By Curmudgeon
Some good ink for Ogden in the papers this morning. First, the Standard-Examiner reports that the January issue of Sunset Magazine lists Ogden as one of the “Top 10 Places you’ve gotta go.".
From the story:
Calling Ogden “one of the West’s hottest adventure spots,” and labeling it a place for adrenaline junkies, Sunset lists the area’s plentiful snow and outdoor recreation opportunities as the main reasons to visit. “Jackson, Wyoming, or Boulder, Colorado, might boast similar activities, but the prices and laid-back vibe in burgeoning Ogden can’t be beat,” the article says.Laid back vibe? Ogden? Now, I'll concede Ogden is much less laced up than, say, Morgan or Provo, but laid back? Would that it were so....
The story reports that upcoming issues of Ski and Ski Magazine will be touting Ogden as a happening place to be as well. All this is good.
Naturally, the article quotes Mayor Godfrey on Ogden's success marketing itself as a a kind of high adventure base camp:
Part of the new interest in Ogden is a revitalized downtown, Godfrey said, with restaurants, movie theaters and the Salomon Center. “If downtown is a cool, fun, vibrant place, then people will want to stay there,” he said, “and ski at our incredible resorts.”Somehow, the Mayor managed to restrain himself from explaining how a downtown Wal-Mart will increase the excitement and multiply the opportunities for adventure in Our Fair City. Admirable restraint on his part, I thought.
The other item is an article in the SL Trib, which touts the Flowrider particularly, pronouncing it better than Hawaii for true surfing fans. [No. I'm not kidding. It really does say that.]
The article goes on to talk about the Salomon Center and its other attractions, proclaiming them to be successful in drawing travelers from all over the world to Ogden. And it talks of Ogden's kayak parks, rivers and the coming ice tower and other attractions like bird sanctuaries and Ft. Buenaventura.
And all of this attention without a gondola. The closing graphs of the article:
The future of a proposed gondola on the east side of Ogden is up in the air. Mayor Godfrey said he was waiting for developer Chris Peterson, who could build a ski resort in the area, to bring forward a proposal.The future of the gondola is "up in the air." God, I love reporters with a sense of humor....
Even without the gondola, city leaders are proudly pointing to Ogden as one of the West's newest major outdoor-recreation destinations.
So, overall, lots of good ink for Ogden appearing these days and worth the reading, both pieces.
49 comments:
Curm,
The recent string of positive articles in travelogues touting Ogden is great. I have met many people at the flowrider who visited after seeing these writeups.
Unfortunately the trend with these articles reveals the herd mentality in the "news" media. For travel and recreation journals this is harmless. For hard news the trend is just as strong and amounts to a rumor mill with press release leading the way over inquisitive reporting.
I'll add that I have met just as many people who chose to visit Ogden because of what was already here. They made their choice without travelogues. Seasoned travelers know the score that with rivers, mountains, and ski resorts Ogden was a natural anyway. Godfrey just loves to claim this as his making. I moved here on the same attractions. No one had to convince the aware. We can see it on the map and make a confident judgement after riding a day at Snowbasin.
Well the trib article has finally revealed something we've all been wonderin for a while now. The idiotic Holographic ice tower will be built owned and operated lock stock and barrel by the taxpayer of Ogden.
This brain fart from the visionary that tried to twist facts compound interest on bogus loans from funds that the City itself can't document, in an effort to give away our golfcourse to the thorazine sedated, favored patagonia vest wearing, seldom seen, want to be a big shot someday, squirrel hating wayne peterson. Some ramp funds were used in the purchase of this white elephant, but by law they cannot be used to pay for it's operation. Who's going to pay for this and just how much annually? You, the Ogden taxpayer. I'm sure that Lowe's going to get the Glassman treatment of nice salery, full benefit package and the lot. Nothing against Jeff but, this thing make as much sense as an urban gondola.
Curm, could it possibly be that dire financials were behind the running of these articles? They've just had the kids out of school for almost 2 weeks, do you believe they raked in enough to pad their bottom line enough to show a profit this year? You'll note no mention of financial health in the trib article. Just a feel good wow.
This article read just like an advertizing promotion. I can't help but wonder if they aren't just setting the table for some real bad news, like finally telling the folks about the RDA debt write off.(not city debt). Lying little SOB. Who was dumb enough to swallow that one? Apparently just enough to allow 4 more years of this little weasels BS.
I would like to remind you that Neilson's endeavor is still costing the taxpayer $1,740,000 a year, for the next 20 years, and that's if he can stay in business. Thats $34,800,000.00 folks. I hope that appears in the cost benefit analysis.
Way to go Ogden, we rock! My real estate business is booming! I cannot believe the prices I'm getting for my one-bedroom rental shanties down on Adams Avenue! I never knew how great this place truly was until the Mayor made a point of it and all these great articles paid homage to him and this great place. I attribute everything I have learned in the rental and real estate business and about how great Ogden is to this inspired man.
Reading what the Trib says about the ice tower, I can't help but remember how, in fall 2005, they ran a huge story (as did the S-E and eventually the NY Times) on the via ferrata. Today, more than two years later, the via ferrata still isn't open for business.
Godfrey has absolutely no business making promises about how the city will purchase and operate the ice tower. Budget decisions are made by the city council.
Bill C:
The guy quoted on the Salomon Center in the Trib article is, I think, the manager of the center. It's his job to promote the place. I generally take anything a promoter has to say about what he's paid to promote with a grain of salt, unless he backs it with docs, sources, facts and figures. And the Trib ran the article, after all, as a travel article, not as straight news. It's of the same ilk as articles papers run on Your Wonderful Weekend In Jackson or Vacation Smart In Yellowstone. That kind of thing. Not by any means straight news.
Though, as you and Dan note, some interesting "news" crept in anyway, via the Mayor's pie in the sky tub-thumping promises about the Ice Tower.
But in general, its good ink for Junction City, provided you recognize it, as I think most readers will, as travel writing, not news reporting. After all, it listed the Eccles Dinosaur Park among Ogden's "adventure" options....
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - A comment by presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is raising some eyebrows here in Utah.
Romney was asked about God and,in essence, whether God speaks to him or to LDS Church leaders.
This interview between Romney and a Boston TV station aired in early December.
His comments about the LDS Church didn't cause too much of a ripple back east.
But here in Utah, they seem to raise questions about his view of how the LDS Church was founded.
In a lengthy interview with one of Boston's most prominent journalists, Mitt Romney was asked the following:
"Should God speak to you and ask you to do something that might be in conflict with your duties as president or should he speak to your Prophet who would speak to you - how would you make that decision, how would you handle that?”
To which Romney responded: “I don't recall God speaking to me. I don't know that he has spoken to anyone since Moses and the bush or perhaps some others."
But this answer appears to contradict one of the foundations of the LDS church.
In the Church's "First Vision," a young Joseph Smith is visited by God the Father and Jesus Christ.
Smith hears one of them say, “This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!”
And if, as Romney suggests, that God hasn't spoken to anyone for thousands of years, then what happens to the LDS Church's belief in direct revelation from God to the Church's prophets?
Revelations such as the one in 1978 that blacks could hold the priesthood.
Contacted by ABC 4 News, Romney's campaign issued the following statement:
"Governor Romney is very proud of his faith and he endeavors to live by it.”
We also asked the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for a comment about Romney's statement.
But the Church politely declined our request.
Reported by Vanocur
http://www.abc4.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoid=77472@video.ktvx.com&navCatId=8
I just happen to have a fund-raising solicitation from Ogden Climbing Parks, a 501(c)3, in my office. It was sent in August of 2007. It even includes a cover letter from Lying Little Matty Gondola Godfrey in which he refers to Ogden's "Hollowgraphic" Ice Tower ... twice, sprinkled among numerous other and very egregious grammar guffaws, lapses in syntax and sundry typos. This is important, because the dumb-asses are asking for $75K A YEAR, with a multi-year commitment, to be the tower title sponsor. Gondola Boy Mike Dowse (jackass!) gets his company's name on the Jackass Center for free, in perpetuity, and poor old Jeff Lowe has to approach "ski hub" and "high-adventure recreation" industry titans like THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE with his hand out for $75K A YEAR. Amazing! Maybe some of you hub geniuses are more comfortable with a "tower feature" sponsorship for $8,000, $12,000 or $14,000 per annum. I'm afraid this "project," as Lying Little Matty Gondola Godfrey calls it, is on financial ground that's as shaky as me without my meds. However, as Lying Little Matty Gondola Godfrey concludes in his incomprehensible, itinerant cover letter: "The City is contributing significantly to this project and we would be grateful to have you join us as we make it a reality." Or, as the Lilliputian criminal's elfin henchman in track suit pants, Patterson, said, "It's going up; we're just waiting for a phone call." Yep, OTown taxpayers are likely on the hook again.
THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE
Jason,
Can you scan that solicitation letter and any accompanying materials and get it to Rudi so he can post it? I think it would be very interesting--especially to the city council which would have to approve any hypothetical city contribution.
Thanks Bill C for the usual brilliance. And thanks to Dan S. for putting my mind at ease on the ice tower - it's just Godfrey lies about the city paying for it. I was afraid I'd missed the public hearing. Please Dorrene, make sure there is a public hearing before we bankroll another colossal loser from Godfrey's team of borrow and spend crash makers.
Beloved Dan S.:
I rarely accommodate requests from those who call me a liar, but I will see that it ends up in Rudi's hands. You'll get a kick out of the so-called sentence wherein Lying Little Matty Gondola Godfrey postulates thusly, verbatim: "People that [sic] will travel or move here to kayak, skydive or rock-slimb year-round will also be able to enjoy the unique adventure sport of ice climbing." And "...people with various handicaps"!!!! What a visionary! And this guy figuratively peed on people like this: "If you want to vote for a second-grade teacher, go ahead." Lying Little Matty Gondola Godfrey is not only a liar, criminal, possible gay European lover of a vest-addicted, Thorazine-addled, gravy-training douchewad, a freakish lover of GONDOLAs and possessor of the biggest forehead since Fish from Barney Miller, he's illiterate and quite stupid to boot.
THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE
*To be fair, it was rock-climb.
THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE
I'm so glad we could pay for so many other people's entertainment. I like it when they tout the Salamander Center's blow up toy. They show people flying around, having a great time, but never put up the cost of admission, which would make even a skier wince! Your first go gets you some ground school and a whopping 1 minute in the tube for just under $60. Cost after that is an affordable $750 per hour or $15 a minute if you don't want to miss a mortgage payment to buy the whole hour! It's quite the plaything.
Now we get an Ice Climbing tower right in the middle of downtown. The paper said it would be operated with a "grant". Whoever is behind this grant, can you call me? I'm sure with the right materials, I could be a HIGH adventurer myself and come up with new and creative ways to spend your money for you, too! Anybody know what the price of admission for this "E-Ticket" ride is going to be?
I thought the last thing we needed was a Wal-Mart downtown, or an upscale model of a ride Disneyland even had the sense to remove (people mover!), but an Ice Tower when you can't even guarantee me the fire trucks will make it out of the station or important things taxpayers need like, oh, I don't know, WATER that doesn't taste funny?
Godfrey supporters, please do me a favor. We're voting in a presidential election this year. Could you please get educated on the issues of the day and make an intelligent decision based on the facts and quit trusting other people just because they go to the same church as you?
In the mean time, can you "grant" me some cash to pay next year's water bills and property taxes?
Leaving Powder Mountain early last week I noticed a large 4x4 truck with the license plate "PRDUCER" or similar twist. I craned as we drove by and the driver sure looked like Rupe. If so, not only does he alias himself online as a producer he drives around with it. Some ego, do most H-wood types flaunt that. my sense is that most celebs prefer anonymity. This guy is compensating.
Curmudgeon
The Sunset magazine piece is actually a paid advertisement. If you will notice, in every article there are imbedded ads and links. Sunset Magazine is not independently endorsing Ogden or any of the other locations they write about in this section. These are not unsolicited and independent articles. No ad, no article. The pieces are also written by ad copywriters, not feature writers.
You all missed another great story in today’s paper though you had to do a lot of your own analysis of the facts. Not sure the paper knew how to interpret the facts. The story is on the front page bottom left “Mortgage problems make Top of Utah apartments scarce and more expensive”.
The report indicated that apartment occupancy rates were at all time highs. Why, because people are having mortgage problems. People are bailing on their home mortgages and moving into apartments. Mark my word, the administration will use this report to justify letting more apartments be built in Ogden rather than encourage home ownership by responsible buyers, (Gadi will meet this demand). People should understand the reason for the increased demand for apartments before they suggest the construction of more (we can not afford to be short sighted). These same people will someday want to get back into houses and the rental market will crash and ultimately those apartments will be rented to the lowest common denominator. Just how Ogden got into the situation that it is in today, only worse. It's not like we don’t have enough rental units and rental homes already.
BDO went from 20.72% vacancy to only 4.42% vacancy. Sounds good except last year the city only generated about 50% (as I recall) of the revenues from the BDO as it had projected. This would suggest (last year when the city had 75% of the BDO leased out) that there will not be any way that the city will ever generate the revenues that they are projected from this facility. Not near the margin of error for bond coverage that the city projected. Hopefully the institutions that hold the city bonds don’t come back for more coverage for the Salomon Center. Also with all the RDA financing used out there to attract business to that location there is little hope for significant future revenue increases.
Office space availability is interesting as well. We went from 15.08% vacancy to 21.89% vacancy and the number is still climbing. Why, because of all the new building in the downtown area. Unfortunately most of those new building tenants just moved from across the street rather than representing new blood in town. Even though this new space rented at new space prices it will be interesting to see how long the older buildings will remain vacant and what they will ultimately rent for. There will be a tremendous amount of available space in this town for quite a while. We could in the future be complaining about the empty office building rather than the empty mall, (i.e. we just moved our problem across the street and now we’re $50 million dollars more in debt).
Ozboy
Sara Toliver, the head of the Ogden-Weber Convention Bureau is quoted in the Standard article indicating that this Sunset Magazine article is not advertising.
So is it paid advertising or not? She wouldn't lie to us, would she? Would you?
Oz:
Very nearly all commercial travel writing in periodicals consists largely of promotion. It's the nature of the beast. And embedded links in a travel article do not necessarily mean the piece in which they are embedded is a paid advertisement. Besides, nobody would expect to find an investigative journalism piece "ripping the lid off this town" in Sunset any more than they'd expect to find such in "Southern Living." It's travel writing, and [its provenance aside] it's good ink for Ogden, as the SE reported.
Gotta tell ya, guys, Hizzonah had a good idea to remarket Ogden as a recreational sports destination when his first idea of Ogden as the New Silicon Valley went belly up. I see little point in trying to find something wrong with the infrequent good ideas he has and carries out reasonably competently. They are few and far between, God knows, but this was one of them I think. Every now and then, it would be OK, and maybe even shrewd tactics, to just lean back and say "nice ink for Ogden. Glad to see it." And let it go at that.
Just looked at the Sunset article (really just a paragraph) on Ogden, and I'm unimpressed. I much preferred this article which appeared nearly 6 years ago. Then the theme was "best places to live" and "best access to the outdoors"; now it's "places you've got to see" and "for adrenaline junkies". Yeah, we've come a long way.
Dan S:
Ogden is till one of the best places to live, seems to me, with among the best access to the outdoors. That hasn't changed much of late [though it would have if Hizzonah had succeeded in paving over and/or walling off the foothills trails behind the gates of a private resort vacation villa development].
Lots of magazines do "ten best" articles on a variety of scales. I really don't have a problem with Sunset listing Ogden among places in the west people ought to see, adrenaline junkies or not. Unless, of course, the list is "Ten Best Places to Be A Republican."
However, with the way things are going here on the Wasatch Front, and the preferences of our Esteemed Republican Legislative Majorities --- SLTrib says the only state agency to have its budget cut last year was the state Dept. of Environmental Quality --- Ogden may soon find itself on lists like "Ten Best Places To Carry Your Own Oxygen" and "Ten Cities With The Dirtiest Air In the West" [Or perhaps, "On a Clear Day, You Can See the Tip of Your Nose."]
I forgot to praise the Huntsville Town Council for not holding back, they told the County Commisioners that the Powder Mountain rezone is 100 % no go from their side of the fence. No pussyfootin around, just flat no. Way to go Huntsville.
Now if the people in western Weber County can find a moment of clairity long enough to see the hollow emptiness of lying little matty's endeavors and put a stop to it. What's the bottom line? A mountain of debt and not much to show for it.
Curm, you keep insisting that there some sort of merit in this stupid "high adventure" song and dance, just what merit is there? Other than a couple of warehouses and a mountain of public debt what can it benefit the folks in Ogden?
Have you been suffering along with the geigers in some wallow of self pity and communal low self esteem?
Please provide us with a definition of high adventure that fits the common usage in the dictionary and fits or translates to anything that lying little matty has promoted. All this "high adventure" BS has done is allowwed the lying little SOB to neglect the things he should have been doing for the people of this City. How will any of this improve their lives?
High adventure requires elements of the unknown, it don't exsist in familiar surroundings, to us what lying little matty calls high adventure is just plain old everyday recreation. As to all these artificial attempts at duplicating outdoor natural experiences, for profit, poppycock.
"miserable toadying shit for brains onion eating godfrey ass kisser"
Driving around downtown and the river area, the scale of the redevelopment is miniscule compared to the huge inventory of undeveloped vacant land alongside empty warehouses and office buildings with little historical character. The vacuum there is huge. It will take a decade or more of boom to fill this void. AmerCan building alone has equal amount of vacanct space as that occupied by AmerSports. The River Walk is a nice idea but with the Salomon Center just coming online now we have a scaled down version of it's awful architecture in the Bingham Cycles bldg. Just how can you split the slightly encouraging traffic at the Junction with the River area. Ambitious would be an understatement. Still it's better than nothing going on. I would not open a biz down there though. Notice Beto's opened on Grant just prior to the Salomon opening and is now closed. All the fresh traffic and Teleperformance could not sustain a modest mexican food joint. Between Costa Vida, Beto's and the other little Mexi place in that same center there is just not enough traffic to support it all. My understanding is that there is another higher end mexi food joint going into the new bldg in front of the megaplex. Is saturation even a concern to these developers. Whoever has all this investment money is sure freewheeling with it.
On the Ice tower, Jeff Lowe is an awesome fellow with his heart in the right place. Ice climbing is a challenging and exciting event to watch. You won't find me on that ice. I have enough outdoor stuff going anyway...and indoor with the flowrider. Outdoor adventure??? wait a minute, none of this dough is being spent on enhancing outdoor recreation. In fact outdoor recreation usually requires little enhancing. Just get one's arse out of the house and onto the two locomotion appendages we swing from the hip and enjoy. Why all the stupid hype. Aside from the mountains in our backyard the rest of the stuff Godfrey has saddled us with could be build in Branson, MO. or Davenport, Iowa or anywhere else for that matter.
Bill:
Sigh... most cities run marketing campaigns and publicity campaigns to draw tourism and other business. Ogden's campaign, marketing itself as as a kind of base-camp for outdoor activities, mostly, seems to be working. It has brought events here, like the XTERRA events. That brings tourists, competitors, increases hotel occupancy rates, puts fannies in restaurant seats, and it has drawn some businesses to locate here as well. None of this is bad. Nor is it necessary to pretend it is on some theory that whatever Godfrey does must be criticized and attacked simply because Godfrey does it. The man has given us more than enough reason to criticize his operation of the city's government. Which does not require us to condemn even the few good ideas he has had and has reasonably competently managed.
Marketing Ogden as an outdoor activities base camp [so to speak] seems to have worked reasonably well. It has certainly generated significant good ink over the last couple of years in widespread publications. It has attracted events, visitors and some businesses. When "Ogden The New Silicon Valley" --- Hizzonah's first idea --- tanked, it was, seems to me, a wise fall-back marketing choice. That's all.
Unreasoning criticism of everything Godfrey does as mayor makes no more sense to me than unreasoning support for everything Godfrey does. When he does something right, he deserves --- and gets from me --- a pat on the back. Doesn't happen often, sadly. I wish it happened a great deal more.
My recommendation to Godfrey for the rumored water feature at 23rd/WA is a real surf club with B-MAX breaking tube wave. Playing to the obvious success of the flowrider. This would give them the opportunity to remedy the shortcomings of the Salomon installation and allow the city to be in the drivers seat on this lease instead of giving all the bronus away to a blanket lessee. The opportunity to create PRIME retail surrounding the wave pool instead of it all being isolated from it like at the Salomon could really be a cash cow.
I haven't heard back from floor 9
Tec:
You wrote: Just how can you split the slightly encouraging traffic at the Junction with the River area.
You've hit on a key problem, I've thought, with the whole river project idea from the git go. It's NOT "downtown Ogden." It's just too far from 25th Street to be comfortably part of a "walking/shopping" downtown to work, at least for a very long time. As for there not being enough traffic to support development in the two locations: I presume the idea is with all the condos/apartments going up or being rehabbed, the body count will be there in the near future. We shall see.
As for the Neo-Brutalist architecture of the Salomon Center being extended to the River Project area, and an Ogden Riverwalk... sadly, I fear you are right. Bingham's Build To The River Bank glorified garage/storage shed building is not a good sign. It has all the visual appeal of a line of Jiffy-Lube bays. Maybe that's the idea, bad- archetecture-as-marketing-tool: people wandering along the River Walk will want to rent bikes to get them away from it faster than walking will.
The Sunset "piece" is a weak-sister advertorial; the editors are running a 10-best feature and likely chose OTown independently. But the sales staff will contact the city and congratulate them, offering the opportunity to purchase advertising in the same issue that features "Utah's newest adventure town." Nothing wrong with buying an ad in that issue and nothing wrong with those lillies writing a terse but fraudulent paragraph or two about OTown. (God help me: I half-heartedly agree with Good Old [?] Curmudgeon.) However, this whole "high-adventure" foozle being foisted upon us is a crock that's cost us $40 million and counting. And what about the extreme potential for high-adventure peeing inside/outside GONDOLA cars? Where's that mention? We're going to be the Mecca for adrenaline outdoors urinators in/from GONDOLA cars, so be prepared.
THE SKI IS BEAUTIFUL BLUE
Curm:
While I admire your glass-half-full attitude, I still say that this new paragraph in Sunset is a step backward from where Ogden was six years ago.
It's time for Ogden's promoters to give "high adventure" and "adrenaline" a rest, and get back to the basics of what makes this a great place to live.
Curm, stop and think. If tyhis "high adventure" bullshit was just limited to some fluff pieces and a little tourism marketing, no big deal,great. But you don't recognize the totality and extent to which it is. How much in time resourses and actual tax dollars has been spent, and what's the return of this public investment? Our disgust is not because this is some lying little matty idea, this represents everything about him, it's all he's done, everything revolves around it. It's enough to make me puke.
I think this high-adventure urination concept has legs; the Flowrider is probably awash in pee from unschooled surfers; urine trickles down the wall of the high-adventure IClimb in front of the Jackass Center; the toilets at the high-adventure dinosaur museum already overflow with liquid waste; the kayak park has a known high-adventure concentration of saline and ammonia; THE GONDOLA will attract adrenaline-junkie pee-ers from across the globe who want to dangle over blighted urban thoroughfares and prior to the fairy-tale castle built without roads and guarded by magical dwarves. Plus, Wolfgang Puck, who will open a restaurant named Squirrel Abatement, at the behest of Wayne Peterson, "developer" and leader of his own famed Squirrel Patrol, is a known urineophile and will construct the best automatic flushers this side of the Nike campus in Oregon. We'll be able to attract world-famous pants pee-ers like Ozzy Ozborne, David Hasselhoff, Abe Vigoda and Joe Paterno; we'll market ourselves as the Mecca of high-adventure outdoor whizzing: We're only 20 minutes away from a high-adventure wee at the top of the Olympic downhill course! The connection is obvious due to Lying Little Matty Gondola Godfrey's idea that our Puck-eatery castle be serviced via shit (and urine) orbs! "Buckle up, kids, we're heading to OTown; hold it 'till we get there!"
Curmudgeon
"Sigh" Your anal retentive is showing again my friend.
No where in my post above, that you apparently misread, says anything about people "expecting to find an investigative journalism piece "ripping the lid off this town" in Sunset"
I never wrote it, I never implied it and I don't believe it. I merely pointed out that the piece was not what it was being represented as - an independent news article about Ogden.
Like so much else associated with the Godfreyites there is a lie at the heart of this. I suppose one could excuse that in this case cause "every one is doing it", like you seem to be pointing out. But in my book a lie is a lie is a lie.
This Sunset piece is just one more example of the Godfreyites trying to create the illusion that their delusions are actually successful.
By the way, you seem to be coming perilously close to contradicting yourself when you wrote: "Very nearly all commercial travel writing in periodicals consists largely of promotion. It's the nature of the beast. And embedded links in a travel article do not necessarily mean the piece in which they are embedded is a paid advertisement." I spent a number of years in the Ad game, and I can tell you that this Sunset deal, and virtually all others that use this format, are Ads.
Dan:
You wrote: It's time for Ogden's promoters to give "high adventure" and "adrenaline" a rest, and get back to the basics of what makes this a great place to live.
Most of the promotional campaign that seems to be getting some notice deals with convincing people to visit Ogden, not to live here. It's a marketing campaign selling Ogden as a tourist/traveller destination and as such, seems to me it's not been a bad one.
Curm:
I've seen no evidence that all this hype is actually convincing anyone to visit Ogden. If it were having that effect, we'd have heard about all the angry tourists who arrived here, hoping to climb the via ferrata, only to find it closed for business and apparently abandoned.
The out-of-towners who patronize the Salomon Center are already here, visiting their relatives.
Even our mayor would surely admit that in order to revitalize downtown Ogden, we have to convince people to live there and businesses to locate there. And when people look for a place to stay and raise a family, I suspect that "access to the outdoors" carries a lot more weight than "adrenaline rush".
Oood point, Jason!
Let me offer my two bits:
piss art:Images of urination in 20th century art
Urinating on Godfrey's monuments as far more art than vandalism.
You notice that they don't say too much about the iFly. I think that it's because it was done half assed. If you want to see a real indoor flying experience go to www.flyawayindoorskydiving.com. This facility is in Las Vegas. Look how much room they have in their simulator. You can actually fit more than two people in it. Godfrey, Nelson and Collins are douch bags
I wonder if neilson had requested that harmer and the economic delvelopement deptartment explore the city bonding to purchase and build a motion ride facility that he could operate. A runaway train, baja jeep safari or a malfunctioning gondola. The most artificial high adventure experience, with no risk. Folks may come from as far away as Malta, Id. or Afton, Wy. just to experience such a jee wiz high adventure feeling. Maybe one or two might even venture onto the artificial ice tower, though I can't imagine why.
Half assed Ogden,
Looks like Vegas rates are cheaper than in Ogden too - $30/3 minute session ($10/hr) and if you go again the same day $20/3 minute session.
Ogden published rates are $75/5 minute session and no deal on the second session, that is unless they have changes their rates.
Looks like Ogden's rates are above the market and Vegas is known to not to be a cheap place to do anything.
Ogden Resident
I agree with you - except for the "$10 per hour" part. I think at those rates it would be $10 per minute, or $600 per hour.
That compares to Ogden's i-fly's rate of $900 per hour, or 50% more. Both pretty expensive, and most certainly way more than the average Ogden resident could afford, and totally out of the question for 99% of the residents within the surrounding inner city area.
Once again Ogden's poor huddled masses get the good old Godfrey shaft! Oh, I would also like to point out that the Mayor and his heartless centurions continue to chip away at the support the city gives to our inner city youth through the Marshall White Center.
On the Vegas Wind Tunnel Ride and Ogden's:
Might be well to keep in mind this when comparing the size of the wind tunnel rides in Vegas and Ogden, and the pricing: There is a much much larger population and tourist base on which to draw in Vegas than there is here. I think it was probably foolhardy to build even the smaller one here, given the local population base and tourist numbers, and it would have been doubly foolhardy to invest in a much larger one with [therefor] much higher operating costs, with fewer anticipated customers. And the few projected riders figures into the pricing as well.
That said, be interesting to see some actual numbers on costs/revenues for Ogden's wind tunnel ride to see how it's doing as a stand-alone attraction. I suspect not well, but I don't know for sure. Ms. Utah seemed to be enjoying her ride, but then, I suspect she wasn't paying the freight.
Frustrating though it may be, it's going to take at least a year, probably two, before we can discuss with any certainty the economic impact and/or success or failure of the wind tunnel ride, the flow-rider, and the Salomon Center overall. For example, I know managers of the Convention Center believe they lost some medium-sized conference and business meeting bookings because of complaints from those who attended earlier meetings here that "there's nothing to do in downtown Ogden between/after sessions." That was one thing the Salomon Center was planned to fix. If it works that way, we should see an up-tick in Convention Center meetings, conferences, conventions. But since those are booked, often, a year or more out, a bump in repeat bookings will take a considerable while to show up, and to know if the Center is making Ogden more attractive for small to mid-sized business meetings.
Frustrating to have to wait, I know, but there it is. The numbers will be there [profits, bookings, higher hotel occupancy rates, restaurant revenues] or they won't. But it will take time to know for sure. The wind tunnel's there, the city's on the hook for the construction bonds, and there's nothing to be done about that now. We now just have to see how it all plays out.
Curmudgeon
I think the real comparison should be between Ogden's efforts under Godfrey and his team of wild eyed incompetents, and the Layton Convention Center.
In Ogden our fearless and idiotic leader wagered the whole friggen magilla on this Carnival angle. The thinking I suppose was that after a hard day of conventioneering the participants would be mightily motivated to go over and bowl a few lines, play a few video games, practice their strokes on a see in the dark dayglow minature golf thingy and eat some so-so Mexican grub out of tin foil containers using plastic forks. (Apparently there are no plates and silverware allowed anywhere near the high tech rec center)
From initial indications it was a dumb assed idea and is failing.
Layton on the other hand built a convention center in an area next to a mall with a lot of different department stores, shops and restaurants. The theory being that after a long hard day of conventioneering the participants might want to do a leisurely dinner at a restaurant that served on real plates with real silverware in a nice atmosphere, and maybe do a little shopping where they had a large variety of shops and/or a movies with tons of choices.
Layton's convention center is succeeding beyond anyone's dreams and in fact they are now going to build a large addition to it.
As for any future evaluation based upon performance and income, well you can forget that one. The deal is set up so that the citizens of Ogden who are footing the big bill will never actually see any performance figures. The city (citizens) own the buildings, however the actual businesses therein are privately owned and thus their books are not public.
The only thing us'n hoi polloi can ever hope to see is rather the private businesses (friends of Matt) can actually pay their monthly rent. That monthly rent incidentally is only a small fraction of what it would be, and should be, on the private market. I think their rent for the whole deal is around fifty grand a month. Given the twenty million plus cost of the thing, the rent in the real world should be more like two hundred thousand per month. Well over a million a year subsidy us poor tax payers are ponying up per year to subsidize these Mayoral pals.
The Little Lord and his circle of Empty suits are very crafty and devious about hiding the truth from the people. We will never know the real numbers with this fiasco. The first and only thing we will know about the success of failure is when the whole shebang collapses for non payment of that nominal rent these FOM's are paying. It is my guess that even then the Little Lord will find many sneaky ways to hide and prolong that truth from coming out.
This whole mall thing and every other thing this group of moron's do are losers on the face of them. We will all pay for this idiocy far into the future, long after this group has left office and faded into oblivion.
Oz:
No argument that Layton seems to have handled development via convention center [just expanded, I believe] better than we did here. Layton, however, did have one advantage we did not have in downtown BR: a lot of space available for development, parking, expansion, etc. That kind of sprawling development is harder to do in a city center. And of course we had no huge mall for a convention center to cosey up to. We had one for a while, it seems, but it went under too.
If things are as bad as you suspect, we will find out about it, though, if/when the businesses fail to make their monthly lease payments, and the public has to pick up servicing the bonds. That's a kind of accounting, I guess.
Thanks for the tip about the Mexican restaurant in the Salomon Center. I didn't know it was a fast food operation. And if I'm eating off plastic and with plastic, it's fast food IMHO.
Layton doesn't use the RDA bonding scam so their citizens are not saddled with the debt associated with development, unlike Ogden where we tax payers are underwriting a very large part of the developers costs and risks. As a consequence there are not near as many highly risky and questionable projects as in Ogden. The Layton projects that get done meet normal business and funding requirements and are well thought out in front. Under Mayor Godfrey it doesn't matter if a project is really viable or not, or makes sense or not, because the tax payers are taking all the risk, not private financial institutions.
Albert:
It's the Davis County Convention Center, isn't it? Not the Layton City Convention Center. As I recall [and not being a resident of Davis Co. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the details], the Davis Co. Convention Center was a county project, and the bonds were approved by a referendum before the County issued them. Ogden's project is exclusively a city project, and was not funded by Weber County.
That in no way affects the question of whether Ogden City was wise to deal with the mall as it did, and to fund the Salomon Center and other projects as it did, but comparing a county-bonded county convention center not located in a city center with a city-funded urban downtown project seems to me, still, to be comparing apples to oranges in significant ways.
Curmudgeon
It seems like the arguments (excuses?) you keep making about why the Layton Convention Center is wildly successful while Ogden's is a flaming failure are based on facts and circumstances that were well known before either one was built. No where do I see you suggest that perhaps Ogden's should not have been built seeing that the elements were not there to make it successful to begin with.
Normal elements that might indicate success or failure of a project are apparently never considered in the Godfreyite calculations before they plunges the tax payers into more and more costly and losing boondoggles. The Little Lord and his circle of empty suits don't seem to care about such a silly thing as due diligence, instead relying apparently on his own council, his private chats with God and Ed Allen, and the fawning approval of his lackeys and lap dogs who are all slurping it up at the public trough.
The Layton convention center is a Davis County facility as you pointed out. However, it was done because of the intense efforts made by the Layton City Mayor and former State Senator Garn (not Jake) who are both rich power houses in Layton. And yes, it was another government financed project. The big difference is that it was done by smart people dealing with real elements and facts and doing thorough and competent due diligence in front before tapping the public treasury. In other words, it was done, on the public dime, by competent business/political leaders operating openly and honestly with real world facts and without any secret insider dealings; as opposed to incompetent business/political failures marching to the tune of their own delusional band that only they can hear, and lying through their teeth to the public every inch of the way.
Although I dislike the notion of Government getting involved in private enterprise, the facts are, and have been for a very long time, that this goes on in a very big way all over the country. Being a realist, I accept that as the way it is. The problem as I see it is when someone like Godfrey, who is arrogant, self righteous, highly dishonest and grossly incompetent, gets a hold of the reigns of power, and the public treasury, and proceeds to loot said treasury with a seemingly endless parade of stupid loser deals.
If we had Garn in Ogden, and Layton had Godfrey, I believe you would see a complete reversal of the two cities fortunes. What we really suffer from most in Ogden is a dearth of honest competent politicians in leadership roles.
Oz:
You wrote: t seems like the arguments (excuses?) you keep making about why the Layton Convention Center is wildly successful while Ogden's is a flaming failure are based on facts and circumstances that were well known before either one was built. No where do I see you suggest that perhaps Ogden's should not have been built seeing that the elements were not there to make it successful to begin with.
Sigh... again. I've made no excuses for how the Administration and the Council handled the Mall matter. The only point I was trying to make in the posts above dealt with what I thought, and think, were doubtful comparisons between the Davis County Convention Center project[s] and the Ogden Mall Redevelopment project[s]. Each faced different problems [downtown revitalization of a decaying urban city center was not a primary goal of the Davis County Convention Center project for example]. The kind of solution available for what Davis wanted to do [large tracts of available land adjacent to a highly successful major mall, etc.]was not available in downtown Ogden. And so on.
It's beyond debate, seems to me, that the Davis County facility has been a tremendous success, and the Ogden mall redevelopment project's success has, at best, not yet been demonstrated.
Seems to me it ought to be possible to question invalid comparisons of the two projects, without being accused of making excuses for the decisions the Administration and Council made regarding the Ogden Mall redevelopment.
There's another key difference in the two projects, so far largely unremarked. As I recall , the Davis County Convention center bonds were approved by the voters in a referendum, weren't they? And attempts by Ogden citizens to have the Mall redevelopment project [tearing down the Mall and building instead the Solomon Center and adjacent projects on the public's dime] were denied by the Administration. So the project, good or bad, successful or not, wisely designed and funded or not, was imposed on the citizens [by their elected officials, true] from above.
While Hizzonah is right that every decision of elected governments cannot be submitted to the populace via referendum, seems to me the mall demolition and subsequent redevelopment projects were of such magnitude, and were of such potential importance for deciding Ogden City's future, that putting the matters up for public approval would have been the course of wisdom on the part of both the Administration and the Council.
But, sadly, this administration --- with occasional all-too-rare exceptions --- is not known for choosing the course of wisdom when it has any other available option.
curm
you think your superior logic prevails in all discussions. fact is it doesnt. you just have more time on your hands than most people to keep pounding you position. you just babble on and on. your moniker should be babylon not curm.
ozboy i concur with you thoughts and likewise feel that we are being lead by incompetent management in this city. management that does not care to listen to the residents.
todays revelation that ogden city is responsible for rda debt was sure soft peddled by the se but im sure babylon thinks they did a bang up job.
Disgusted:
Wanted to thank you for agreeing that the logic of my argument is [as you put it] "superior." Wasn't expecting so nice a compliment from you. I appreciate it and congratulate you for being so perceptive as to notice.
babylon
if only it was
disgusted
While I appreciate your agreeing with me vis-a-vis Curmudgeon on this issue, I must warn you that he is by far the most well read, politically astute and masterful word smith amongst us.
He has had just too much experience over too many years dealing with smart ass College Students coming out of High Schools with straight "A"'s and trying to debate him! Arguing againt him and his generally well reasoned arguments is a lot like a little kid arguing against Mom's edicts about taking your medicine. Like that kid however, it is still lotsa fun to catch him in a rare and minor illogicality!
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