How much better off, Miami Dade County would be if the money invested in the Performing Arsht Center had been spent on public parks.
I don't have time, today, to go to the Great Parks Conference slated at Fairchild Tropical Garden to unveil a 50 year plan for county parks, except to say, I'm all for it.
I'd vote for any measure to increase parks funding (including maintenance!), especially for the creation of a network of usable parks in our cities. Small parks, pocket parks, large parks, ball fields: anything to make more civil a landscape, especially in the poorer areas of the county, that was dehumanized through the triumph of zoning attorneys, land use lawyers (eg. Greenberg Traurig) and developers.
Let me be clear: it is not that the Growth Machine stopped parks from being built to serve poor people. But it is the case that every zoning decision to build platted subdivisions in farmland--through which process Bob Traurig made his and his law firm's fortune--stripped the equitable distribution of funding (ie. general revenue through property taxes, etc.) to provide infrastructure, like parks, in areas already served by development. Let me put it another way: it is not that the big downtown lobbyists and lawyers said, "Don't build that park in Overtown", so much as commandeer through zoning and planning that priority would always be given to improving services one platted subdivision after another.
It is sometimes claimed that the public investment in the Performing Arsht Center will help attract business and high paid jobs, for cultured people who expect their city to offer entertainment commensurate with their expectations.
But if anything is driving away jobs and middle class families, surely it is the poverty of the landscape--built for cars--and the absence of a network of parks (especially downtown).
The PAC is struggling for relevancy. I wanted to share a story, told by a friend about a recent experience attempting to buy tickets for a PAC performance this weekend.
My friends wanted to buy some tickets to this weekend's performance of "The Sleeping Beauty" by the American Ballet Theatre.
They were willing to pay the top ticket price, advertised as $145 dollars per seat.
They clicked to the website listed on advertisements in The Miami Herald, filled out the ticket form. and then discovered that there was a $20 processing fee. Per ticket.
Wow, $20 to buy a ticket online!??#@$#
Our friends said, "We're not paying $20 per ticket, to buy tickets on the internet!" So now their odyssey to attend the PAC, began.
So our friend picked up the phone and called the Concert Association phone number listed on the advertisement, intending to save $20 per ticket by buying on the phone.
The first time our friend called the phone number listed on the newspaper ad, she was placed on a queue line. After 20 minutes of muzak, our friend hung up. So, what to do? Our friend called the box office at the Performing Arsht Center. That's reasonable, right?
Our friend asked, "Can you sell us box seats?" "No, we can only sell you tickets in the third balcony for this performance. You have to contact the Concert Association for the good tickets."
OK. My friend said that it cost $20 to buy the tickets on the internet and no one answered the phone. The person at the box office said that Concert Association was short on staff and the phone line closed at 4 pm.
She suggested my friend and her guests just appear at the PAC an hour before the performance because “they always have tickets then.” Just like Lincoln Center (not).
So on the second day, she tried calling again. She had given up hope of buying the tickets and on the verge of deciding to do something else. It was after 4 PM, but what the heck. Someone answered the phone. "I'd like to buy some tickets, in the front section." The ticket person said, "We've just lowered the price for those seats to $20."
I guess the point is, with the Performing Arsht Center, don't buy your tickets until the last minute. The second point is, leave your house early because it will take you twice as long to find a place to park, even if the ticket price is only twenty percent of what you expected to pay."
With a park, at least, you always know what to expect.
10 comments:
No wonder my son gave up on a BA in music performance...He told me he wanted to make a living to support himself and future family. He couldn't do it here, that is for sure.
Gimleteye,
You really want to use "e.g." instead of cf.
"e.g." = for example
"cf." = compare
I wholeheartedly agree with the idea of the Parks Master Plan and think that everyone should be able to at least walk to a playground. The misguided PAC adventure is typical civic boosterism stuff. The powers that be got it into their collective heads that all "first class" cities have opera houses.
The plight of inner city neighborhood parks is not the product of developers, however, but of general lack of attention on the part of government. Developers are not building anything in these areas and most of the subdivisions and parks in inner city neighborhoods were laid out decades ago.
It would be helpful if:
1. All the parks were maintained and safe
2. They leave space for real kids (not those in non-profit sports) to have a place to have football, soccer or whatever games on a Saturday afternoon to get outside and play. Unfortunately, our parks do not allow for regular folks to play...they always give up the open spaces to organizations. It has long angered me.
Taxpayer money should go to acquire more park sites. We better hurry before every park and potential site is paved.
What a tragedy that taxpayer money is being wasted on the Miami Art Museum's monument to small egos. MAM has no collection and no attendence. Worse no one donates any money. They have resorted to begging the County for access to taxpayer funds. 1 in 16 property owners have not paid their most recent property tax bills yet god forbid county bureaucrats not give money to MAM.
gimleteye wrote:
The county and cities should create pocket parks in neighborboods, by buying aggregating adjacent lots in strategic locations, tearing down structures, and building parks in their place.
The drop in property values makes this the best time, in a very long time, for the county and cities to come up with ideas and funding plans for property/ land acquisition and park development.
You can't create livable walkable communities without giving people a place to walk to.
Everyone wants parks but nobody wants to pay for them, and they don't want the government to build them because they don't trust that the money will be spent right.
Case in point: the "global agreement" everyone screams about included $30+ million for Bicentennial park. All you see is people screaming about "no money for the museums" but this is funds to build the park part. Landscaping and walkways and all that.
The Arsht Center PAC Carnival whatever was built with convention development tax funds. Those funds cannot cannot cannot be spent to build neighborhood parks. Pitting one against the other - especially when they have totally separate funding streams that do not intersect - is dishonest.
Why can't we have art and parks too?
The convention development tax fund can be redirected like any other funds...all you need is an ordinance or a vote.
Last anon: Don't bother posting if you don't know what your talking about.
FS 212.0305(4) - Convention development taxes; intent; administration; authorization; use of proceeds.
Section 4 - authorization to levy; use of proceeds; other requirements
"3. All consolidated county convention development moneys, including any interest accrued thereon, received by a county imposing the levy must be used in any of the following manners, although the utilization authorized in sub-subparagraph a. shall apply only to municipalities with a population of 10,000 or more:
a. To promote and advertise tourism;
b. To extend, enlarge, and improve existing publicly owned convention centers in the county;
c. To construct a multipurpose convention/coliseum/exhibition center or the maximum components thereof as funds permit in the county; and
d. To acquire, construct, extend, enlarge, remodel, repair, improve, or maintain one or more convention centers, stadiums, exhibition halls, arenas, coliseums, or auditoriums."
That's the whole point of the global agreement. Do you think anyone would have bothered if you could just spend CDT wherever?
Think, then type.
we cant have art and parks because parks don't further the interests of the four people who own wynwood
Does anyone think tourists visit Miami so they can spend $300 to watch the hapless Marlins?
Don't modern convention centers need a minimum of 1,000 to 3,000 hotel rooms within walking distance?
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