We find an apt headline on this morning's Standard-Examiner front page. "Adventure defined" blares this morning's Std-Ex story title. "Re-defined" would possibly be an even more apt description, but (as our regular readers already know) we really do hate to nit-pick.
Scott Schwewbe reports that Boss Godfrey held an exclusive media press conference yesterday at the downtown "Rec Center." We use the term "exclusive," because reporters from Weber County Forum were for some reason not invited to attend. We're sure that this was merely an inadvertant oversight. We're sure we weren't overlooked on purpose. It matters not however that we were thus unable to send our own reporter to cover this event, because our adopted surrogate reporter, Ace Reporter Schwebke, apparently showed up, notepad in hand, to do the reporting for us.
Our favorite Std-Ex reporter provides this morning a journalistc walk-through of the two-story "crown jewel," and describes a series of "high adventure" features. We won't wast band-width enumerating them again, but we confess a couple of the the listed features caught our adventuresome eye, particularly this one -- which definitely got the adrenaline flowing:
"Glow-in-the-dark miniature golf" (no, we did not make this up -- read Scott's article.)
Conjure up in your gentle minds this image, if you will:
Boss Godfrey... navigating our little indoor, dayglo miniature golf course dressed to the nines in tradtional golfing attire, tiny knickers, miniature argyle sweater-vest and tam o' shanter, with Bill Glasmann (borrowed from the Emerald City Economic Development Department,) trailing behind as caddy, hauling a set of "junior" golf clubs, (rented from the "sports store" pro shop.)
And we'll note in passing the addition of another Mexican restaurant and pizza joint to the downtown Emerald City landscape. JUST what's needed in downtown Emerald City we think. We truly don't know how Boss Godfrey and his minions manage to come up with all these wonderful ideas.
We've re-read this morning's article several times, and can't really find any of these features we would call "high adventure." Of course we're mainly into outdoor receational sports, however. Being buffeted around in a 120 mph wind tunnel thirty feet above the floor may be something close to adventure, we guess, especially taking the $15/minute cost into account. We suppose the latter includes all insurance premiums.
Still, we think calling Peewee's new playhouse a "high adventure" venue has been pushing the definition of that term more than a little bit. It was smart for the suits on the ninth floor to rename the place the Salomon Center, we think. A Weber County Forum tip o' the Tam o' Shanter to Boss Godfrey for talking Salomon into slapping their brand name on it.
Today's article reports the center will open for business in May. We hope it works. It's gotta work. The taxpayers on on the hook for this to the tune of $19 million and change. We'll probably know a year or so from now whether the folks from Amer Corp. will wnat to keep the Salomon trade-name on the front door.
So how about it, gentle readers? Can we see, by a show of hands, how many will be rushing down there at the grand opening? Day-glo miniature golf, anyone? High scorer picks up the tab for margaritas at the Costa Vida Grill!
And no! We are NOT irked that we didn't get invited to yesterday's media press conference... not unless we missed out on free sandwiches and hors d'ouvres.
Don't let the cat get your tongues.
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97 comments:
I do think it has a chance. With the Frontrunner coming and the Flowrider and Sky Chamber attractions are unique I think that it will draw well from the whole Wasatch Front. Kids will want to try these things at least once and that makes a lot of potential rider base. Skateboarders and Snowboarders are particularly interested in the Flowrider. They are expensive to ride on a regular basis but I can see groups of them coming from all over to ride since the closest one is in California. Here is the latest from one industry source...
Transworld Business
Surf Skate Snow
Wave New World
Posted 12.21.2006
“Talk is cheap, but building an artificial wave is not. Anyone can produce a drawing or build a wave tank. The hard part is making it all economical: building a pool that has a reasonable real-estate footprint and attracting enough riders and business to pay for the maintenance, energy, and a lot of other costs to make it a viable return on investment.”
—Doug Kirk, Cofounder, Surfparks LLC.
If everybody has an ocean, across the U.S.A.—and around the world—and everyone is surfin’, like Californ-i-a, what effect will that have on both the top and bottom line of the surf industrial complex?
Fooling with Mother Nature is about to become big business. In the next year, the Ron Jon Surfpark is going to open in Orlando, Florida and offer three state-of-the-art wave pools designed not for masses of nincompoops on surf mats but for beginning, intermediate, and advanced surfers riding one computer-generated artificial wave after another through a salty brine in the middle of Florida.
Now that the Wave House in Mission Beach, California has proven the “one surfer on one wave” business model can be an economically viable, Flowrider Creator Tom Lochtefeld is furiously franchising his curling Bruticus Maximus standing wave to locations around the world. Chile and Singapore are signed and about to be delivered, and there’s talk of London and many other places.
Ron Jon Surfpark and Wave House are realities. This isn’t cheap talk, this is expensive large holes dug in the ground and millions of dollars committed to waves designed by good surfers for good surfers. Commerce and technology are going to let people around the world catch a wave and sit on top of the world no matter how far away from the ocean they are. And because success breeds copies, if Surfparks and Wave Loch make a nice dollar, this could bring other concepts like the Ring Wave and the Wave Cannon off the drawing boards and into reality.
And if that happens and this wave new world opens up the thrill and culture of riding waves to hundreds of thousands of landlocked people around the world, what will this do for the coffers of the surf industry? What peripheral opportunities will spring up around these miracles of modern science?
Artificially generated waves in pools go back to the 1920s when indoor pools in Germany and England had agitators that would stir up wavelets in pools that adults found soothing and kids found fun. In 1969, the surfin’ sensation swept the nation all the way to Arizona, where Clairol invested two-million dollars (the 2006 equivalent to eleven-million dollars) to build Big Surf, a 300-foot-by-400-foot pool set in a twenty-acre Polynesian-themed complex. Big Surf created waves by dropping millions of gallons of water down a 40-foot chute. These could be ridden by dozens of ’Zonies on surf mats, but the park also attracted famous surfers like Fred Hemmings and Corky Carroll.
Big Surf established the model for wave pools for the next 30 years and pretty soon you’d catch them surfing in Calgary, Miyazaki in Japan, Allentown and Irvine, and down to Typhoon Lagoon. All these wave pools were modeled on Big Surf: compressing or pressurizing a large volume of water and then releasing it into a large pool, where as many paying customers as possible would ride the wave—usually on surf mats or bodysurfing. All of these wave pools could be cranked up to eleven to produce a wave that was challenging—or at least readable—for stand-up surfers.
In 1985, the first World Professional Surfing Championships was held in Dorney Park, Allentown, Pennsylvania. Tom Carroll was the World Champion at the time, and he won the event, which was generally reviled by the surfing media.
In 1997, Kelly Slater was the World Champion in the real ocean, but he also dominated the Typhoon Lagoon Surf Challenge at Disney World in Florida—a wave less than 100 miles from Kelly’s hometown in Cocoa Beach, and a wave that had some real potential when cranked all the way up. The following year, Slater didn’t defend his championship—he was called away to Hawai‘i to surf in the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational. Good for him.
That same year the Sunway Bandar wave pool opened and showed to the world a record-breaking artificial wave that was seven feet from trough to crest. “But by that time,” Matt Warshaw wrote in The Encyclopedia Of Surfing, “the surf world’s interest in artificially produced freshwater surf had for the most part turned to the stationary-wave FlowRider machines produced in Southern California.
Growing Fast By Going Nowhere
Tom Lochtefeld is the Wizard of Big Rock—a sketchy, heavily localized spot in La Jolla, California. Lochtefeld grew up getting barreled there and doing big cutbacks at Windansea. Now Lochtefeld has dedicated a great deal of his time, talent, and money to bringing the thrill of riding waves to landlocked people around the world.
He began investing in real estate in the 1970s while a student at USC, where he earned a law degree. As his investments bore fruit, Lochtefeld gradually gained the experience and finances to do some serious messing with Mother Nature and try to bring that Big Rock experience to the world.
Lochtefeld has proven to be one of those very rare individuals—particularly for the surf industry—who backs up his wild ideas with unflakey action. In 1990, Lochtefeld developed a new kind of wave, which flowed water over a padded hump to create a stationary wave that could be ridden prone or standing. FlowRider tremendously decreased the “footprint” that was needed to install an artificial-wave attraction. The first FlowRider was installed in Texas in 1991 and by 2006 you’d catch ’em surfin’ on more than 100 FlowRiders from Korea to Norway.
In 1999, Lochtefeld cranked it up to twelve with the Bruticus Maximus—a super-sized FlowRider that jets 100,000 gallons of water a minute over a warped ten-foot-high berm at 30 mph to create a barreling, six-foot wave that was a serious challenge to the world’s best surfers, snowboarders, skimboarders, and other extreme water athletes.
The Bruticus Maximus was bad and it went worldwide as the center attraction of the Swatch Wave tour, which traveled to a dozen cities from Munich to Long Beach and let the world’s best perform and compete. Surprisingly, it was not surfers who performed best on the Bruticus Maximus. Norwegian snowboarder Terje Haakonsen was one of the best and in 1999, a very limber skimboarder from Laguna Beach named Bill “Beaker” Bryan won the Munich event—and had the bruises to prove it.
“Whenever you fall, which was often,” Bryan says, “you’d get sucked into the lip, fall twelve feet down into an inch of water, refract off a wall, and then get sucked into a metal grill with thin rubber padding. It was brutal. I’ve got golf-sized bruises all over me.” Despite the danger and degree of difficulty of the Bruticus Maximus, it became both the centerpiece of the Wave House and an idea that tested the accepted model for artificial waves.
The Wave House is different because it doesn’t require a large pool or a great deal of water. More importantly, the attraction allows only one rider at a time. Very few outsiders thought that business model would work and Lochtefeld took a huge gamble when he took over the operation of the entire Belmont Park amusement park in Mission Beach in order to install the Wave House.
After a year in operation, the Wave House is going strong, proving that the one-man, one-wave idea is financially sound. At the end of the summer of 2006, MTV came to the Wave House to do a week long TRL—giving the Wave House a priceless promotion. The continuing success of the Wave House has inspired a new wave—so to speak—of artificial waves and pools that are designed for real surfers: one rider on one wave, and those waves are becoming increasingly sophisticated—The Flying Reef, The Ring Wave, and The Ron Jon Surf Park are all concepts that are moving from the drawing board to reality.
Six Foot And Barreling
In Orlando, Florida, the Ron Jon Surf Park is under construction right now, with the Training Pool already full of water and producing what some surfers call “fauxaves.” Six years and twelve-million dollars of financing, R&D, and construction have gone into this park—which is the first of the new wave of artificial waves to come online. A 600-horsepower engine will pump three- to four-foot waves at a rate of five to six waves a minute for 30 to 35 yards through an alchemy of saltwater and chlorine. The Training Pool is the middle brother in a 120,000-square-foot, outside complex at the Festival Bay at International Drive Mall that will also include a Pro Surf Pool capable of will generating four to eight-foot waves for rides of 70 to 100 yards. There will also be a Body Boarding Pool for three-foot waves going for twenty to 30 yards. This is all scheduled to be up and running and open to the public by the summer of 2007.
As a miracle of modern technology, the Ron Jon Surf Park is getting ready to blow the world’s mind by next summer. As a business entity, Ron Jon will have the three wave pools as a feature attraction, with plenty of food and retail for mesmerized bystanders.
“Having a complementary retail component to the surfpark is a natural fit, and we’re particularly excited about revolutionizing the way surfboards are sold,” says Jamie Meiselman, founder/CEO of Surfparks, the owner/operator of the Ron Jon Surf Park. “For the first time, we’ll have perfect waves every day right outside the front door of the shop, so we’ll be able to offer a ‘try before you buy’ option for surfboards and fins in flawless, consistent conditions. Surfers will be able to make an accurate assessment of how different shapes, constructions, and fin setups work before plunking down big dollars for new gear. We’ve partnered with some of the leading surf-equipment brands and plan to offer demo boards from all of the major shapers and a ‘fin pit stop’ so surfers can swap out different fins during their session. With so much going on in new board technologies right now, the timing for this demo-retail concept is perfect.”
According to Meiselman, the ETA for the Ron Jon Surf Park to be fully up and running is June/July of 2007. Beyond that, “We are in negotiations for various locations around the U.S. and Canada to follow up to the Orlando park,” Meiselman says. “Most likely the second park will be in Southern California.”
Ron Jon’s and the Wave House are green lit, under construction, and going. One of the other artificial wave concepts that is making the rounds is the Ring Wave—a sort of endless wave that goes around and around in a circular pool, allowing any good surfer to go through his entire repertoire, ad infinitum. Within the surfing world there are rumors that Kelly Slater and Quiksilver are behind the Ring Wave. Kelly Slater is rumored to have invested as much as 100,000 dollars in developing the Ring Wave, but he is careful when he talks about it. “I have yet to ride a pool or see a pool that really got me excited—that I would travel to again as a destination,” Slater said in the summer of 2006. “I really believe that’s about to change. When I saw the technology and imagined the possibility of what could be made it clicked that this was finally the reality in the world of man-made waves. There is the ability to adjust every aspect of waves: speed, steepness, height, and more.”
The Champ foresees a world in which surfparks are custom designed by the pros to suit their individuals styles and tastes. “There’s no reason why Bruce, Andy, Taj, Fanning, The Hobgoods, and others won’t have their own specifically designed waves that are different from anyone else’s to suit their mind surfing—how they envision a wave being ridden,” says Slater. “Then people can then try to outdo their favorite pros on their own waves. Everyone sees waves differently, and this will be the expansion of that when finally realized.”
Back at the Wave House in September of 2006, Royal Caribbean hosted the Surf Series National Championship. It was an event that brought surfers from across the USA to compete on the Bruticus Maximus. The Wave House was packed with friends and visitors mesmerized by the endless wave and the skill of the riders who were doing the tricks the surfers do.
Wave Loch Founder Tom Lochtefeld watched it all, smiling quietly to himself, and spoke over the crowd noise but off the record about a possible partnership between Wave Loch and a new, phenomenally wealthy, Los Angeles-based entertainment company that has more than enough clout to give everyone an ocean across the U.S.A. and around the world.
Lochtefeld did say this about the immediate future: “Wave House will open in Santiago, Chile in May of 2007. Wave House Singapore is scheduled to open in December 2007. Three other Wave Houses should be announced in the next few months in major global destination cities.”
All of this is just around the corner, but what will it mean for the bottom line of the surf industry manufacturers and retailers? Jamie Meiselman sees the biggest opportunities opening up for equipment and other hardgoods. “The surf clothing companies—Billabong, Quik, et cetera—have already made the inland invasion,” Meiselman says. “They are well entrenched in pretty much every inland state and country around the world—with or without wave houses or surfparks. But the surf-equipment companies—which are tiny in comparison to the big garmentos—have not made this move yet. Surfparks could enable this paradigm shift in the size and scope of the surf-equipment market. There is massive unrealized upside potential for the surf-equipment people, whereas the garmentos have already tapped the inland markets and their growth will be much slower and less significant.”
Here's another success story
FOR MORE INFORMATION November 15-19, 2004
Aquatic Development Group’s Double FlowRider®
Hits A Home Run At Kalahari Resort
(Orlando, FL) The Aquatic Development Group (ADG) (www.aquaticgroup.com) is
pleased to announce the great success of its immensely popular Double FlowRider®
flowboarding system at the Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin.
Earlier this year, the Kalahari Resort was looking to add new excitement to the
Wisconsin facility’s attractions. It chose the Aquatic Development Group to install its leadingedge
Double FlowRider® last spring, and subsequently experienced a record summer season
with significantly increased hotel occupancy rates, as well as an increase in day visitors. The
FlowRider® flowboarding system is powered by submersible propeller pumps that generate a
sheet of water that flows over a stationary wave form. The resulting wave-like shape permits
riders on body boards and flow boards to drop-in, bottom turn and ride on wave surfaces.
“The FlowRider® is one of the coolest waterpark rides we’ve ever seen,” said an
enthused Todd Nelson, President of Kalahari Resorts. “We hit a home run with the FlowRider®.
Our hotel guests love it, we love it. Order me another one!”
In fact, that is exactly what Kalahari Resorts did—it retained the Aquatic Development
Group to design and build the indoor waterpark at its new resort to open in Sandusky, Ohio next
summer. The Double FlowRider® will be a prominent feature of that waterpark, as well. The
Aquatic Development Group’s decades of experience in outdoor waterparks is propelling the
company into an industry leadership position in indoor waterpark design and construction as well.
ADG’s vertical integration will allow it to provide comprehensive services for the seamless
transition of every phase of a client’s project from creative design to quality equipment, and on time.
Rudi,
You left out the Gieger connection (Kamie Gieger - the city's project coordinator for The Junction) in the $19.5 million project(Hey wasn't that $18.5 million dollars just a couple of weeks ago?). That's not like you to miss a small point like that.
I want to contemplate this project a little now. Let's see you take your three kids down to the Salomon Center (within The Junction) to ride the Skyventures (wind tunnel)for the first time at $50/pop (and then "only" $15/minute there after), then you have them put on their bathing suites an go the the Flowrider (a wave simulator) for $20/hour while you go play a stimulating game of glow in the dark minature golf? An hour and a half later you gather up your kid and say lets go get something to eat, maybe something unigue here in Ogden - mexican food! You can do all this in Ogden in only two hours and only be out about $225, what a deal, I think I'll plan this adventure for my family ever saturday morning. Four times a month that only amounts to $900/month out of the monthly budget or only a quarter of the average annual Ogden family income.
You remember after all the superbowls they used to always ask the MVP what he was going to do now that the game was over and he'd always say I'm going to Disneyland! Do you kind of get that same feeling with every project that the mayor gets the city involved in? Without exception, some ski company official is asked what he thinks of the project and that offical always comes back with the response that if it hadn't been for that project that his/her company wouldn't have come to Ogden.
Mike Dowse, president and general manage of AmerSports' U.S. winter and outdoor division was the lucky speaker this time when he said per the SE article "the opportunity to attach its name to an iconic building like the recreation center was a major factor in the company's decision to move to Ogden". Man would I hate to be a board member of that company to hear that was the business reason why our people move their whole operations to a new city was so they could have their name on the side of a building!
You got to love living in Ogden!
Anonymous,
People do plunk down $60 for (0ver 12yrs. age) tickets at Snowbasin regularly (unless they bought season passes) and buy lunch and drive a few miles to get there so that kind of outlay is apparently within reach and attractive for quite a few. Those days at Snowbasin amount to usually less than 4 hours by the time exhaustion sets in. A lot families piss away far more on far less healthy pursuits. I won't be skydiving but the Flowrider has broad appeal and $20 hr. is deceiving. You will likely get very tired in an hour on one of those things. If the family all had a recreational time of it I'd have to say it's worthy and justifiable.
A trip for a family of 5 to the theater to sit on their ass watching pornographic all-american violence and anger, while chomping on milk duds, popcorn and sucking down sugared caffiene fluids will cost at least 70 bucks and it's all negative.
Personally I find no "high adventure" whatsoever,in an artificial "indoor" climbing wall,a giant fan or a large "indoor wading pool.A more appropriate moniker might be,"High dollar Boondogle",I get the feeling that season passes were not yet available at "Lagoon" when Matt Godfrey was a child.
Let's not miscalculate costs. The real estate for this center cost the city as I recall, something like $20 million, plus another $5 million to settle the lawsuit with Woodbury. So the total cost is more like $40-50 million. Dont' ever forget to count real estate!
Also, is it a Big Surf pool, a kayak pool or both?
At this point, predictions aren't worth the effort. The die has been cast. The bucks have been invested. Now all we can do is sit back and await the outcome. I am cautiously hopeful that enough of the parts [exercise club, flowrider, wind tunnel, minigolf, bowling, eateries etc] will succeed that the center overall will. A little dicey that it will be opening in advance of the office buildings and condo/apartment projects and [I guess] in advance of the theaters, since all of those can be expected to increase traffic in the plaza and at the center. We'll just have to see now how it works out.
Not inviting Rudi was downright churlish.
As for the movies, here's hoping whoever books it is willing to go beyond booking the same films booked into the Riverdale Mall, and will take a flyer or two on the several general release highly rated films a year that never manage to make it to Riverdale mall. [E.g. "Children of Man" playing in Layton now, but not up here.] I'm tired of having to drive to Layton three or four times a year to see a film that, somehow, never makes it to Riverdale. With fourteen new screens, here's hoping whoever books for them realizes the possibilities of booking a little more widely than Riverdale does. But, again, we'll have to wait and see now....
I agree Curm, on the movie bookings.
Maybe I'am a little old fashioned, but extreme noise, car chases and wreckage and countless acts of violence both physical and verbal including the commonality of unresolved death is mind-numbing. A friend remarked to me recently that he was watching Saw3, in a particularly gruesome scene he turned around to see everyone just chomping away loving it. A little scary.
Maybe we should construct a RPG resistant viewing dome in the center of Baghdad so we can fly there and sit in safety witnessing the horror of over 30,000 Iraqis dying each year so we can maintain our fuel supply security. We are just as insulated from reality in our ocean protected North American Island
There I go again, disrupting the peace and conciousness here at home with pesky little stories out of the American Murder Reality series.
I was looking at the SIA (Snowsports Industries America) convention web page to see whether our mayor had gotten himself quoted there and while I was at it, it got me to thinking about the companiies that our mayors says are in Ogden already. So I went to see if they were exhibitors at the big convention. Interestingly nether Kahuna nor Snowsports Interactive were listed as exhibitors. So I went to both companies web pages to see what they were listing as their contact locations and neither company mentions Ogden in any way shape or form. Could this mean that there presence in our town is insignificant from their company's perspective or that they aren't in our town any longer?
Also Rossignol lists their place of business for this years convention registration as Park City, Utah and Scott USA listed their address as Sun Valley, Idaho (could of sworn the mayor said both of these companies are located in Ogden).
As for Tec Johnson's comments, I don't disagree with you that people spend $60/day for lift ticket and that they probably spend a total of 4 hours or less on the mountain but it still represents a full days worth of activities where as this same expenditure (drive time included) is 2 hours max. and no where near the experience. These are poor substitues for the real thing and I feel people will tire of them in short order.
My biggest concern though is that I just see a conflict in what I'm hearing from the administration. In one breathe I hear that he is trying to develop a downtown that is friendly to those people that want to walk to it but then I look at who lives within walking distance and I can't see them as being able to afford the services being offered. Then in another breathe I hear that we need local novelty or niche types of stores and restaurants and then I see him putting in chain store or fast food type restaurants that seem to contradict or actually conteract the project being put together.
Work with me on the following word dis-associations
Gym - Pizza Factory
Climbing wall - arcade games
Jogging track - bumper cars
Wave maker & Wind Tunnel- mexican grill
Sports Bar - childrens play area
Seems to me that the city is trying to be all things to all people rather than actually sticking to one theme. This place is being billed as a physical recreation center. My concern is that neither faction of the population is going to feel comfortable interacting with the other faction. For example, some one taking their daughter dressed in leotards to a dance class isn't going to want to be mingling with a bunch of young boys hanging out at the arcade gallery. Also the restaurants being included in this facility seem to be potentially conflicting with what has been suggested to be taking place with the rest of The Junction.
There is no continuity in the theme of this place as planned and that is what concerns me.
Thank you , Mayor G, for all your financial wizardry and keeping our open spaces open! You really are a marvel.
I wish you'd made a deal with a different company tho on naming of your first in the country rec center! SALOMEN???
You know it'll always be called the 'rec center' or SAMMEN ...Why not Sam's or Nike or Descente??
SALOMEN just sounds a lot like ENERGY SOLUTIONS....doesn't denote FUN!
But, since my taxes are heavily invested here, I sure hope the thing attracts folks with big bucks.
Mr. Mayor, how come you didn't tell us how much time the initial 50 bucks buys? 15 buck a minute, I can understand that, but you didn't tell your panting public what the 50 bucks will buy.
I sure hope the po' folks who actually live closest to the Junction will be able to bowl, play miniature golf, and have a slice of pizza once in awhile.
Have your Eco Development boys figured out how many REPEAT customers you can expect on any of your attractions?
I don't want to come across as negative (surprise! eh?), but skiing is a pricey family outing, and I'm just guessing here, only guessing, that after the first onslaught into the family budget, fun at the Salomen Center, ain't gonna happen again in most families.
But, Mayor G, if enuf folks come up on the FrontRunner and have a go at it, even once, some dollars will be dropped.
BTW, how many folks have to ride, glide and bowl for the whole shebang to break even? Have your ECO guys figured that out yet?
Do list the prices for the rest of the attractions so that the very interested can start saving up right now.
did any one say at the press conferance that the payment of the building is $54,000 a month. that is not including the overhead and the maintanace of the facility. plus I guess that fat cats and golds gym will for sure buy some advertising on the police cars so when they are out pulling people over for their ticket quota's that they advertise for the gym, then what ever money that the city hasn't taken from them on the tickets they can spend on the peewees play house.
Lot's of skepticism on the Center here, some of which I share. But I do hope the mix works. Downtown Ogden and in fact all of Ogden has a lot riding on this and it will do the city no good if it fails. I get the impression that some here are hoping it fails, anticipating the joys of indulging themselves in a loud "we told you so!" However good it might feel, it would not be good for Ogden. So, as I said, I hope it succeeds. Keeping my fingers crossed.
One thing that does have me a little concerned is the tendency of development companies, like Boyer, to line up chain operations for projects like the mall redevelopment. The problem with that, as I see it, is folks can find chain operations very nearly everywhere. Not much reason to come to downtown Ogden for a Barnes and Noble bookstore [there's one in the Layton Mall] etc. I seems to me encouraging non-chain one-of-a-kind merchants might be more effective in drawing people in from outside the city.
Perhaps not. I guess the counter argument is the reason chains are chains is because they are successful. We'll just have, now, to wait and see how it all plays out.
On page 1 of today's SL Trib, Debt Committee Tells RSL No-Way there is an interesting pro/con list. My favorite "Con" is "Statutory limits on public funding." What a concept!
DRC's take on the viability of the stadium project:
STRENGTHS:
* RSL owner Dave Checketts and his management group
* Team's above-average attendance in first two seasons
* Major League Soccer's solid business model
* RSL's favorable contract with the MLS
* A "well-situated" Sandy stadium
site
* Team's multi-marketing opportunities
WEAKNESSES:
* Insufficient parking
* Unrealistic revenue projections
* Reliance on too many startup businesses
* Capital investment plan too complex
* Statutory limits on public financing
* Private debt too high
* Near-term cash deficits likely
Source: Salt Lake County's Debt Review Committee
Can the developer really put a sports bar anywhere on that property? Don't bars have to be a certain distance away from a school or church. Seems to me that there are two churches very close to that location, LDS Ogden Temple and Church of the Good Shepard. Just curious.
Boyer Company has been a parasite on Ogden City for as long as I can remember. The company exists simply because the city leaders come and go thus there is no memory as to how the Boyer Company out maneuvred (took advantage) of the city on the previous deals. There have been problems with them dating back to the late 70's and not just once. Usually it has centered around the fact that they have out negotiated the city on a project and they end up holding our feet to the fire. When will we ever learn not to deal with them.
Curm, just because you don't want it to be so doesn't mean that it won't happen. For The Junction to work it's going to require alot of outside Ogden area participation to survive. I'm confident that the initial concept will draw lots of people but the long term picture is pretty bleak regardless of what people in the community say good or bad. These are fad projects that make a lot of money for a short period of time but when the fad dies down the businesses go out of business under their own weight. They remind me of tanning salons, bungie jumping towers and waterslide parks. Unfortunately those are easy to take apart or small in size. The projects we're looking at are going to be located in the middle of several other operations and are going to be hard to reconfigure without a lot of additional expense.
Anon:
Haven't been here long enough to know much about Boyer experience with Ogden. Do know the other development company that originally won the contract for the mall redevelopment pulled out because [at least this is how it was reported] it thought city expectations for the project were unrealistic. Which was not encouraging news.
The concerns you listed about key attractions being "fad" draws... quick out of the gate but with no staying power... I share, believe me. Hope I'm wrong though. We shall see....
We're all invested in this, dare I say the obvious? 'vision ' of Godfrey's to be the first rec center mall in the country.
I did notice in the paer tho, that he's toned it down from first in the country to first in the state!
Curm...we all hope it is a success, and that it's lure lasts longer than an ice cream cone in July.
DO we know how many patrons are needed to break even...make a profit? Pay the pricey 'rent'?
I notice we haven't heard the hotel on 23rd with the pass thru 2nd floor touted for awhile. Have I missed something?
I still don't like the name of the rec center....how 'UNwild...UNsexy and UNcool' can we be?
I share Curmudgeon's concern about developers bringing in chains instead of unique, locally owned shops and restaurants. Besides being less interesting, chains typically offer only low-paying jobs and send their profits out of town, usually out of state. Of course we're going to end up with some chains no matter what, and for many types of business (supermarkets, pharmacies, most clothing sales), locally owned shops are now nonexistent. But the government shouldn't exacerbate this situation by creating a development environment in which only chains are welcome.
Unfortunately, large developments full of chain stores and chain restaurants seem to be exactly what the Godfrey administration has in mind for the River Project, and for the other mixed use centers that have been proposed throughout Ogden. These developments will be governed by the new mixed use zoning ordinance that's now in the pipeline, and so far, the planning staff have shown no interest in making this ordinance compatible with small, individually owned parcels of land. Instead, the assumption is that entire blocks will be bought by large developers and redeveloped all at once. The compatibility with small parcels is mostly a matter of the ordinance's procedural requirements. Burdensome procedures are ok, and probably necessary, for large developments--but are a death sentence for the little guys. We'll learn in about a week what the planning staff is actually going to propose this time around. Stay tuned.
On another subject: Yes, we should all hope that the Salomon Center will succeed. But it's interesting to note that the mayor himself predicted otherwise, at one of his Thursday night gondola sales pitch events last summer. He said it would be successful at first, but then the novelty would wear off and perhaps other cities would copy the idea, so there's no hope for the long term unless we also build the gondola. (It didn't seem to occur to him that the novelty of the gondola might someday wear off as well.)
Good on ya, Dan, for your excellent recall of the mayor's disclaimer about the success of his rec center.
He just wanted to say it first, so if it happens that way he can say, "I TOLD you this would happen if we didn't build the gondola....so there!"
We all hope the whole shootin' match will succeed...as we all are heavily invested for decades!
I, too, would like to see some non-chain entities open here. There is a lovely bakery in the (Red?) Rock Canyon outlet center in St George. I don't think it is part of a chain...and the wares are WONDERFUL! A place like that where one could have a pastry or sandwich on fresh bread and perhaps sit inside or out on the sidewalk under an umbrella would be deliteful.
There used to be a bakery in Trolley Square that sold pastries, and sandwiches on fresh bread....their BLT's were to drool over.
Curm...you and I both hope a book store will open. Most are chains...but there is a LARGE 'day old' (used) book store in Provo on Center St. It is paradise to browse in there and find just about anything! Adding a few comfy chairs for perusing a book or two adds to the ambience.
An upscale dress shoppe, men's wear (NO! not MR Mac) would be welcomed. Especially if we are courting conventions. A store that caters to hi tech 'toys' where a business man/woman could recieve needed help RIGHT NOW would be an attractive sales pitch to convention bookers. Is Kinko's planning to move close to the hotels? They're a chain...but, they are GOOD!
What you say about the minimum wages for employees of fast food chains and restaurants is true, Dan. Also, the corporate offices are not in Ogden..unless it's a ski company, of course. Do they sell food?
I'd like to see some of Miller's Mega Plex screens devoted to NOT run of the mill movies. "THE RABBIT PROOF FENCE" is such a film. Haunting. We caught it at the Broadway in SLC a couple years ago. Also, like the SCERA Theatre in Orem...I hope Miller will dedicate a couple screens to FAMILY Friendly movies. My biggest concern, tho, is that the NewGate, and No. Pointe Theatres will go out of business, unless THEY bring in the odd and deliteful little films and cater to the Families who are thirsty for clean family 'friendly' shows.
We MUST have a market downtown. Hotel guests need to be able to find one without hailing a cab to Albertson's or Smith's a few miles away. Of course, it will be good for them and residents to hop the trolley and shop at a 'neighborhood' market.
I hope Ogden will be known as a welcoming, friendly, courteous, safe and charming town!
I suppose we've all read the expected and sad news that Matt Jones has been officially fired from the OPD!
He's taking his case to the Civil Service Commission to restore his 'honor'.
I hope he sues the proverbial pants off this city!
I wish him all the best in his new venture as a butcher. One could suppose that this is a logical career choice since he's had 'on the non job 'training in butchery under the leadership of Godfrey and Greiner.
Sharon, all this talk of hotels. We have three near empty ones now with a conference center that requires about a million bucks in subsidy per year. Does anyone really think this rec center can correct that? I don't beleive people would come from Idaho to climb a plastic wall. They most likely would come down and stay at a hotel to shop at an outlet mall,maybe take in a movie,eat and bowl a frame or two. Point is,the rec. center nor a stupid urban Gondola would draw enough folks to fill our hotels.
Curmudgeon - Larry Miller is doing the theaters so you can tell what he will put in there by looking at what he does in Jordan Commons. Same group, same bookers, plenty of blood and guts. You can bet your butt we won't be seeing Broke Back Mountain showing there! Hey, who wants to see a flick about a couple of queer cowboys anyway? Much rather see Stalone blow somebody's f__king head off!
Anon - I think the $54,000 you are referring to on the Rec center is the rent the fat guy from the Gym and the skinny guy from Fat Cats will be paying collectively for monthly rent on the $20,000,000 building. In the real world commercial real estate usually rents for about 1% per month of its value. That means any where else in the country the mayor's buddies would be paying $200,000 per month rent on this $20 million dollar plus building. This means that the tax payers and citizens of Ogden will be subsidizing these guys to the tune of $146,000 per month, or $1,752,000 per year! (Damn I wish I was one of Godfrey's buddies)
This does not even take into consideration the underlying ground costs that could be calculated by comparing the footprint of the building to the overall mall site which the city (us) is into around $30+ million.
Dan S - As to the River front attracting chain stores, or any stores for that matter - that will not happen unless the omni present Boyer corporation approves. Remember, they have veto power over anything that goes into any of Ogden's other RDA projects - which of course the River project is.
With the control and power that Boyer has over most everything in Ogden, I fully anticipate that in the future the town's name will be changed to Boyerville. We will all then have the security of living in a company town and shopping at the company store. American money will most likely be discontinued to be replaced with Boyerbucks.
Here's a question for Councilman Safsten, or any other City Council members who may be tuning in: What are the benchmarks that will be used to judge whether the Salomon Center is a success? What are the revenue goals for the first few years? By when is it supposed to be making a profit, and how will we know whether it is making a profit? I ask these questions now because I don't want to see the targets moving in the future.
I need to finnish my thought. Not hoping for doom with reguards to the rec center,it will make it or not,done is done. Tourism should not be the primary focus of this local gov. This gov. should be focussing on making our community better for the people that live here.Tax money via rda seems to be the only means of development.Where is the private investment?
Bill:
ON the Rec Center/ Mall redevelopment and the Convention Center. I heard someone from the city some time ago report that the Ogden Convention center loses some smallish and medium size business meeting bookings, especially hoped for repeat bookings, because people have been complaining that "there isn't enough to do there between sessions and at night." [There meaning downtown Ogden.] The Rec Center/ Movie complex I gather, had as a partial goal rectifying that, and thus [maybe] increasing bookings at the Convention center [reducing the subsity] as well as increasing bookings at downtown hotels. I don't know if that's how it will all work out, of course, but that's how the city explained the thinking. Wish I could recall who I heard on that topic, but I can't remember. It was close to a year and a half ago, if not longer.
Sharon:
Ogden has, right downtown on Washington, The Bookshelf I think it's called,a fairly large and kind of interesting used book store. Just across from the Egyptian Theater. [Ooops. I didn't mean used bookstore, I meant "previously perused books store." We're trying to tone up downtown, remember.] Sadly, it doesn't seem to stock a great deal of new non-fiction, which is what this political junkie mostly buys. But as a source of inexpensive cheap trashy mysteries, and such like, it's a stop well worth making. Specializes in Fantasy and SF I think, if that's your thing.
Ogden taxpayers are subsidizing the rent for Fat Cats and Golds Gym which is classified as an "unconstitutional gift of public property without adequate consideration".
Gifting of public resources violates Article XI Section 5 of the Utah Constitution which enumerates the powers conferred upon cities, none of which vests Utah cities with authority to make a gift of public funds.
The meaning of the term "gift" and "gifting" is the meaning of the term "gift" as used and defined in Price Development v Orem City, 995 P.2d 1237, 1247 (Utah 1995).
Price was a huge developer who had the resources to take Orem on and win. The average Ogden taxpayer does not have those resources which is why Ogden City continues to thumb their official noses at us and do whatever they darn well want to do with our debt limits and/or cash.
This case ruled against Orem for doing the same thing Ogden is doing.
For any disposition of public money or property to pass legal muster, it must be shown that the public entity has received (stress on the past tense) fair market value in exchange, and in a transaction, each year's exchange must meet that standard independent of every other year.
There is another court case pertaining to unconstitutional lending of public credit in aid of private enterprise, Salt Lake County Comm'n v Short, 985 P.2d 899, 909 (Utah 1999).
That decision states: "The policy of this section [Utah Code Annotated 17-4-4 precluding the County from funding private enterprise] is a strong one, echoed in the Utah Constitution....
This policy is aimed at preventing government from in any way using public assets for private purposes".
Ogden City's financing of land, structures and improvements for Health & Fitness Holdings, LC will inevitably result in a disproportionate tax burden on all Weber County taxpayers in violation of Article XIII of the Utah Constitution. See Rio Algom Corp v San Juan County, 681 P.2d a84, 192 (Utah 1984).
I could go on and on with more violations and more court cases but I think you get my drift.
Because this is all covered under Civil Law I cannot get the Grand Jury Panel to get involved as they deal only with Criminal Law.
That is the reason we need to get this session of the Legislature to amend the Grand Jury statutes to cover Civil Law so that taxpayers have recourse.
At this time the only recourse is the Utah Attorney General and the Weber County Attorney who are not inclined to get involved. They prefer criminal cases as well.
The bottom line is that at the present time, taxpayers either have to fork over independent lawyer fees of $250 per hour or more or instead just get more and more incensed at the lack of justice for taxpayers when elected officials have all the big guns sewed up.
THE UTAH CODE COVERING GRAND JURY PANELS MUST BE AMENDED!!!!!
Defendants of RDA Project law refuse to acknowledge that implementation of an RDA does not and will not promote equality in treatment of similarly situated property owners but will always result in disproportionate burdens and inequality.
In the case of the Ogden Rec Center this disproportionate burden will occur over the 25-year term of the municipal bonds used to finance the RDA Project.
The implementation of an Ogden City RDA violates the equal protection clause of the U.
S. Constitution and 42 U.S.C. 1983.
Ogden is also guilty of restraint of trade by entering into an exclusive lease agreement with Health & Fitness without permitting other entities or persons the opportunity to negotuate or bid on a lease for commercial space in the Rec Center which displaces market forces.
It would be interesting to know how the bar and grill and restaurant were chosen for the Center and if other persons had an apportunity to bid on the space which the law requires.
Over $7 million of taxpayer funds will be used to pay for the bonds for the Center which is an exclusive subsidy to the tenants thereby displacing market forces and substituting competetive free-market forces with government regulation and planning.
This mindset is typical of the previous City Council.
I have some hope for the present Council but it is too late to do what was right with the Rec Center.
So the plastic wall,wind tunnel and wading pool are all integral parts of the structure,thus covered by,how you say,"build to suit". What about the gym equiptment? I would think that with two facilities 10 or 12 blocks apart,they would already have plenty.If that is the case,maybe one could say the gym has at least some investment.Any details?
bill c....I hope a new hotel won't be built! I mentione hotels because, IF a convention is booked, or someone from out of town stays over, they may want to visit a market or buy something that doesn't look like a clone of everything else at Wal Mart.
I thot godfrey promised us that the equipment for the rec center was being supplied by Neilson!
Just go take a look at Fat Cats in SLC and you'll see the same pizza joint, bar, etc as seems to be promised for this one. There isn't a glow in the dark miniature golf course tho!
the city is giving the fat cats and the gold gym 5,000,000.00 in equiptment. that is on top of the 20,000,000.00 for the building. talk about a sweet heart deal and all with out going to bid. whould this be a class action suit if, say five of us residents were to sue the city for not letting us bid on the space? would any of you know?
did any of you know that Rep. Hansen is running H.B. 251 Auditing of Leases Related to Revenue Bonds I think it is committee on tuesday at 8:00 am
I Plead for some of you be there to help the Rep. get this out of committee in room ten.
I can speak from experience, since I have been involved in the same industry as the new rec center is going to be in and we were located in Weber County. I know what it costs to run a bowling center, a glow in the dark miniature golf course, (I know the owner of the only one in Utah), restaurant, arcade and such. I can tell you what type of revenue they can reasonably expect from the bowling, arcade, mini golf, bumper cars and restaurants. I cannot speak from the gym stand point, but I can tell you that bowling, mini golf, arcade(which, unless the city is purchasing the games for fat cats will be owned by Best Distributing who they currently use for their games in their other locations and is owned by the Polygamous Kingston Clan (seriously) cannot generate the type of revenues to cover a $19,000,000 building. In answer to a previous post here, yes, there is a 1000 ft buffer that must be between an establishment that sells alcohol and a church or school building.
It is very unfortunate that this facility will fail and the tax payers will be stuck on the hook for it. A may opening for this type of facility is extremely bad timing. The bowling industry and any other indoor recreation places are slowing down and are experiencing their slowest revenues of the year. Very few if any of these types of facilities can make money during the summer months in our climate. It's not too hot and it's not too cold. People will be outdoors and on summer vacations. Children will be at outdoor pools, rock climbers will be climing real rocks, skydivers will be really skydiving. Work out enthusiasts will be running outdoors in our beautiful mountains. Not good for business.
The paper says that there are four restaurants in this new facility. A mexican restaurant, a pizza restaurant, Strikers Grill (which is a snack bar that sells nachos, pretzels, and other small fast food items) and some sports lounge. The sports lounge is just a beer room where you buy your beer. Go look at Fat Cats SL facility and you will see what I mean.
As far as billiards, people don't play billiards like they used to. It's an awful lot of square footage to give up for such little revenue. $50 for the sky tunnel and $15 a minute after that. Yeah, the people who live around here can afford that. $20 per hour on the flow rider, cool during a 12 hour day that's a whole $240 per day in revenue. times that by 30 days and you have a whole $7200 and that's if it's busy 12 hours a day every day non stop. Mini golf might make $150,000 per year and that's if it makes $400 per day every day.
Am I anywhere near what it would really take to pay for a $25,000,000 facility over the next 20 years. Well, according to the great mathamatician Godfrey, YES. According to the rest of the world, not even close.
Most of these type of facilities that do succeed are in extremely highly traveled vacation destinations. I'm sorry, but Ogden, Utah isn't a Disney World, or Orlando Florida, or do we even have a resort. During the summer people are going to Lagoona Beach or Raging Waters. Hell, we couldn't even keep either one of our water slide parks open, the one that used to be in the Newgate Mall or the one out on 21 street.
It will be a sad sad day when this thing fails and Ogden City and Weber County residents will be left holding an empty bag.
Collins Corp.
Apparently Costa Azul, Pizza Factory, Fat Cats are under one single corporate group. Way to negotiate Matt. A real competitive bid process.
Strikers too.
I had never seen any attempt at opening these leases to potential bidders. Considering the limited space and the unique value of the anchoring downtown and the huge investment in the main attractions it would seem many competitors would jump at the chance to bid on these plum locations.
Maybe they are not so plum... Maybe Godfrey was so inconfident in the whole project he settled for the ease of leasing to a company that can fill several spaces without the messy thought of finding few would take a chance on downtown ogden in an embarrassingly public open bid process. Of course if Collins finds itself less than profitable and not meeting their goals we will see instantly FOUR of the tenants boarded up in one fell swoop.
It is amazing how these days planners are so removed from day to day necessities that they anchor a downtown revitalization project with a bowling alley and gym. While this fits in with someones dream of a recreation based economy, EVERYONE must eat. Next everyone must be clothed. So it stands to reason that a downtown revitalization should start with the essentials. A supermarket and some clothing outlets. Everyone will still be doing their regular daily shopping for essentials somewhere other than downtown. A recipe for continued disaster. Good Luck Matt.
Getting Trader Joes into Utah would be a serious coup as they personally expressed no interest in Utah to me. The kind of incentives tossed to these less than essential tenants would likely have cultivated their interest. Trader Joes is on an urban store model movement after starting in the suburbs. Their new Manhattan stores opened to huge lines and now sell out by noon. A grocery store selling out daily!! Yes , My daughter in NYC gave me this first person report. She works in Union Square and watches Trader Joes out of her office window. Local workers must make strategic plans to send an office runner down there to get in before the throngs.
People want healthy foods and selection. See Wild oats in Sugar House or Whole Foods. These have bacome the new community centers for just the kind of demographic to who they are trying to market the Junction.
Still I hope the Flowrider alone will bring in exactly the demo that should have been the focus.
Anon...the flowrider allows 12 - 15 riders at a time so the potential revenue is more like 300/hr. Still it is a longshot and must be booked solid to profit. I am encouraged but it is still a huge gamble.
Curm...the BOOKSHELF on WA Blvd is not an attractive bookstore. That little place hardly constitutes a store that entices book lovers to come in, browse, stay awhile and buy.
Schwebke saw fit to get two stories out of the naming of the Salomon Center, and throwing in Dowse's push for Godfrey's Gondola.
Just when I was thinking the SE was taking a different direction. Or at least, stopping to catch its breath.
I'm glad that Amer is going to renovate and save the integrity of the Am Can Co Bldg...but, I wish Dowse would get his 'facts' about the gondola from a source other than Godfrey and minions.
I don't see how Ogden can possibly become the "Ski Capitol"....an 'outdoor clothing distribution center'?
Is that different from an outlet mall?
Sharon:
Well, we disagree on "The Bookshelf." Most used book stores are short on cosmetics, and some of the best of them are downright run-down looking, with books piled all over the place hither and yon. Been in some wonderful used bookstores [Paul's in Madison, Wisconsin, for example, a couple in Boston and the one in West Yellowstone --- West Yellowstone for god's sake!] that are like that. But gems none the less.
Then of course there's the interesting bookstore in Kimball's Junction, Utah. It's a combination Wine Bar and Bookstore. [If we are aiming up-market downtown, that might make an interesting combination for the new mall development, que no?] But it's all new books, not used. It would certainly be the only combo bookstore/wine bar this side of the crest of the Wasatch Front....
As for all the predictions of disaster and failure for the Rec Center complex posted above: again, it's all moot now. We'll just have to await the outcome. Predictions and such had a point when we were still debating the wisdom of going forward with the project. But we are well past that now. The ship has been launched, so to speak, and there's not much point anymore in predictions about its floating or sinking. We'll just have to see how things turn out.
Curmudgeon
The mall project was not debated in the traditional sense - it was dictated and manipulated into being. There were plenty of people - citizens as well as large development companies that were pointing out the lack of wisdom in building a mall around a gym and bowling alley. The several polls that the Standard did on the subject showed that a vast majority of the citizens of Ogden didn't like it.
You are right on our current position of having one course of action left, that being wait and see. For the sake of the tax payers of Ogden I sure hope it succeeds. We will all be in a world of financial hurt if it doesn't.
As for used bookstores, you seem to have forgotten the grand daddy of them all here in Utah - Sam Weller's in downtown SLC. It takes up their entire basement and is absolutely terrific with an incredible selection.
Weller also has a world class rare book section in their upstairs loft, and of course the main floor which is all new books. A great place that all Utah bookies ought to visit at least twice before they die!
Of course there is also the wonderful Ken Sanders Books - also in SLC. Another year or so we can all catch the train and visit these great shops. Course they don't have a parachute ride or surf pool, so maybe we really won't want to go after all.
Michael:
Of course, Weller's. Have toted enough cheap trashy mysteries out of his basement that I should have remembered.
Since I see the gondola has crept back into posts thanks to the SE's story on AMER today, I thought I'd mention that today's NY Times has a long feature story on Portland's tram here. Best line in the story? Comment from a happy rider: "“I’d like it even more if it was 20 times slower and they served cocktails.”
Lunch break, so I have a minute to respond to some of the points above.
The city made direct pitches to stores like "Wild Oats," and others like it seeing them as a possible niche' store downtown. They did not come, despite our efforts, but it would still be good to have someone like that downtown.
There is was a large food/clothing retailer that was coming downtown, but several citizens, including some from North Ogden (inexplicably) fought against that effort. I would refer "Michael" to them to see why we still don't have a food/clothing retailer. So, we continue to watch some of our retail, property, and payroll tax dollars daily drive to the large parking lots just outside of Ogden.
Retailers need space. Ogden has space, but it is broken up into smaller lots. It takes a concerted effort to combine the lots together to get the space necessary for retailers. It is always going to be easier to build your retail store in a cornfield somewhere just outside of town and that is one of the reasons many retail opportunities are passing Ogden by.
Amer Sports are already looking for candidates.
AmerSport Jobs
The large food/clothing retailer that the Councilman refers to was none other than Wal-mart.
What a jewel of a retail store we missed. It would have certainly appealed to more illegal aliens than a Neiman-Marcus.
re: NYT Portland Tram Story
City That Loves Mass Transit Looks to the Sky for More
Every time some media jerk-off writes about these things they make it sound as though this was built as some kind of
trial in expectation of building more of them for mass transit. That is not the case. This was built as a solution to a single unique requirement, to link OHSU(Oregon Health Sciences University) to a new waterfront development that was supposed to house a lot of the resident faculty and also moke home to associated health related businesses in a cluster of research park type commercial buildings. Apparently now that the tram has opened there are almost none of the faculty living in the waterfront condos and almost no medical related businesses located on the waterfront. Planners and Folliticians are constantly trying to create these commercial clusters based on some large local anchor industry. Ours is the Ski Hub. Few, if any succeed to fulfill any original intent.
We may want to take notice that American businesses are in jeapordy and are struggling to maintain identity as that is all they have left after manufacturing has been exported overseas. It will not be long when Chinese manufacturers of outerwear simply are branding top quality outerwear and everything else built in the same factories as Nike, Salomon, Burton, etc and sell it here under their own logos. Americans have been suckers for logo identity for the last couple of decades but price is ultimately the bottom line. I personally cannot wait to buy a "shingtaoseng" snowboard for a couple of hundred dollars cheaper because I trash them anyways. I have not now, nor ever have had a need for Uber-Branded stuff.
I hate to admit that I would use my buying power in such a way, but I would rather pay directly to a overseas manufacturer than pad the profits of a company that exported the jobs in the first place and inflte the value of their goods to pay for excess advertising and hard core identities.
I respectfully disagree that we should “hope” the Recreation Center succeeds. We would do as well to “hope” that we all become instant millionaires by virtue of a deceased and unknown relative. Hope is like a bottle of Cutty. It makes one feel good for awhile but does little else. Personally, I plan to check the RC out though, as a frequent user of workout facilities. If it looks good to me, I’ll join, Godfrey or no. If it’s a dog, I’ll do one round of glow golf with the kids and that will be the last time they’ll see me.
What we would want to do instead of hope is watch so we can learn once again whether enthusiasm, inexperience, hubris, “good intentions” and public money are a substitute for private money in the hands of experienced and knowledgeable people. My feeling is that the former should never be undertaken in the absence of the latter. Police and Fireman on the low end of the seniority scale who have other options may want to think seriously about those options now, before city finances collapse and they have no choice. And people thinking about leaving Ogden my find this is as good a time as they will have for awhile. After watching 25 years of public (we gotta do sumptin) projects in the hands of really inept people, this monster imploding may be the thing that makes sure Ogden remains the bucolic paradise it has come to be. Godfrey may have done us all a favor after all.
There have been some things said about my quote that perspective changes when you take office in government. This really should be of no surprise. You read, see, and hear much more than you did before you entered office. This is not to say that people "sell out" their principles. They simply have more and different information that may possibly cause them to have a different perspective than before.
Police Ticket Writing: It should be remembered that the current system in Ogden for ticket writing (call it what you will) has not changed for a very long time and is one of many standards used to evaluate police officer's performance. What has happened to make 1 state legislator so interested in this situation now? Why not last year when the same evaluation process existed? I also wonder why the legislator is only interested in this one performance standard? If one evaluation standard is bad, why aren't all standard performance evaluation criteria questionable? By the way, I can witness that the city council does not wait each month with baited breath waiting for the latest report on the amount of tickets that are written. It is not something that significantly affects the overall budget. For me, this issue currently has much more to do with state control over mundane city issues and allowing the city to have performance evaluation standards remain in place for employees. Some officers have been quoted saying that accidents go down when tickets writing goes up. I cannot speak to that specifically, but even anecdotal evidence should be of interest to us.
Lease Rates: Please remember that at the time the Rec. Center was initiated, there were no serious investors putting money down to lease space downtown, including the mall. The mall was virtually empty. That situation has dramatically changed for the better. Lease and selling rates are up almost double downtown since I went into office in 2000. The creation of the Rec. Center has everything to do with bringing in so many of the entities that are now on the site of the "Junction" and surrounding areas of downtown. The partners in the Rec. Center got into the rejuvination of downtown early and when things were just beginning to go on the upswing. This is reflected in their lease rates. The rates now in the other areas of the mall and downtown are much higher because the market is much improved downtown. We have a ways to go still, but we are moving upwards.
We still must get retail store(s) and grocery store(s) downtown, of course, along with other things and we are working hard to make that happen.
On drawing retail to Ogden....
Seems to me the kind of retail we need in downtown Ogden [25th St., Mall redevelopment project] is not big box retailers needing very large tracts on which to locate. A big box development that might be suitable for, say, the intersection of Washington and 12th might be [was] wholly in-appropriate for downtown Ogden which {a}lacks an interstate exit directly to the area (b) is trying to market a kind of historic turn-of-the-century look-and-feel to downtown 25th Street. I got the impression [only my impression] that the Wal-Mart push was driven [on the part of some council members] by a kind of "something, anything so long as it comes here" desperation.
That approach stuck me then, and now, as ill-advised for Ogden for two reasons: (a) the desperation is and was unneeded and (b) inviting downtown development wholly inconsistent with what the city had been promoting as the main theme of its downtown revival would be counter-productive. And Wal-Mart seemed wholly inconsistent with the rest of the downtown development push.
As for Wild Oates, Whole Foods, etc.: (a) glad to hear the city was pitching them. Hope the city will continue to pitch them. (b) Whether it's Wild Oates or a semi-independent IGA, downtown [if it is to develop in part as a condo/apartment residential district] needs a mix of shops that provide essential services to the area without requiring driving a ways. Food store, drug store, hardware store, etc. No, not flashy like a wave rider or trendy like Whole Foods. But if you want to draw lots of people to urban downtown living --- and it seems that that is what the city hopes to do when Frontrunner chugs in --- being able to walk/stroll to such places is essential. I keep reading in national papers about the accelerating shift among the middle-aged middle classes away from suburban living and back to transit-centered urban living. Ride the train or walk to work, to clubs, to restaurants, to theaters, to parks, etc. Salt Lake City downtown is already cashing in on this. Ogden, in a smaller way should be able to cash in on it too. But the more often you have to haul the car out of the garage to take care of necessities [buy a head of lettuce, a roll of toilet paper, some wood screws and so on], the less attractive the "urban option" seems to be.
Cities are organic things. They grow and change and evolve and rise and fall. So do neighborhoods. Nobody can plan in detail every facet of a neighborhood's development or a city's. What wise city governments can do is take a few prudent steps to make successful neighborhood growth in desired directions more likely rather than less likely. I hope the Council and Planning Commission will take cautions like those posted recently by Dan S. about a new mixed use ordinance seriously, that they will construct Ogden's in such a way the it first and foremost serves the needs of small business owners and small entrepreneurs who actually create successful neighborhood mixed use areas, like that at 15th and 15th in Salt Lake City [recently featured in the AAA travel magazine] or others in SL in the Avenues and Sugarhouse. Crafting the ordinance to serve large developers who want to raze and redesign only entire square blocks or more, right down to the smallest detail, will, I suspect, not produce in Ogden the kind of success SLC has had with its small neighborhood mixed use areas, which I think is the kind of development Ogden would be wise encourage.
Curm,
The Wal-Mart location would have been located at the intersection of Wall Ave. and the highway leading to the freeway--not exactly an historic district at risk of gentrification. 12th Street is a good place for the large retailers, of course. The residents in the southern end of Ogden would appreciate something closer than 12th Street, I would presume. The large retailer, closer to downtown, will have a direct benefit on the smaller, specialized downtown businesses because of the larger traffic and dollars it would attract.
There is a need for BOTH of the things we are talking about. Economic Diversity is the phrase that comes to mind. 25th Street does not compete with a large retailer and visa versa. The 2 things have very different economics.
The reality is that most (I didn't say 'all') Ogden shoppers shop at the largest retailers, whether they are located in Ogden, or not. Why wouldn't Ogden want to provide all the possible shopping opportunity within the city confines?
As someone previously noted, a retail store is providing a very basic need. And, the fact is, a large population within Ogden needs the prices that the retailer provide. Most people in Ogden can't buy their bread and clothing at boutiques. By denying Ogdenites a nearby or convenient retail store, we are obliging them to shop outside Ogden which hurts the schools and city by taking away the tax revenue they depend on.
Each day, the Weber School District should send a "thank you note" for all the tax dollars provided by the Ogden City shoppers that go to Riverdale, Harrisville, and South Ogden to do their retail shopping because it is not always easily available to them inside Ogden.
There is a need for both experiences, but Ogden is severely lacking in the larger version.
I believe that we will see the day when the big box retailers will not have the same clout as they do today. Riverdale will have to re-invent itself, as you say cities do. Ogden can/should plan and even anticipate the next evolutionary trend in our retail and urban society, but in the meantime, it would be ill-advised to do absolutely nothing about our situation today.
Wanna have some fun? Hook onto a pair of Salomenmbindings that have been mounted onto a pair of Salomen skis and take a few turns. If that ain'[t fun
Sharon, then you don't know halof as much as you think you do. Seems allyou want to do ias eat a sandwich and hang out in some bok shop, smelling coffee.
Give it a break and give the Administration some credit. BIG things are happening in downtown Ogden, whether you are on board or not.
As far as naming the rec center, good on em! Most every large, community focal point building has a name and with AMER providing some 230-250 60K to 70K jobs, they are VERY deserving. What have you and your bunch done for the City lately?
Everyone should follow Curmudgeon's link above and read the NYTimes story about the Portland Tram.
Some tidbits:
Total length: 3300 feet, or 0.6 miles (Ogden urban gondola length would be 4.5 miles)
Speed: 22 mph (Ogden gondola speed would be 13 mph)
Travel time by tram compared to driving: less than 1/3 as long, since there's no direct route by car
Cabin attendants: yes (not feasible on a gondola with 100 8-passenger cabins)
Fare: $4, twice what was originally promised
Construction cost: $57 million, nearly 4 times what was originally promised
Can't Wait...while you're anxiously waiting to climb that indoor rock wall, how about getting a few out your head and taking a remedial SPELLING course?
My husband and I teach reading in an elementary school...room for you, if you want to sign up.
"eating a sandwich and hanging out in some bok (sic )shop, smelling coffee' IS my idea of heaven!
How astute of you to notice.
I agree with the excellent posts above relating to the fact that independent, close by, businesses were not solicited to participate in the rec center.
We have a climbing wall, bowling alleys, and privately owned restaurants in our area that could've and should've been approached to relocate or open up a 2nd business in the mall. (Also these business owners should have been asked for some financial info).
That's a good point about all the food joints associated with the bowling alley being under one company. IF one fails...will they all pull out?
What happened to free enterprise? This mayor doesn't understand the concept of a free market and that the role of this administration is not to be competing with other businesses.
There are some of us who still think an upscale outlet mall would bring in a LOT of people off the freeway. I'm not sure we'd get the 10 percent of ten million cars pulling off for the mall as the ten percent of ten million that Curt Geiger assures us WILL jump off the freeway to ride the gondola!
Keep up the negativity. It sure is helping.
Asking questions is being NEGATIVE????
Apparently, never questioning the chosen one of the republic leads to enlightenmnet and contentment?
Do enlighten us.
I just heard,on localradio news, that"the Ogden City Council says the Gondola is a good idea,they just want more details from the developer". I guess its time to turn up the volume folks,apparently we weren't loud enough last week.
Bill C:
Either you heard it wrong, or the radio station reported it wrong. I suspect what you heard was a garbled version of the press release the Council issued on its vote last Tuesday not to endorse a procedure for considering the non-existent Peterson proposal. It was Mr. Garcia who notied that some members wanted a more information on the proposal [such as, for example, I imagine, actually seeing a proposal from Peterson] before proceeding further on the matter, and that if such was ever forthcoming, the Council could draw on the work it had already done considering an approval procedure.
Quote from the release: Many on the Council said at the meeting that they would like to receive more
specific information regarding the potential project before finalizing what the process
steps for considering such a project would be. Council Chair Jesse Garcia said he believes it was a good idea to not act on the
resolution at this time, but added that the work done to define the process could prove tobe a valuable asset in the future. [N.B. The full press release as a "Discovery Ogden Update" can be found at www.ogdencity.com ]
The press release did not say the gondola was "a good idea". Or anything like it. If anyone reported on air that it did, he grossly mis-stated the press release.
Anon:
You wrote, sarcastically, Keep up the negativity. It sure is helping.
Think you could say the same, in the same tone, to the Mayor next time he decides to go negative in public on Mt. Ogden golf course, calling it "not golfer-friendly"? Just before he complains in the same breath that not enough people play it?
Thanks.
Safsten
The Wall Mart was unpopular because it involved taking people's homes and land for a cheap price, under the threat of eminent domain, and giving the same to the world's richest company for a pittance. It is called stealing from the poor and giving to the rich. Something you supported with all your being.
If you and the mayor had any integrity you would have used your considerable talents to negotiate fair deals for these property owners. The way the deal was structured the city was also going to make a substantial profit in the land transactions, is this fair? Had you and Godfrey been fair and honest we would have the Wall Mart in town right now.
You also are spinning the facts about the mall/rec project. City Ventures was ready and willing to take on the whole project - sans the Rec Center idea. They were chased off because they didn't buy into the mayor's and your's dream of turning Ogden into the ski village at the bottom of the ski lift. Had they been encouraged instead of run off, we would also have a completed and successful mall downtown right now - without the $30 debt.
Also, if you and Godfrey had not decided to play big league developers with our public money the old mall owners would have continued to pay taxes empty or not. Free enterprise would have taken over and we would have a positive development downtown without the massive public debt that goes along with this albatross that you ended up pushing through against the public's wishes.
As to the the ticket quota. Again your arrogance and dishonesty are showing through. Although the public safety people (lowest paid in the state) have 18 items in their performance evaluations, the fact remains that if they did not write their quota of tickets they did not get a raise. The process has that written into it. This includes detectives and all non-uniform personel as well. It seem pretty stupid to have these officers taking time off their cases to write income generating tickets for you and Godfrey, especially when you tell us how insignificant that income is to the city.
In my opinion you and the mayor are both major league manipulators and dissemblers. You both reek of arrogance and I, along with a very large segment of Ogden, will be very happy to see both of you thrown out of office in November. The writing is on the wall smiley.
Councilman Safeston,
The County should send a than you note to Mayor Godfrey for sending all (allmost all of the car lots to Riverdale) we dont need their kind in Ogden. Do we? they generate a lot more tax dollars than yer pal Chris Petersen can ever imagine.
I have been reading this sicko blog center for quite some time. Shame on most of you. Negativity is the motivation, and, Sharon, whoever you are, get off your a.. and do something for the community, instead of sitting on your armchair and sniping at everything that might be positive for your ailing city. You are a bunch of hateful, divisive, cruel, and negative people who have nothing better to do than stop "creative" people, hard working visionists ... why can't you come up with positive alternatives. My mother used to say..."if you don't have something nice to say about someone, don't say anything at all". Build your town, have dreams, leave the people alone who do things to advance your retarded souls, and relax, smell the roses, and sleep well tonight. It is all coming ... with you or without you.
To anonymous above,
Without us anything that Ogden City does will be a failure because we are the ones who may or may not frequent these establishments. Even if we don't patronize these businesses we will be paying anyways because our tax dollars are paying for it. Pull your head out of your butt and pay attention! People from all over the world are not coming to Ogden to frequent The Junction. It is nothing but an over priced amusement park paid for by tax payer dollars. We are tired of people who do things to advance our retarded souls with our money. We can advance our own retarded souls on our own. Contrary to Kevin Costner's movie The Field of Dreams, if you build it they will come is not true, unless you build it for them and just give it to them. Ogden's new motto ought to be, "We finance everyone, no credit checks, no questions asked." Ogden city and Mayor God-FREE should take a lesson from Salt Lake County and their refusal to build RSL a soccer stadium with tax payer dollars. At least it seems that one body of government in this state uses their heads. As far as what your mother used to say, I respond with this, "You can't handle the truth!" So if this is a sicko blog, quit reading it!
To Anonymous,
Only a few people (usually family members) refer to our city administrator as a visionists. Thus I assume you are one.
What you are seeing here on this particular blog pertaining to The Junction is the cognitive reality of the citizens of Ogden to an ill conceived business plan foster by an individual so driven and so impatient for instant success that he was willing (and still willing today on other projects) to take anything that come his way and unfortunately I'm afraid that a lot of his motivation is for all self gratification and recognition. We the residents of Ogden realize that we are going to have to pay for these bad business decisions for years to come and we have the right, in advance, to vent for something that we know we can't change and yet we will be held financially responsible for.
Quit being so hypocritical. How can you dare call us retarded souls, motivated by negativity and suggest that we lack creativity when the mayor will not listen to any vision other than his own. Mr. my way or the hiway (whether you be residents or employees). Family pride and support is a wonderful thing but I was also taught that it's better to be honest with someone you love rather than let them think something that is not true. Like he’s a visionist. They say that family members are the last to recognize a mentally ill member of the family; maybe you're having the same problem recognizing that you have a General George Custer on your hands instead of a Bill Gates.
Let's see...yo mama said.."If you can't say anything nice...."
tsk, tsk....but, I understand your pain. Hard to keep all that venom bottled up, innit?
Two TV channels tonite mentioned the ski companies coming to Utah...West Valley was one of the cities that will see one or more...and Clearfield and Ogden were mentioned on the other channel.
Ch 5 said that the gondola is a no-go...didn't mention Peterson or his non-proposal, just that the Council has knocked down the resolution.
Neither story about the ski companies mentioned a gondola as a lure, which is probably a good thing as I don't think W. Valley City nor Clearfield are in the market for one.
Neither story mentioned the rec center...but I'm sure that will be big news down the road.
Sam Weller's and Sander's books.....wonderful. They'll find just about any out of print or hard to find book! Deliteful.
Anonymous at 10:09 PM said "You are a bunch of hateful, divisive, cruel, and negative people who have nothing better to do than stop "creative" people, hard working visionists ... why can't you come up with positive alternatives."
Just because the Mayor comes up with crummy ideas it's not our responsibility to come up with good ones. However, many have. High end outlet mall, Hispanic plaza surrounded by shops and restaurants, International market, better shopping (food, books, hardware, etc ) downtown. Any suggestion that doesn't come from City Hall is ignored - it's not even examined and then refuted.
BTW, since you like to align yourself with the "creative and visionaries", how about showing some visionary creativity and logging in with a name of some sort other than "anonymous"?
Deano,
Your CitiVenture statement is simply false. Their proposal was impossible. The Council was ready for any good proposal at the time and theirs wasn't. Your memory of the CitiVenture proposal is simply not true. I wish it had been as simple as your memory claims it was.
The properties involved in the Wal-Mart proposal would have been compensated under the Federal and State Legislature's guidelines for fair compensation. The rhetoric about stealing shows you don't understand the law, or choose to ignore it.
The property taxes on the mall property would have been based on $6.5 million dollars and would have gone down each year because the building would only decrease in value because we couldn't do anything with it. The projected property value on the Mall projects at last count was about $70M. Do you want to do the math, or shall I? Yes, there is more to the story (tax increment, mall bonds, etc...) but the math still comes out much more positively for the city with what we have now, than the old mall building.
I still stand on my statement about the police officers and ticket writing. What other performance standards should we just do away with because some people don't like them? Arrests? Community Involvement? Others?
Deano,
I should add that I was one of the councilmembers that originally supported CitiVenture to come to Ogden. At the time, we were anxious for any kind of successful venture for the mall site and we thought they were the best fit for us. As we continued working with them, we soon discovered it was not going to turn out as we had hoped.
What companies or entities do you know of that were coming to Ogden had we gotten out of the way? Any specifics? The city was looking at an outlet mall option, but that did not work, despite the efforts. I am not saying that an outlet mall would have been good for the downtown, but it does show we were looking at all the options.
The Anon Ranter Above:
Mid-rant, while you are calling others names while berating them for being negative, you wrote: "why can't you come up with positive alternatives?"
For what seems the hundreth time now, permit me to suggest that many of those who think differently than you do about how to improve Ogden have suggested, and are suggesting, alternatives to the gondola/gondola/real estate speculation scheme endorsed by Mayor Godfrey and his Lift Ogden Amen Chorus. If you can restrain your intolerance for just a moment, hop on over to the SmartGrowthOgden website here and take a look around. Visit several of the links therein. You'll find alterantive suggestions, some fully developed, some simply offered as ideas for discussion. And, of couse, SGO people are not the only ones making suggestions.
Mono:
You wrote: With technology, we can easily photograph and log the number of cars running red lights at a particular intersection .... (I'm not advocating using photos to send them tickets by mail — yet — but one could do that later.)
Interesting idea, though I'm not sure why you are not advocating using the photos to ticket. Some cities do that now. Though I suspect if Ogden did try that, some good Republican in the state legislature would immediatly propose a law to ban it on grounds that ti was not sporting that people could be ticketed without knowing at the time that they were being cited. I recall [yes, sonny, I'm that old....] when police first began using unmarked cars for traffic duty, the letter columns in New York were filled with complaints that it "isn't sporting" and that it was "not fair," that it "would give the police an unfair advantage" against speeders, etc.
But the technology is there, it works, it saves a ton of police man-hours [if the citation is challenged, they simply run the films in court of cars running red lights instead of having officers take time to wait for the case to come up and testify]. Sounds like a win/win situation to me. I don't know if the techology would be too expensive, but the technology is there.
Hope you haven't upset Anonymous too much, making alternative suggestions like this. Why you're likely to put him right off his feed if you keep doing that.
Methinks Councilman Safsten doth protest too much.
My Momma,
I don't know specifically what protest you refer to, but I do get very concerned when people try to over-simplify or even re-write history.
I sat in hundreds (yes, hundreds) of meetings regarding the mall. I like to think I know of which I speak. It is absurd for someone to imply that we were overly picky about which companies could come in, or that companies were waiting to come in, if we had only gotten out of the way. Did you notice that no names were given--either of the companies supposidly waiting to come in or the real name of the blogger making the assertion?
Let us debate the facts, but let's not make up new realities.
Creative thinking and visionary thinking would have found a use for the old mall building rather than tear it down. It was a solid building and had potential had anyone thought outside of the box. Too many people thought that new was the only way to go.
Anonymous,
What use would you have given to the building?
With all respect, it was a heck of alot harder to tear it down and try to rebuild it than it would have been to leave it alone.
If leaving the building alone presented any financial possibility, I believe it would have been done by those making the decision.
Why did "too many people [think] that new was the only way to go?"
It was because all the evidence said that going to an open site was the best financial option.
I hope that people realize that I do not consider my position on the city council as a game, or that I do it "for fun." I take the position very seriously because I realize the implications of the decisions we make. The mall decisions are/were huge. But the downside risk of doing nothing was even greater, in my opinion.
The safe decision on the mall would have been to do nothing. "Doing nothing" will always be the safest decision. There are lots of people out there willing to run for office on the "do nothing" ticket.
I hope that no one who ever sits on the council is content with making only safe decisions by doing nothing.
councilman safsten,
tell me about your decision to pay out 5,000,000.00 of the taxpayer to woodbury corp. are you going to be held personaly responable, just why was the mall torn down with the law suit hagging over the city head. or was that an acceptable loss?
were yoou not the watch care of our tax dallors? tell me how you can justify that kind of money to be paid out of our pockets when we have such a hard time paying taxes anyway.
is this ok to you? if not why were you not standing up for the taxpayer over all this? I will be sure that all the taxpayers are aware of your answer or no answer.
On doing nothing and Councilman Safsten....
Well, the problem with phrasing the question of mall redevelopment [and more broadly, encouraging growth --- smart growth --- in Ogden] as between "doing nothing" and "doing something" is this: it falsely states the issues. The discussion as I recall it was not between "doing nothing" and "doing something" but rather was an argument [or discussion if you like] about what should be done, and whether this action was better than that one. [Just for the record, I don't know if the mall teardown was the best option or not. Didn't study the matter much at the time. I have no opinion on that.] But I don't think it helps public discussion much to have disagreements about what to do phrased as "do something vs. do nothing." Anonymous above wants the gondola phrased that way, and so does the Mayor and the Lift Ogden Amen Chorus. But it's a deceptive phrasing of that particular issue as should be evident to most folks by now.
Further more, even if opponents of a policy [say the mall teardown for example] have no ready alternative, if the policy they oppose is an unwise one, then the course of wisdom is to "do nothing" for the moment, rather than to act, merely for the sake of acting, unwisely. And, just to carry the logic out a bit further, it is wrong to suggest that "doing nothing" is always the safest decision to make. On the contrary, sometimes doing nothing is the riskiest course to take. Depends on the circumstances and the issue. Always.
That said, have to agree with Councilman Safsten that re-writing history, or recalling events and actions very selectively, does not much help advance the discussion either.
I'd suggest, though, that Mr. Safsten might like to keep in mind that for most Ogdenites, knowledge about what the Council did and why came largely from press accounts. He may have attended hundreds of meetings [I have no doubt that he and the others did that], and so have had access to a great deal more information than the general public did. But the general public can't much be faulted for not considering information that, generally, it didn't have. Councilmen can reasonably plea "special knowledge" or "greater knowledge" on their part from their participation in those meetings and the legislative process, but they should also remember that most of the rest of us did not so participate. [Happily, those of us who've become much more interested in public policy in Ogden and how it is made over the last two years or so... e.g. me... now have WCF as another source of information... which I agree has to be sifted and winnowed fairly cautiously in some cases... and a forum for discussing it. Once again, good on ya, Rudy.]
Finally, seems to me at some point, folks who oppose a policy and lose have to recognize that the contest is over and they have lost. At some point, continually rehashing battles long since decided not only doesn't accomplish much, it is counter productive. Go to the mat as long as an issue is play, but when it's over and you've lost, move on. Makes as little sense from my POV to keep rehashing the mall teardown decision on the one side as it does for others to keep bemoaning the failure of the downtown Wal-Mart from the other. There are decisions still in play, yet to be made, with potentially major consequences for good or ill [depending on how they are made]. Lots of them. Seems to me focusing on them makes a lot more sense that continually rehashing old ones.
Curm,
The $5M Woodbury settlement regarded tax increment claims/liens that Woodbury would have rightly/wrongly claimed no matter what was done on the mall site. Tearing down their building (their building was actually separate from the 'mall building') was necessary to proceed with the mall development. Their agreement was done by a previous council and the settlement was the only way to proceed with anything on the site.
Logically speaking, yes, sometimes "doing nothing" is smarter than "doing something." However, regarding the mall, the only alternatives I hear for the mall was to wait because SURELY someone would have come and turned it into something spectacular. I characterize waiting as "doing nothing." I strongly disagree with that and believe that we are doing the smartest thing we can for the site.
Curmudgeon-
You are the only one making sense on this blog.
Dear Councilman Safsten: Just for the record, I did not question or express any opinion on the Woodbury settlement matter [that was someone else; I didn't then and don't now know enough about it to have an informed opinion]. Nor did I question that you strongly believed, as did a majority of the Council, that you acted prudently in the mall matter. Only thing I questioned was your phrasing the discussion, as Anonymous tried to phrase another issue, as "doing something vs doing nothing" rather than as, more broadly, a discussion of what it would be best to do. On whether that particular criticism was justified, clearly, we'll have to agree to disagree.
Dear "My Momma Done Tole Me":
My congratulations to your momma on raising such a perceptive and intelligent child.... [grin].
A major problem, as I see it, with the Mall, the Rec Center, and the gondola/golf course/Peterson scheme is not these issues per se, but the lack of transparency in our City Government.
Even when there is honesty, any appearance of possible dishonesty is damaging because no one tells the citizens what is really going on behind closed doors.
I notice that nobody wants to talk about Matt Jones, the patron saint of this blog. Can I still make a donation to the FREE MATT JONES LEGAL DEFENSE FUND, or has he already taken all the donations he needs?
So let's talk about Matt Jones, Mr. Redneck.
Make your points, if you have any.
Take your time.
When you get done, I'll have my way with you.
-Rudi
I agree with Curm's point that we shouldn't cry over spilled milk. That said though since Safsten wants to keep justifying the decisions regarding the mall I will make just a few observations.
1. The old mall building was in good shape and I've been to other communities where they have taken advantage of existing facilities (turning lemons to make lemonade). Putting in small office complexes (in some cases government services offices where people shop!) instead of national retail chains. Some shops and activities that I've also seen are grocery stores, butcher shops, pastry shops, recreational centers, dance studios, meeting rooms that could be used by various organizations, climbing walls and local or specialty stores and restaurants. Our mall would have accommodated all of these options and all in an environmentally controlled environment. The street levels store fronts onto Washington could have been opened up to allow for restaurants with side walk dining and other pedestrian used business. This would have given the mall a whole different feel as well as washington Blvd. No one wanted to here of these ideas.
2. What I feel killed the mall was the fact that is wasn’t an open air experience and I think the powers to be were convinced that that was the way of the future. I didn't agree then and I still don't today. I've been to SLC's open air version during hard rains and cold snowy days and I can tell you that their business suffers during those days. They are also already having turn-over within some of their original anchor tenants. For example the big sporting goods store there is now something else. These open air facilities are already proving to be no panacea.
Sometimes impatience, a lack of creative vision and a closed minded attitude allows the frustration to over take the decision making process. We needed to take more time, focus more time on the options and get more input from others as to what to do before we reacted. This mall decision is just another example of the inexperience within the administration. So much for the spilled milk.
Can the administration at least get a consistent theme going with this new development so that it has at least some chance of success?
Rick....don't you know by now that you'll NEVER win here, on this blog? No matter how articulate, no matter how correct, no matter how logical, jousting with this crew is a waste of time. And besides, if you make a little sense, and it goes toward your side of the fence, Rudi, in all his journalistic ethics, will either delete it or alter it.
Aww Butch, don't be such a naysayer.
Seems to us that Councilman Rick is doing just fine. He's proven he's neither thin-skinnned nor aloof.
Whether open-minded, we shall see.
All-in-all, we think councilman Safsten fits in fine here, and is a definite asset to this blog, unlike ex-councilman g., err we mean Butch..
Rick,
Are you saying that the woodbury building that was torn down was not part of the mall and they said to go ahead and tear down our building! did the city have permission from woodbury to tear down their building.
I've mentioned Matt Jones many times.
I'm concerned that he's quoted as saying he doesn't want money...just his honor!
I wish he'd sue the dickens, (whatever THAT'S worth) out of this city.
The Police Chief's and his Lt's argument that Matt failed a polygraph concerning the wallets two illegals charged Matt with stealing...and that he was derelict in calling in his position at times (which he admitted)...appear specious to me. If Matt was such a lousy cop who warranted dismissal from the OPD, then WHY wasn't he fired prior to Godfrey skulking after Mrs. Jones and ordering Greiner to run the Jones' PRIVATE vehicle's license plate?
THAT was improper on more than one count. Griener's own Lt's asked him not to take Matt's gun, badge and car from him!
So, I ask...if Matt was a bad cop, why wasn't he fired when all these 'charges' were allegedly brot against him?
Was Chief Griener derelict in HIS duty? Or just forgetful, as he alleged (in the paper) for not dealing with Matt earlier?
Why did the Chief/Senatorial candidate wait to deal with Matt's infractions, and suddenly remember that he'd forgotten to put him on leave, til AFTER Godfrey played Jr. G Man and ordered the Chief to be his lackey?
DiCaria's lonnnng awaited report exonerated Matt!
Well, Matt, we're sorry for this stain on your reputation and wish you the best in your new venture as a butcher. Post when you open your shop and perhaps we'll all come up and buy some meat for our freezers!
How do we manage to keep good cops (and firefighters) in Ogden??
sharon,
the city keeps good cops by ruling with the iron fist. why is it that we have not heard any more on the hatch act and how a chief that is in law in forcement can brake a federal law and still keep his job? when will decaira step up to the plate and find out about this, oh I for got he is one that just blows in the wind and maybe when the heat is on, will he do anything.
Anon:
ON the Hatch Act/Greiner matter. It's not DeCaria's call. The matter is being reviewed by the U.S. Justice Department. It's federal law Greiner violated [if he did], not state law, and whether to proceed on the matter or not is a U.S. Justice Department decision.
Sharon-
How do they keep good employees in any department in Ogden?
Worker says complaint led to firing-
He claims city officials reacted to whistle-blowing on an abusive manager
Matt Jones is a liar, he was nervous when he took the polygraph, give me a break who wouldn't be nervous taking one. Stealing walletts, taking illegal immigration issues into his own hands because he doesn't like the way they are enforced, getting into high speed chase accidents, creating "free time" by not being able to be dispatched properly. Good ridance I say, good ridance. This is the last guy we need on the streets causing problems everywhere he goes As I like to say where there is smoke there is fire. So come on everybody now, lets all donate tom the free Matt Jones Fund. It's ok Rudi to wake up with egg on your face every once in a while, as long as your willing to just admit it.
1A
STEIN SAID--
Have you read today's Kris Moulten article in the Salt Lake Trib regarding the latest in Ogden City intrigue?
Get your self a copy and get up to date.
Rudi...glad to see you cleaned up the place!
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