cynosure not just of the city, but of the whole surrounding three-state countryside. Evansville drew 134,622 last year at home—sixth highest in the country—and another 31,895 showed up for the NCAA college-division tournament finals, annually played in Evansville. This year, with half a million copies of the team’s schedule covering the area—on everything from place mats to change purses—attendance is up even more to an average of 10,700 per game.”

     “Indeed, the phenomenon that is the Purple Aces can be dated from 1956, when Roberts Municipal Stadium was built. Roberts is a handsome place, seating 13,000 or so, and it was the immediate pride and joy of Evansville, a fact that did Mayor Roberts no good—since by opening day he had already been voted out of office. Still, he does have the stadium for Evansville to remember him by. Next to Roberts is Hartke Swimming Pool. Mayor Hartke went on to the U.S. Senate, but in Evansville they do not talk about Hartke’s pool; the topic is Roberts’ Stadium because that is where the action is.”

5. thehighroller, you stated yesterday the following…

   “It was UEs decision to go to the Ford Center. The Weinzapfel administration offered them Roberts Stadium meaning they could have it, it would be UEs stadium not the Cities. UE said they did not want it because of its structural problems.”

   If true that opens up a sea of questions. The first one being- WHO told UE that Roberts had structural problems? That was a lie, Roberts had ZERO structural problems and that was very clear in the HNTB report. The concourses did need a new roof which was estimated by Jeff Justice to only be 50-100k. The water pumps were NOT a structural problem, they were designed and engineered to do what they did and they were fixed by Peyronnin (In 05 iirc). The angeled roof, the sound stage, and the parking lot were also renovated in the mid 2000s. There were no structural deficiencies in that arena.

   The next question is, if UE really did tell Weinzapfel that they wanted to play in the FC against his wishes, why in the world would he allow them to play in the FC. The city had ALL the leverage in those negotiations. If UE did indeed balk, all the city had to tell them was “Ok, but you’re not going in the Ford Center.” That would have been game over for UE.

   Another question is, if that’s true why didn’t he go public with this. He could have pinned UE in really good with the public. All he had to say was ” If UE doesn’t take this arena, we are going to have to cram them into our new arena which will hurt total attendance and revenue not help it. And besides Evansville residents, do you really want to fork over the bill to demolish this arena because UE doesn’t want to deal with it after having used it all these years and after having two basketball teams and a volleyball team that could still use it?”

   With all of that being said and believe it or not, I never blamed Weinzapfel 100%. I do blame him some but truthfully I don’t think he knows much about the business of arenas simply because that’s never been his job just like I don’t know anything about state legal issues. If he can produce any documents showing that he offered Roberts to UE and they flat out told him no I will GLADLY post them on my blog.

   I blame John Stanley and Lloyd Winnecke mostly for what happened. If it wasn’t for Mitch Barnhart, John Stanley would be the WORST A.D in all of the NCAA. His banking background has done nothing for him. You watch, he will end up running UE basketball even farther into the ground when the seems break again on conference realignment. Because of his actions, UE is basically forced into moving into the lowly Horizon League because the MVC as we know it is on the brink of imploding or being extremely watered down. For him to turn down an arena that is basically on campus as an arena will ever get to UE in favor of spending $3.3 mil on a lousy looking practice facility is pathetic and bad business. No other way to put it.

   And yes I do blame Winnecke more than Weinzapfel. Sure, people say, “How can you do that, didn’t Weinzapfel put him in this position?” The answer to that is NO, no he did not. Yes, the paper work was already signed keeping the Aces in the FC for the foreseeable future, but that really was nothing that couldn’t be worked around. He had 3 teams wanting to play there, he had 2 residents willing to help schedule up to 180 trade shows that they frequent in other cities and knew the people first hand who want to come to this market, he had TWO arena operators wanting to bid on managing it while saying that the scaling down of Roberts would help, not hurt, the FC, and he had everyone and their brother in law telling him they wanted this venue.

   And yes, traveling BMX tournaments and mid-sized events would have worked hand in hand with the aquatics people getting their renovation next door at Hartke and even the outdoor BMX and BMX only facility still having plenty of room to build between Swonder (or expand Swonder) and Roberts, and not to mention the back lot was PLENTY big enough for this illustrious dog park and connector trail to State Hospital Park.

   He has all this going for him and what does he do? He goes and regurgitates a rigged task force and cites only the lines in the report that were completely false (and yes it was easily proven to be false) and which I’m still trying to figure out how it’s not fraud by whoever put those lines in there. Instead of correcting this report, dismissing whoever put the lines in the report that were NEVER discussed and aren’t even close to being correct or factual, and then retracting his support for these statements what does he do? He calls me first thing in the morning after it all hit the C&P and throws a fit about me telling the media the report was a sham. Way to run a transparent and honorable city government lloyd.

6. Might I suggest two things here? It is said that Roberts required the least public tax revenue of the city’s entertainment facilities. I do not think that the University of Evansville would have been capable of matching that performance since it would have meant booking acts and competing against the Ford Center. So where would the funds come from to maintain Roberts? I doubt that admissions from UE sporting event would have been sufficient to cover those maintenance expenses.

   • BTW, in yesterdays C&P the city published its financials. It showed the current FC arena debt at $122.4 million.

     Roberts Stadium could have been renovated into outstanding facility for a fraction of that $122.4 million debt.

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     • Not really. If they would have renovated Roberts in terms of upscaling it to a level on par with the Ford Center, it would have most definitely compromised the iconic roof structure that was designed by Legeman as well as the exterior triangle field house facade that is the basic fabric of Indiana basketball. In other words, you would have killed all of its marketability while taking away its competitive advantage.

       And that route was estimated to cost $90 mil which is a little bit cheaper than the Ford Center but it would have taken away one the three sources used to fund the FC- the Downtown TIF.

       The biggest problem with upsizing Roberts is the same problem we have now- one size DOES NOT FIT ALL. You watch, this GLVC Tournament is going to make an azz out of this city. It left last time because of cost and since then has gone into much smaller facilities because its attendance has dwindled down to a thousand. So why would you want to put that in an expensive brand new arena whose capacity is 9/10 times that? We also ran off the Boat Show AND the Evansville Bluecats because the rent was too damn high.

       A downsizing of Roberts would have solved that problem. It would have also flushed out events like the GLVC Tournament (and the Aces) so that the FC could focus on events that pay the bills which means that Roberts would have complimented not competed with the FC- A view held by just about anybody in the sports industry that is not associated with Winnecke.

       Lastly, the goal of a new arena is to put it in downtown so that your urban core can grow which will fight urban sprawl and thus keep your city making more money while spending less. Although I do agree that that isn’t happening right now that still needs to be the ultimate goal. On the flip side, a Roberts renovation only needed to solve one goal- stabilize the businesses around it. Although it would be hard for new business to grow there, Roberts still had businesses that relied on it. Earlier this year, Kipplee’s took off the “stadium inn” part of their name. Surprisingly (not really) it’s not called dog park inn or skate park inn. That’s because they drew from Roberts’ events. A downsizing would have stabilized that as well.

   • Admissions from UE events would most definitely have covered the costs of a smaller Roberts Stadium. It would have been water pump less like it was from 56-90 and its HVAC system would have had less strain on it due to its smaller dimensions. It would have also saved them $3.3 million by letting the team use the arena as a practice facility on non event days although I did not support the notion of making it a practice facility only (too big).

     SMG told me that the secret to Roberts’ success came from the ticket fee tacked on for parking. This same fee could have remained on the ticket while still being a cheaper ticket than an Aces game at the Ford Center. And with the Aces vacating the FC, Venuworks could have used those dates to book concerts that draw better and have a higher selling ticket.

     The events at Roberts WOULD NOT have competed with the Ford Center in any way shape or form. If UE wasn’t up to running the facility they could have very easily outsourced that job to Venuworks or SMG but I think they were fully capable of running their own facility. Universities do it all the time- Murray State is one, Southern Illinois is another as well as Indiana State, Wichita State, Drake, Missouri State, Northern Iowa, and my favorite Illinois State. Only Creighton and Bradley in the Missouri Valley Conf use a city facility besides the Aces although push come to shove Sandie Aaron and Scott Schoenike are two great assets that I think would do a better job than UE.

     The only task the Aces would have had in booking Roberts would have been to iron out agreements with a minor league basketball team, an indoor soccer team, an indoor football team, and set up a schedule for trade shows like the boat show. 2 of those 3 teams were already operating in town.

     The rest would have been much easier because there would be organizations in the city working to bring events to town like they are with this now worthless GLVC Tournament that has no business in an expensive brand new arena when it’s only drawing 1,000 people total. I would also imagine that the IHSAA and the EVSC would have looked into for basketball events as well since the Roberts Stadium design is mostly known for being the design that has given the state of Indiana the largest high school field houses in the world.

     So yea, Roberts would have taken care of itself fairly easily.

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