There’s No Profit Here

Mothballing the Central Missouri Events Center, aka Fairgrounds, presents the perfect pause to consider what our region offers for spectacles ranging from gun shows to concert performances. Apart from the somewhat edgy history behind Boone County’s acquisition of this considerable acreage, there’s one thing we can be very sure of: Like public transit, which survives only because it is subsidized by the government, the Events Center survived because the land and buildings are owned by Boone County and therefore exempt from taxation. Once built, the onus fell on the county, which is now obligated to subsidize the day-to-day operations covering myriad expenses ranging from basic maintenance and security to climate control, but now they’ve decided to feather the place.

Encomiums of high praise are in order for the TAG Events crew that cleaned the Augean stables at the Events Center with a series of herculean performances to make the place presentable again. Then financial realities descended upon the place.

There’s no profit here; the facility’s continued existence will require a subsidy. Despite bookings for various exhibitions, shows and equestrian events that filled the hall almost every weekend of the year, the Events Center has been grossly underutilized given the fact there are weekdays to fill as well. There’s not much going on out there on, say, Tuesday. Now that the Events Center is marked for discontinuance by the end of the year, what other options remain among public gathering places that dot the region?

Civic and convention centers of yore

Local history recalls the existence of a plethora of public gathering places over time that included theaters, auditoriums, ball rooms, exhibit halls and other smaller venues. There are stories as well about “civic centers,” often proposed but never realized, with the excuse that facilities generously provided by the University of Missouri spared both municipal and private interests of any obligation to enter this arena and fully realizing after considerable due diligence how costly and unprofitable such an entity would turn out to be.

One recalls the frenetic burst of activity that began decades ago to build convention centers across the country. These huge, looming, tax-exempt edifices occupying dozens of valuable center-city acres ended up costing a fortune to heat and cool, throwing finances of quite a few cities into a tailspin as municipal bond ratings dived into the cellar. MU found out that it costs a great deal to heat and cool the Hearnes Center, one reason why wrecking balls may soon be whacking away at this 40-year-old hulk.

While appreciating MU’s Jesse Auditorium and Missouri Theatre performance venues for what they are, Columbia seems woefully deficient in having available a large-scale exhibition hall with 100,000 or more square feet of climate-controlled space under a pillar-free roof. It seems somewhat inevitable that such a venue will come to pass sooner or later.

Keep on dreaming

The highest and ultimate best use of residential areas extending north from downtown Columbia to Business Loop 70 will inevitably lead to the development and repurposing of this territory some day. Might some of these cleared parcels become the site of a true downtown civic center/exhibition hall complex with ample parking, an associated hotel development and a public-private partnership that would preserve the tax base and offer another downtown Columbia attraction?

Columbia’s history is riddled with projects that took forever and ever to accomplish, and this one is still a dream. Civic undertakings that dragged on for years such as relocating the Columbia Public Library, building garages, initiating a cable television system and Courthouse and City Hall expansion projects gave legions of budding journalists and the proprietors they worked with plenty to write about. Here’s another one for local scribes to cover: the performance and exhibition complex we’ve overlooked building for way too long.