Rather, that came while dissing the performing arts center: "We now interrupt the flow of this column to ask the question we've been asking for months: Explain again why it is that a refurbished football stadium, a venue that brings in much more tourism revenue and costs hundreds of millions less than an arts center, is on the back burner? And another question: Everybody else is cutting back in this awful economy, isn't it about time for city officials and performing arts advocates to trim some of the amenities and build a more moderately priced arts center?"
Translation: Football good, faggy arts shit bad. Grunt.
Here's you answer, Neanderthal. Yes, the performing arts center can and will be trimmed. The entire venues plan was detached from reality from the outset, as I've already said more times than I can count (and might I mention that Bianchi was front-and-center the "build them all build them now" crew that have doomed us into eternal debt).
But do you really have to ask why the Citrus Bowl is less important than DPAC? Really? Seriously? OK, well, I'll try to lay it out for you, in small words and ALL CAPS so you can understand: NOBODY GIVES A SHIT ABOUT THE CITRUS BOWL.
The football stadium is an eyesore that's used maybe five times a year. And even if we fix it up, it still won't host any NFL games because it's not being built to NFL specs. No college team plays there, so it will maybe keep the two second-tier bowl games. No stadium concerts come this way, so that's out. Instead, maybe we'll get an extra Monster Truck show or something. Awesome.
DPAC, on the other hand, was the only project people actually wanted (not Rich DeVos' Golden Pleasure Domeâ?¢, which is already under construction, thank you very much). Because if we're going to shell out a bajillion dollars on public works projects, we want something more than the cultural equivalent of Truck Nutz to show for it. In all the pre-venues polling, DPAC was far and away the most popular project. In fact, had it not been packaged among the three, I neither of the other two projects would have gone anywhere.
To answer your question, Mike, that's why.
