By Curmudgeon
Is it just me, or has the Standard-Examiner's coverage of the proposed high adventure indoor wading pool and hotel for downtown Ogden become a tad more conditional of late? New article about it all in this morning's Std-Ex.
Some interesting things therein. For example this:
The proposed $115 million water park that may be built on 1.6 acres at the northeast corner of 23rd Street and Washington Boulevard is viewed as a major component in the success of Midtown Village at The Junction, a luxury 14-story hotel that may be constructed across the street....A skywalk would connect the water park to Midtown Village at The Junction, which could have 300 rooms.A hotel which may be constructed that could have 300 rooms? May implies may not, and could implies could not. I don't recall the first stories being quite this conditional.
And then there's this:
The year-round water park would feature a number of slides, a lazy river, a raft ride, spa area and a challenging flow rider that could complement the one that already exists inside the Salomon Center within The Junction, Kwiecinski said.Would "complement" the flowrider at the Salomon Center? Would the English translation of that be "compete with" the Salomon Center's already publically subsidized flowrider? Would public funding for competition for a public-funded venue for which the city is already in hock be wise policy?
Finally, from this morning's story, we learn that the new High Adventure Wading Pool would be designed with a kind of Key West look and feel and ambiance. We've already been told, remember, that the Salomon Center flowrider provides better surfing than Maui. Key West, Hawaii in the high Utah desert and in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains, which I've been told [and I believe it] offers "the best snow on earth." A perfect fit. A natural.
Let us hope the City Council does its homework before offering public funds to subsidize this High Adventure Indoor Wading Pool project, or Utah may become known as the place to go for the "best snow job on earth."
Curiouser and curiouser....
41 comments:
The SE ran today's article about Ogden's proposed indoor waterpark in the Davis section of the paper under the following headline:
Developer: Park would add to Ogden’s outdoor reputation
I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried....
Another water park? The Grand Sierra Resort in Reno(previously Hilton) is building the world's largest indoor water park which includes a flowrider to open now after major delays sometime in '09. It probably won't be long til Lagoon invests in a flowrider thus "watering" down the market for it. I would not doubt that Wendover will soon get in on this kind of action. You cannot bet a downtown and local economy on entertainment. Not even Anaheim or Orlando has shown that Disney is the be-all for their economy.
"The city would also create a special assessment area for the hotel to help fund parking facilities."
What does that mean? Another downtown tax to funnel money to someone's crony?
I noticed in the SL Trib that the city would borrow $18M for a parking garage and sidewalks. This point was left out of the Standard piece. How much can we borrow for more private development?
My interpretation of challenging flowrider was the next step up from a flowrider, which is a Wave Loch. I've been told that they are completely different and that the Wave Loch is much, much more challenging than the Flowrider and that they actually do compliment each other. Wave Loch is for advanced Flowruder users, etc.
I can't help but wonder if the 18 million parking garage and sidewalks are not really the first 3 floors and connecting skywalk of the possible hotel? Would that bring the taxpayer investment up to 22 million, before this developer puts up a dime?
Well there it is. The city fronts basically up to 20% of the cost of the thing.
I knew it had to be something even though the lying SOB, Larry Myler, said he wasn't asking for public money, while out the other side of his mouth he's asking for public money.
He says he likes to build in "turnaround" cities. Right. He's just another parasite attracted to the free money the incompetent Godfrey throws out the window, just like it has attracted the notorious Gadi Leshem.
Word's getting around. Ogden's the place to do a corrupt, taxpayer subsidized deal. This is just the beginning.
It's always something with the corrupt way they do things here, and the corrupt way the paper leaves the important details out . . .
Council, please vote "NO." Tell 'em you're not in the subsidy business.
Good catch, Bill! Yes indeed; you have may indeed identified the so far missing Godfreyesque element in this hotel/wading pool project, i.e., the ubiquitous GIANT Emerald City corporate welfare subsidy.
And I can't wait to hear Gold Gym's Gary Nielson whining about the arrival of a second (city subsidized) wave machine in Emerald City.
We all remember what he said about WSU's new "complementary" climbing wall"
iRock owner and president Gary Nielsen isn’t very excited about Weber Rocks.
“His statement that it will complement us is completely wrong,” Nielsen said. “It takes away from our prospective members. It will be straight competition.”
Nielsen is also the owner and president of several Ogden-area Gold’s Gyms and has fought competition from public-funded community recreation centers elsewhere.
“It’s really frustrating as a business owner,” Nielsen said. “In a sense, we’re paying taxes to support the people who compete with us.”
Hansen's ticket quota bill passed the committee with only one no vote. It now moves to the full house for debate and if you would like to see more on this watch the new on channel 2 at noon.
Wave,
You are correct that the advanced flowrider they would build is a WaveLoch barreling wave like the Bruticus Maximus at the WaveHouse in Mission Beach, CA. It is a complement to the standard flowrider. At the Wavehouse you must prove your skills on the flowrider before you are allowed to ride the B-Max. I personally would dig this thing. I just hope it gets built without public money. The lease deal on the flowrider at the Salomon is just plain embarrassing. In fact it is a lack of lease that is most discomforting. Few people realize that Gold's pays zilch, nada, cero, for the use and profitability of the flowrider along with the climbing wall and the iFly. Not one penny goes to amortize these city investments. Nor is there a performance clause in the lease that would guarantee the city any return on this 5 million dollars in total recreational investments that turned city owned recreational resources to private entity for profit to be run at their discretion(closed on Sundays) Tourists grumble daily over this arrangement that has these facilities closed for HALF of the weekend. Why come to Ogden when you can only recreate in High Adventure style on a crowded Saturday.
The flowrider stands idle most hours now that winter has settled in and the Neilsens sit on their hands refusing to promote it in SLC or elswhere. The place is closing soon for repairs just 7 months into it's existence. Anyone want to dig deep to find who is paying for these repairs. Is Boyer providing warranty to it's shoddy work, is the city responsible to signing off on cost cutting to get it open in June. Who is responsible for the 100,000(my guess) in repairs. Will they upgrade the restrooms to provide at least one more shower. Will they replace the rental grade fixtures with commercial grade. Will they repair the already damaged tiles. Will they fix the floor drain which obviously has NO TRAP. Smells like shit in there.
I would probably have no issue with the city's investment if the contract was handled correctly and the construction up to standard.
Tec:
Still seems like competition to me. There is limited use of the FR now if you're right, so it seems that those who ride it now and are proficient enough to deal with the more challenging new machine will cease to be FR customers at the Junction once the competition opens across the street. The only way I can see them complementing each other is if new customers sign on for the FR in order to be come competent enough at surfing go across the street to the new machine , at which point of course they stop being FR customers. And being separate venues, a ticket to ride on one will not admit you to the other. The two operating within the same recreation park, I'd grant, may well be complementary. The two operating in different venues a block apart charging separate admissions, probably will not.
Or am I missing something, not being much of a surfer dude....
Wave Loch
Curm, in your absense you missed a pretty funny one. The mayor, lying little matty, promised exclusive rights to the gondola for a station to this new possilbe hotel.
Now if the City won't be paying for it or owning it, how can the lying little mayor be granting and dictating rights?
What if the city loans this guy $1.2 million and then a year from now he goes broke without building anything. What are the chances of getting the money back from some one in bankruptcy?
Even worse would be if the city spent 18 or 20 million on a three story garage and bridge over Washington, and then the guy went broke. Ogden could end up owning a 20 million dollar bridge from an unused garage to nothing across the street.
I sure hope the city council/RDA board stays awake and starts looking at "what ifs" on this one. They sure don't seem to have done so on the past projects.
As a way to accurately measure lying little matty's RDA give-aways of the past 8 years I offer this.
Eight years and $100 million latter, he has yet to attract as many people as one day of the old street festival that he killed.
Bill:
You wrote: Now if the City won't be paying for it or owning it, how can the lying little mayor be granting and dictating rights?
As I recall, the Mayor's promise was that "the gondola" [meaning the downtown to WSU gondola] would not be built by the city. I don't think he ever said it would not or could not be owned by the city.
In any case, the hotel, which the SE says may be built, would be in an RDA zone, so anything going in there like a gondola terminal or line, would need RDA [that is, City] approval. Whether the Mayor has gotten prior approval of the RDA Board to grant an exclusive franchise for a gondola station to the hotel, I don't know, but since it's in an RDA zone, that does seem to be in the city's [if not the mayor's] gift.
But there's more. Any gondola line would, of necessity, need lots of city support to obtain rights of way from UDOT and the city over public property and roadways. As a practical matter, such would not be obtainable without the support of "the city." We know that some state agencies, like UTA have taken "the city" to mean "the mayor" [though UTA now, having been repeatedly embarrassed by the Godfrey team, seems to understand that "the city" encompasses the Council as well as the Mayor]. As long as "the city" [aka Mayor and/or Council] opposed granting such accommodations to a gondola builder, they would be nearly impossible to obtain. Without them, a downtown station would be worthless. So, as a practical [rather than merely legal] matter, I'd say exclusivity for any eventual terminal is in the city's gift. Whether the Mayor alone could grant it, I don't know. If he's entitled on some matters to enter into contracts for the city without prior council approval, and this is deemed to be among those matters, he probably can.
Or, as we now know, he can go ahead and do it, and demand [and get] the Council to retroactively grant him the authority to do it. Remember the transfer of all those options in the River Project Zone to Mr. Lesham....
Y'all are just a bunch of negatiod nay sayers that can't see the vision for the scabs the devil has grown over your eyes.
Mayor Godfree has single handedly taken Ogden from a boarded up broken down shanty town to Lagoon Light, and now with his magic goggles (FKA "peepstone") he is going to take us even further to - New Lagoon.
I sure feel sorry for those poor folks sitting down there owning Old Lagoon. Hope they can re-configure that place into an old west ghost town or something.
As for me? Hells bells, I'm catching the wave and moving to Key West, now in the heart of Emerald City, Land of Oz. Gonna hang out in the same bar as old Ernie Hemingway did, drink lots of 3.2 Alcopops from the state liquor store across the street in the fancy hotel and spend my time chasing those exotic pussies with two feet per front leg.
Might even write the great American novel about greed, arrogance and stupidity. Already have the main character in mind - an incompetent lying midget named Matt.
Bill Bill Bill...
About the Ogden Summer Festival. You are so judgmental.... How could Hizzonah have possibly known that face-painting and puppet shows wouldn't draw as many visitors to town as brewery-sponsored arm-wrestling contests and festival beer gardens? Who could possibly have known? Now I suppose some grinchs might point out that the beer companies pulling their sponsorships [and so nearly all of the out-of-town advertising for the festival] might have provided a clue about what was going to happen... i.e. that the cleaned-up kiddie-centric Godfrey Fest wouldn't draw flies... but clearly such carping Cassandras did not share The Mayor's Vision and so could be discounted as naysayers.
Curm, it's just a way to measure progress. Keeping track of accomplishment. How can lying little matty know how he's doing if someone isn't keeping score.
Oh I get it, he's just playing for the fun of it. It's a high adventure thing, no winners or losers, just a thrill.
Hey if powder mountain can do it, why dont lying little matty and his bootlicking buddies incorporate their own town, 18th to say 24th wall to adams.
Once again, the Standard-Examiner and Mr. Schwebke are printing Godfrey administration press releases sans any filtering or skepticism.
I know I'm repeating myself, but this is making me angry.
This is not a matter of "editorial judgment". It is a violation of your journalistic canon of ethics, to wit:
Journalists should:
— Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
— Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.
— Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.
— Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
— Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.
— Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.
— Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money; avoid bidding for news. [Emphasis mine.]
If you can't follow these simple rules, then you're not much of a journalist, are you?
the newspaper article on the water park made it sound like the water park itself is now a $115 million dollar project. has this project been expanded and what what is the total cost of the park and the hotel.
the $18 million dollar parking assessment is the the other shoe I suggested a while back and this explains why they are doing it in the rda. no public input.
no public money my ass.
Monotreme,
I know I knocked you before about "journalistic ethics", but you are of course correct.
It's just that I felt that the Standard's disreputable behavior falls under the category of "What else is new?"
But you are right to hold up the higher standard to the Standard. Who knows, someday they may seek to be better. When Cathy McKitrick was there, they were better for a little while. She works for the Trib now, naturally.
I wanted you to know how much I appreciate the fact that in addition to the mice and spiders who are currently using my ice tower hardware as it lies like a pile of crap in a dusty lot in west Ogden, that after only $1.6 million and twenty bucks a head, you will be able to enjoy it too.
By the way, I recently found a corn cob jammed up it. I wanted to pull it out, apply some neon tubing, and call it "Jeff Lowe's Holographic Suppositorial Plug" My initial estimate is this will cost the taxpayers only $400,000. Of course, in six months the price will be a lot more. Start saving up for it!
just did some googling and it appears the hotel developer myler is suggesting that the horizon construction company is a seperate company from the wave development company. infact the co-owner of wave is a co-owner of horizon.
make you question the credibility when they try to hide the fact.
also wave development has partnered with another company to form a company called sage. purpose to buy hotels to put in their water parks. have already done it about three times. makes you wonder about the accuracy of their suggested outside sales figures, number of actual buyers of their parks and their suggested roi.
Some interesting reading. The company mentioned in the stories, Aquatic Development Group, is the exclusive flowrider dealer. They appaerently have a few stalled projects other than Randall's Is.
Randall's Island
Water Park
Project Canceled
Pretty interesting that these water park developers got canceled by the city of New York because they couldn't get their financing together. This in the financial capitol of the world and home to the original RDA!
Of course, unlike in Ogden, investors in NYC, private and public, usually do thorough research and business planning. They call it something like due diligence. a completely foreign word in the Godfreyite dictionary.
Maybe our Lilliputian Mayor can go back there to that hick town and show them how to really do big deals by using the vision thing instead of the old fashioned way?
Mono:
In re: — Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.
This is the item on which I find the SE most wanting... both on the editorial pages and in the news pages.
Between SW flights in Phoenix recently, I picked up a copy of the Arizona Republic. It reminded me very much of the SE in its general story selection, placement of items [local stories on page one; nationa-international inside]. About the same size as the SE. But it seemed to do more with local controversy stories than the SE does, as a rule. Perhaps unfair, since I saw only one issue. Still, there did seem in that issue at least to be a taste for citizens take on government or developer tales. And the reporting did not seem to include much press release boilerplate lightly rewritten.
But again, to be fair, it was only one issue.
Tec and Lionel:
Tec: thanks for the link in re: Randall's Island Water Park.
Lionel: well, the situations are not precisely parallel. What was planned for Randall's island was a much much larger project, many acres, and with a substantially larger price tag. Still, the company failed... twice... to secure independent financing by its agreed upon deadline. Which illustrates a point Our Fair Mayor and, too often, Our Fair City Council Acting As RDA seem not to grasp: If the independent and private investment market will not back a project, it is because upon due consideration, the project has been deemed to involve too much risk compared to the probable return on that investment.
Developers who cannot sell their ideas in the private investment capital market --- can we all say Mr. Chris Peterson together now? --- turn inevitably to public financing to make up the shortfall, or to reduce the going-in costs sufficiently that private investment can be obtained for the remainder. When city councils... and mayors... consider such subsidies, they out to keep firmly in mind the evident fact that private capital evidently could not be obtained because the risk/return numbers were not sufficiently good. What happened with the Randall's Island development is an excellent example, as is [or was] the Peterson buy the park in Ogden to finance his Mallan's Basin Tyrolean pipe dreams plan.
Curm,
fine nutshelling
I thought you might like this story with your nyc background.
Curm ! thats SOUTH TYROLIAN, a ficticious place full of doll house replicas, accessed only thru copious ingestion of thorazine capsules or tablets. Not to be confused with the tablets that hold the original artists conception of an urban gondola stretching from the parking lot of a high adventure Walmart, thru a ficticious hotel, five miles to nowhere. These plates were given to lying little matty by an angel disguised as a transient at the old Shupe Williams Building, prior to the municipal arson. Ed Allen gave a sermon and bore witness to this during the recent elections.
Did anyone else notice that the first phase of the water park was going to be 32,000 sq ft with the "possibility" of adding another 25,000 sq ft in phase two. Now if I recall we had a water slide in the newgate mall and it failed. 32,000 sq ft doesn't make much room for a very good water park. 32,000 sq ft is only about the size of the 32 bowling lanes in Fat Cats in the Soloman Center. I guess it will have a lazy river, but it's probably the kind where you just go lay there and it goes no where because there isn't enough room and i can assure you people aren't going to go to an indoor swimming park in the summer.
Rumor has it that there is a proposed development for an outside water park the likes of Raging Waters out of Salt Lake coming to our area.
You can bet your life on the fact that the city will foot the bill for this project just like it has for everything else involved with this high adventure recreation.
If this developer has enough cash to build a $115 Million hotel and water park, why do they need a $1 Million interest free loan and don't pay for the property for up to three years after it opens?
Sounds like a bunch of crap coming our way again.
I have an idea! lets close down the YCC on 23rd and adams and put in a gondola tower. that is the best idea yet!!!!!!
Water Parks, aside from the rare ones with flowriders, are the antithesis of high adventure. They really appeal to the human life rafts wallowing away the hours in the "Lazy River" Water parks go hand in hand with fast food, gluttonous leisure, and the desire to act out like the super rich giving the illusion of a getaway with no responsibilities and doting service from immigrants. It's a sickness not an activity. In fact flowriders are best not placed in these hippopotamus lagoons. Flowriders deliver a tremendous workout and challenge the athlete. There is no challenge to a waterslide.
Tec, do detect some level of flowrider snootery? My super big concern is, how in the hell a slippery slide and a lazy river qualify as high adventure outdoor recreation, especially indoors? Just what pray tell is a lazy river ride?
Bill:
A lazy river ride is, I think, an inner tube ride. You get one, sit in it, and a gentle flow bumps you into other tubers as you float down to the end of the ride. Of course it doesn't qualify as high adventure. Nothing in a water park does. The Mayor knows this. He's just trying to keep the "brand" he's touting before the public --- any public, any time. It's a marketing ploy, that's all, and not a very good one.
Water parks are fun family and dating venues for young people, at least the outdoor ones I've been to. They contain some thrill rides, maybe... steep twisty water slides for example. Nobody over the age of nine confuses them with high adventure. Ever.
Hizzonah is trying to brand Ogden as a High Adventure base camp, so he's going to wave that flag every PR chance he gets. Carping over it hardly seems worth it and might even distract attention from far more substantive matters Hizzonah would rather the public not notice. I suspect Godfrey & Co. would be delighted to have critics carping over whether a tubing ride or water slide is "high adventure" instead of more substantive matters.
The way to deal with such pretentious claims is, I think, not with outrage or complaint, but with simple derision. Nothing deflates the pompous better, and faster, than that. [I made a stab at it... though not an especially good one... with "High Adventure Wading Pool."]
I guess alot of the newer residents to our fair City are not aware that Ogden had a water park a few years back. It was out by the freeway on the border with West Haven. Where the Stevens Heniger College is now, I believe.
It was closed down after a patron was sucked into the turbine and chopped into little pieces. I can't recall how much City involvement there was, but I know there was one hell of a lawsuit, and water parks all over the state were under heavey scrutiny.
Bill
The water park out by 21st and the freeway did indeed get sued out of business. However, it wasn't that some one got "sucked into the turbine and chopped into little pieces".
The real story was every bit as tragic. A little girl sat on the high suction drain on the bottom of the pool and it sucked her intestines out and killed her.
This caused a major safety modification to all such facilities through out the country.
Bill:
Wasn't there another small water park by the overpass on Riverdale? I seem to recall seeing a water slide snaking down the hill toward the river coming back from Big Box Heaven one day a couple of years ago.....
Yes Curm, the signs can still be seen. Maybe they're still operating, but I don't think so.
I've never been too impressed with slip and slides.
I have been impressed with the swimming facility that the City of Logan built, huge, and seems to be quite crowded. But it's a lot more than a slip and slide, in fact other than some higher platforms for diving, they're not BS'in the public with some bogus high adventure scheme. It's just a great munincipal swimming facility.
Lying little matty seems to be too young and imature to understand that nice things don't need to be cloaked in hype and bling. Only when trying to pull the wool over folks eyes do you need to dazzle with BS.
Oh I forgot, Brigham City also has a very nice swimming facility. Loren Farr could be if we had a mayor that was more interested in the people of this City and less interested in outside interests that stroke his ego. Visions of grandure, such a sorry little boy.
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