OK. We’ve listened to your complaints, how we need the Performing Arts Center to attract educated people to Miami because this is a place where culture is skin-deep.
This is also one of America’s poorest cities. Now that we have this black hole of a performing arts center, there should be a full accounting.
The Miami Herald should analyze the original, projected budget revenue model for the PAC, based on commitments made by local performing arts organizations to provide taxpayers with a clear picture of who promised what, who accepted those promises and committed $500 million to them.
We would also like to know—since every other week the PAC needs more financial assistance from the county, how much will the PAC need to survive under the worst case scenario on revenue/attendance models?
In today’s (another) front page story, PAC Trust Chairman Parker ‘No Parking’ Thomson called the center ‘an unqualified success’.
There is a word for what happens when a deficit over projections occurs on the order of 1865 percent and it's not "success".
Mr. Thomson goes on, “… attendance had been diluted by an overload of shows in an effort to reach the diverse South Florida community.” WTF?
“We are not getting sufficient Hispanic attendance,” he said. Oh boy.
We are an Hispanic city. If we are not getting an Hispanic audience, maybe it is because Hispanic audiences have no need for a $500 million Carnivorous Center for the Performing Arts. Maybe Hispanic audiences are smart enough not to try to weather the traffic interchanges that only lead to frustration on the way to the concert hall.
What is the performing arts budget for the public school system in Miami-Dade?
Maybe too many people are in two wage-earner households to have time for performing arts, or, struggling to make ends meet with overpriced houses and mortgages they should never have reasonably bought.
Maybe the only reliable audiences for the PAC are homebuilders, and mortgage brokers, and their land use attorneys.
The PAC is “not out of diapers”, “too early to hit the panic button”, they’ll conserve costs by cutting air conditioning, finding parking.
The PAC director “compared the center’s opening and Miami’s current growth to the building boom that saw New York City build Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, the Bronx Zoo and the subway between 1879 and 1899. It’s our time.”
OK. You ask us not to beat up on the Performing Arts Center when there are so many other, more pressing problems here.
The problem with those other, more pressing problems is that they are so concealed in a rat's nest of self-dealing by lobbyists, insiders, public agencies and officials, corporate shells and hidden shareholders that it takes a platoon of investigators to make sense of them.
Is the Carnivorous Center for the Performing Arts a reflection? and if it is, what is it a reflection of?
8 comments:
We never learn. The same failure will happen to the mini-PAC being built in S. Dade and the overzelous plans to turn MetroZoo into a "destination" complete with hotel and theme park. The average family in Miami-Dade cannot afford to go to the PAC or MetroZoo.We need to stop wasting public money on monuments built to politicians.
My thoughts on a first trip, weeknight 8 PM venue, at Carnival Center. Although traffic could be a problem, in our case it was not. We drove from the Palmetto Bay area not knowing how traffic would be on US 1 we chose the more scenic route up Cutler road and through the Grove to a “food stop” around 17th avenue. After eating we went up US 1 to I 95, across 836 to Biscayne and north to the Omni to park. Our experience; No major delays or traffic holdups, an easy drive.
My complaint and what may be the thing that keeps us from going is the parking. It’s the cost, the aggravation, the walking distance and the environment we had to walk through. First to cost; This being our first experience at finding a safe secure place to park we decided to park at the “Omni Performing Arts Parking Garage A” mentioned in the information on the Carnival Center web site. It’s not that we cannot afford to pay the $19; it’s the value you get for that $19. To park in the Miami Beach parking garage by the convention center for an event is $8; $19 is taking advantage of the public. On the beach you can go to an event and spend time walking Lincoln road, have a nice meal, at Carnival Center you park for two hours or so and get the hell out of there. Second the aggravation; poor signage in the parking garage and on the street, trash and run down buildings, what to do if it’s raining and not feeling safe at night along the streets.
What is needed is a parking area with covered well lighted access to the center, nothing less will do.
Now we hear the idiots at the Miami Art Museum want to build the new Miami Art Museum on Bicentennial Park WITHOUT any parking. Sound familiar?
Watch. The Miami Art Museum wants $200 Mil to $300 Mil in taxpayer money to relocate to Bicentennial Park. They are planning on no parking. Right, parking is not included in its estimates. More idiots.
Parking, parking, parking, why don't you get out of your car and walk. Its a freaking city, don't be afraid.
To Anonymous above –
So we are to walk to downtown Miami from south Dade? We have to park somewhere.
We do walk. When going to a function at Miami Beach convention center we park, for about ½ the cost, about the same distance from the center as we did at the Omni and before or after the event we WALK to Lincoln Road and have a meal at one of the many restaurants available. We will also walk off the meal by WALKING around the area.
If you think that the carnival center can be supported only people who can walk to it without finding a place to park you have another think coming.
Read the letters to the editor in today’s Herald about people who will not return to events in the downtown area due to parking issues.
See - No parking? We're not coming back at http://www.miamiherald.com/456/story/58526.html
Parking is an issue and it MUST be addressed
I agree with Rthrc: When you come from Broward you are NOT given a tutorial on how you can park elsewhere and take the people mover. When they sell tickets they should give a pamphlet about eating and parking here in Miami, until they get their act together. I will volunteer to help them write it.
And, as the letter writers in the Herald said today: They will never come back. That is a shame.
When there is a Heat game, a bayfront park event and a concert/ballet...well good luck people!
This isn't Manhattan where you have cabs everywhere and public transportation.
I agree. What idiot made the decision to allow the PAC Center without planning for parking?
Now we see the Miami Art Museum wants taxpayer money to build a museum, also without public parking. We hope someone has the courage to stand up and say NO.
What is wrong with grass and landscaping on a waterfront public park?
Post a Comment