It is a red-letter day in the Miami Herald letters to the editor. Someone opened the windows to let the fresh breeze flow through.
The top letter in “Performing arts center’s miscues and red ink” takes the Miami Herald to task for being “the biggest enabler in this farce… no investigative journalism until too late.”
We suggest that Herald reporters go back and review the original revenue model/calculations for Parker Thompson’s PAC: how many days of occupancy per year were claimed, by local groups, and who exactly comprised the board of directors of those groups? Who audited those numbers? What opinions on attendance projections were rejected, because their numbers were not as rosy as the PAC cabal wanted? How do original projections for the revenue model match up to what is happening, today, and who is still on the PAC board who approved that model?
That story belonged in the Miami Herald before $500 million was spent on vanities. It is time to air the dirty laundry or maybe just put the County Commission and PAC board together in the main hall and lock the doors.
Make them watch a continuous loop performance of the musical, Cats, for an entire year.
“The center is a tribute to those who fancy Miami being ‘world class’, but the majority of our residents will never enter the building. The county should privatize the center and let the rich pay full price for their playground.”
And another letter writer,
“Our politicians and lobbyists continue down the path of fiscal irresponsibility by pouring public money into cultural facilities that should be funded with private money. Let’s hope these same commissioners do not drag us into another mess with the construction of Miami Art Museum without the required $100 million of private funds up front and in the bank.”
We agree with all these points. How much better off would the arts in Miami be, if the money for the PAC had been directed to building arts programs in Miami Dade County schools? You can’t fill the PAC with audiences until you build the audience, and you can’t build the audience without investing in education. Duh.
The use of Bicentennial Park for new museums has generated a lot of comment here.
The Miami Herald recently reported that the number one complaint of visitors to Miami is traffic. No kidding. (We loved how no one from the Chamber of Commerce was available for comment.)
Still, the Miami Herald has not reported how large downtown stadiums and museums and PAC’s and the impacts of numerous skyscraper condominium buildings can all be served by existing roadways. They can’t.
Downtown Miami is saturated by traffic. Are we really going to spend billions of dollars on attractions that no one will visit, even if they wanted to, because it is physically impossible to get there without road rage. (There’s a good way to cultivate your donor base: take your initial subscribers and piss them off standing and waiting for cars, or in traffic blocked from movement and having their windshields forcibly cleaned by panhandlers at stop lights abridging the entrance ramps to the highway.)
We share dismay that Miami’s leaders over successive generations have literally shut down public access to Biscayne Bay—creating the strange dissonance of one of the nation’s most vibrant cities cut off from exactly what makes it attractive.
There is a common theme here.
Miami-Dade County: cut-off from the Everglades by production tract housing.
Overtown: communities cut-off, by Interstate 95.
Miami: cut-off from Biscayne Bay by repetitive, bad decisions by elected officials.
Zoning and permitting cut-off from reason.
Still, it is one thing to allow criticism of the Herald in the letters section, and another to actually assign reporters to follow up on excellent points by letter writers that are, too often, lost in space or defensive dismissal.
6 comments:
Brilliant idea:
That story belonged in the Miami Herald before $500 million was spent on vanities. It is time to air the dirty laundry or maybe just put the County Commission and PAC board together in the main hall and lock the doors.
Make them watch a continuous loop performance of the musical, Cats, for an entire year.
the would have MEMORIES forever.
you said that “The center is a tribute to those who fancy Miami being ‘world class’.
While walking from a parking facility to the Carnival PAC there was a man sleeping in a doorway (It was the afternoon) and there was garbage all over the sidewalk and the swale. Building were derelict. Certainly not a world class city by any stretch of the imagination.
Where is code enforcement, sanitation and the police in Miami? Certainly not at this end of town.
This is a difficult project in an area with alt of challenges, give it a break. Wow, it seems you people are never happy, build a 500m arts center with no discernible corruption built into the construction contracts and you must find something else to carp about. How are we going to get the well educated, highly technical job base if we don't have things that well educated people would want to do? Just think if that 500m was spent on attracting employers (bribes) to relocate. Think of how corrupt that would have turned out. I would much rather have the PAC. Enough about the PAC already, there are bigger fish to fry in this seas-side town.
Last reader:
I go to the Carnival center often. I like it.
I just have these beefs:
1. We must spiff up the area. You just don't build it and then abandon it: Code enforcement, police and sanitation are needed. People will come once -- if it is too hard, they will not come back.
2. We should have had a better handle on the budget so we are not all in sticker shock.
3. There are SOLD OUT shows so we need a better line-up to attract an audience. Some of the line up looks to be a yawn--- I am a big Dave Winfield fan, but what is with that show?
I have those $10 tickets to see whatever it is I will be seeing...didn't really care at $10 for a night out.
So I agree with you last reader that educated people need things to do...except educated people need jobs too. What jobs does Miami have for educated people? I think that is the first consideration. A lot of educated people like the outdoors...and will make do with what cultural activities we have available in a trade-off.
12:05 PM, March 24, 2007
You've got to be kidding me if you think the PAC was built to attract Educated People! Educated in what? Spending Money Like a Sailor on Shore Leave? Let me tell you this city is POOR! Let me spell it out for you, P-O-O-R! Before we spent 500MIL on this joint we need to focus educating our children because their education is what will raise their standards of living and not the building of this completely useless and utterly uneconomical building. If it's such a money maker then why didn't it get funded with private money? There's only one answer it's good money down the proverbial TOILET! Over and out.
The PAC's 500m is but a small part of the money that needs to be spent in Miami to bring in educated people. We need billions for education, however, not even the county can come up with those kinds of figures. We need more state money for colleges and universities. Again I would really rather have the PAC than 500m for business relocation to the Beacon Council blackhole.
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