There are two Facebook pages that have been established as platforms to inform people of their support for doing the hotel deal in downtown Evansville as it has been disclosed or to oppose using taxpayer dollars to subsidize a this particular hotel. While young people are thought to be more inclined to support public financing of entertainment venues while older people take the more conservative role of being frugal with public subsidies, in the case of the 253 room hotel and the $37.5 Million public subsidy the statistics available indicate that in Evansville just the opposite is taking place.
The Facebook page “Citizens of Evansville for Progress on a Convention Hotel” at this time is reporting that the most popular age group of those who “like” it is the demographic made up of those aged from 35 years old to 54 years old. The most popular demographic for “Citizens of Evansville Against a Taxpayer Funded Hotel” is reported by Facebook as people aged from 25 years old to 34 years old.
The preliminary indications based on some interviews are that the older folks want the hotel so they go there for entertainment and the young folks do not want to be stuck with paying for it for the next 25 years.
As for the other Facebook metrics the “Against” site has 756 likes to 288 likes “For”. The “Against” site has 1.397 people talking about it with the “For” site has only 205 talking about it.
The one thing the groups have in common is that they agree that a convention hotel at the proposed site would be a positive asset to the community. The big and only difference is that the youngsters are against the public subsidy while the older folks are in favor.
Of course it is recognized that the total Facebook interest in this issue constitutes less than 1% of the people who live in Evansville. It was also pointed out that the town hall style meetings that the Mayor has been holding are drawing an average attendance that is 0.05% of the population and it is mostly the same group of people at the meetings.