The Coliseum a Memorial to Poor Governance

Caller Times fails to report lower bids for creating an open air pavilion.
Analysis

The management of the decision making process for the future of the Coliseum and the land around it, for better or worse has become the symbol of Corpus Christi City Government. There was a fairly straight line of planning development of the public park land and the buildings like the Coliseum that sat on them until the American Bank Center was built.

From the parkway’s construction in 1941, before the Coliseum, Exhibition Center and old City Hall had been built on the seawall fill, it was designated a parkway, a “park way”. A parkway is listed as a type of park in city records; in 1967 the site of the coliseum was listed in City records as a special use park. The planning for various park alternatives, which included a festival park plan since 1987, proceeded through the 2004 Master Planning effort which culminated in the 2008 Bond proposal, when citizens voted $13 million dollars to execute that plan. One the current Council ignores in whole.

At the closing of the Coliseum and contrary to over fifty years of public planning to create a festival area and mixed use park at the site, the 2005 (Scott and Chesney wer both on that council) Council decided to privatize the property in a land give away to TRT holdings under a 60 year lease agreement that would have violated state law without a public vote. Questions about the bidding and other reasons killed the deal, but no one questioned the 60 year option, so the next RFP offered the same. Whether the economic development and legal departments were incompetent or just decided to play it safe and go along with what the council wanted is unknown, what is known is the next four years were wasted because the status of the land was not honestly stated.

Fiscal Prudence or Planned Demolition?
One of the basic problems with solving the Coliseum dilemma is that every Council was instilled with the idea that any development on the site should be free, it shouldn’t cost anything. Where this welfare dependent mentality derived from is anybodies’ guess. Why would you take the most valuable piece of property in the City that should be your show place for visitors and absolutely refuse to invest any money in it to make it useful and nice looking?

In the name of fiscal prudence the Council (who almost unanimously wanted it torn down) steadfastly refused to provide money for Coliseum maintenance. While, hundreds of thousands of dollars of Homeland Security equipment acquired by the police and fire departments was kept in rented semi-trailers in a lot on IH-37 and even more money was lost because police lacked a secure weatherized impound lot, the council refused to even maintain and secure it for storage.

The new 2007 Council tried to advance the issue with a public process to determine what the community wanted. A minority just wanted it torn down, another group could accept it being torn down but only if some public use could not be found, the rest wanted it kept. The committee appointed with the support of the Council tried to halt deterioration and assess the health of the building.

While the roof was deteriorating badly, the building was structurally sound. They tried to move ahead with what they felt was a public mandate to pursue an adaptive reuse. The problem was the die was cast; all the departments and the Council were under the impression the outcome could only be a private investment development. No one ever considered looking at continuing the community process to develop a public open space plan and decide whether it might include part of all of the Coliseum.

That Council after two consultants produced an RFP. That path went nowhere when it was found the Economic Development Department staff and two consultants had dropped the ball by failing to properly vet RFP winner Leisure Horizons before awarding them the right to negotiate. They were exposed by WtP as having filed bankruptcy on their last project the Queen Mary who they were managing for the City of Long Beach, California and who also accused them of fraud.

When they couldn’t produce proof of their financial commitments upon the demands of then Mayor Henry Garrett negotiations ended. Garrett was made the scapegoat for the department’s failure in the next election. Mayor Joe Adame beat Garret based on the promise to resolve it in six months. Adame had been on record as wanting the coliseum torn down and the whole thing turned over for private master plan development, not something he promoted during the campaign. Adame and the new Council, eager to prove their “pro-growth” pre-election promises, leapt on the issue.

Rush to Judgment Crashes on Rocks
A new RFP was issued by Economic Development that involved all of the land from Sherrill to McCaughn Parks, totally ignoring the legal consequences of the park issue. Adame swept aside all the work done up to that point and appointed his own committee.

The legal department came back with an opinion that a public vote would have to be taken to privatize park land. According to sources within the department at that point Adame brought in Attorney John Bell to get an opinion he liked. Adame then decided to recuse himself for conflict of interest after it was revealed by (WtP) he owned the Whataburger across the street from the Sherrill Park end of block.

The Mayor requested the City again employ outside counsel to give an opinion on his conflict of interest. Adame has since said the attorney said he can participate, the City and Whataburger asked the Texas Attorney General’s office to deny the request by WtP for a copy of the lease between Adame and Whataburger. That denial was granted based on what Whataburger claimed was proprietary information. A request for the Jimmy Bray’s (City retained attorney) report may be available according to the Attorney General’s office but City legal is saying they think they have a decision from the AG saying that is attorney client privilege and won’t give that up either. WtP is still waiting for that opinion at press time.

Despite cautions from his own committee about the various proposals themselves, including the building of apartments and the high density of some of the projects, the forced march towards more privatization schemes continued. NRP, who proposed a mixed use development with the creation of a Memorial Plaza and Leisure Horizons had been there before. They were now joined by Brass Development and latecomer the National Swim Center.

Shortly after WtP (see Long History as Park Land www.wethepeoplenews.net) printed the history of the area from Planning Department documents and other public records, it was generally accepted in the back rooms of the council and staff that any commercial proposal involving long term leases (60+yrs) was a dead idea, in spite of whatever John Bell said publically. There was little chance in a good economy a hotel or other big commercial development could get financing without a 60+ year lease, and probably little chance anyone would even want to try to push it through the required public vote. Yet publically the Council wouldn’t admit it why?

The Brass deal, which was highly touted by the Council at the time (Kiesnick “don’t worry about the details”), seemed the end to their quest and they rushed headlong down the road to build a solid wall of 3-5 story buildings stretching over 29 acres from Furman Street to Cooper’s Alley. Brass had thrown the Ice Rayz into the mix in order to actually rebuild and manage the Coliseum, almost as an after thought.

The council now admitted that part of the land was a park and issued a new RFP for just the Coliseum and adjoining parking lots. NRP dropped out, Brass crammed all of the twenty nine acres of development into 2.9 acres, and Leisure Horizons came back its old proposal with proof of financing. The National Swim Center thrashed around trying to get a reasonable presentation and figures together, something they really never accomplished.

The Brass Fiasco
The Council jumped like a hen on a June bug for the Brass deal with Councilman Kevin Kieshnick leading the way. He waved away concerns with a “don’t worry about the details” speech. Brass Real Estate revealed in negotiations that instead of being flexible on planning as earlier promised, they wanted total control over all planning including moving Shoreline Drive. That plus a backlash of citizen opposition to the huge scale of the project killed the deal soon made the Council realize they had bought a pig in a poke.

After the Brass negotiations fell apart, the cry to give the National Swim Center another opportunity was enough for the Council to allow them to try again over the next two months. This was despite knowing the whole time that the National Swim Center must have a hotel on the property to succeed, and that it would be impossible within the time frame the Council had set to upend the park status and create such a deal.

A new privatization plan was publically presented to Council by Destination Bayfront the same day as the swim center/demolition was voted on. The new group offered to pay to conduct a public process, the hitch? They would only provide funding after the Coliseum was demolished. Knowing the swim center deal would fail and the demolition plan would move forward with the Destination Bayfront group waiting in the wings the Council voted to negotiate with the Swim Center and demolish if that didn’t work. In other words if we have to tear it down it’s the Swim Centers fault.

No Public Plan but a new Non-Profit Privatization, Destination Bayfront
Long before that day a small group of young developers and American Bank folks had been looking at Houston’s Discovery Green and had started the Destination Bayfront idea of creating a private conservatory to build, fund and manage the area as a quasi public park, in other words a non-profit privatization scheme that would remove the park from public control.

The group says it wants to stay neutral on the Coliseum but according to one member over half the group is uncompromising in wanting to tear it down. While they are offering to hire and manage a company to run a public design process, the offer is only good after the Coliseum is torn down and only to determine which “uses” the public wants, the conservancy would determine the rest. Most of this group has little or no connection or understanding with the historic or memorial aspects of the Coliseum. When one 30 something in the group expressed that it was just an eyesore to be cleared away was asked how long he had lived here he responded two and a half years.

Regardless of the architectural significance, its historical icon status in some people’s lives, the fact that it was dedicated as a memorial to WWII veterans who died from Nueces County; the biggest kicker is the City doesn’t have the money and would have to BORROW the money if it proceeds with demolition.

The Clower Plan
After the decision to not proceed forward another plan was proposed that was not new but had never been considered. Local Architect George Clower put together drawings of a proposal that had been advanced by other architects and residents but never was drawn or evaluated by public response, because no public open space plan had ever been considered, only privatization schemes.

The “Clower Plan” proposed removing the walls and seating, while restoring the roof to create 65,000 square feet of shaded pavilion that could serve a number of uses for big civic events, outdoor boat shows and festivals. By retaining is memorial status the need (and cost) for a new memorial could be saved as well. The plan could be integrated with any other park proposal. While Mayor Adame saw the potential healing of this compromise proposal, many others were so tired and embarrassed by the Coliseum issue they just wanted to tear down a building that would cost $20 million to replace. He gave the group some moral support and encouragement but kept the demolition train on track.

Objection after objection was thrown up, what about birds, what about wind lift, on and on, as to why the Clower plan wouldn’t work without any real professional evaluation of those supposed challenges. When it was pointed out that there were solutions to those problems but they would take time to find and evaluate, the City wasn’t interested in taking that time. The City did request partial demolition bid requirements that would prepare facility for a new roof, clear out the walls and interior for an open air pavilion. Estimates for the cheapest roof are at $250,000.

Caller Times Covers Up Demolition Bids
When the City received bids on total and partial demolition of the Coliseum, the three lowest bids for total demolition were $562,312, $647,877 and 665,580. According to one bidder who was present when the bids were read, the three lowest bids for partial demolition (tearing out the sides, seats, walls and prepping for a new roof) the bids were $200,000, $218,000 and $611,000. Joe Adame denied this in an email saying the $200,000 bids were in addition to the basic total demolition bid. If the bidder was right (and he says he is) two were less than half the price of tearing down the whole building and the one that exceeded the low total demolition bid was cheaper then the number two and three bids for tearing down the whole thing.

Yet a Caller Times in an article written by Jessica Savage on February 10, 2010, reported “A&R Demolition, a company based near Austin, provided the lowest bid at $562,312.” It went on later in the article to say, “A partial demolition of the coliseum is an idea proposed by local architect George Clower. His plan would keep the arched green roof as an open-air pavilion and add a festival park and memorial nearby. He has suggested using the city money set aside for coliseum demolition and Shoreline Boulevard realignment for his plan, but has not yet provided a cost estimate for the entire project. Bids submitted Wednesday estimated the costs between $611,000 and 887,667.” No mentions of the other bids for partial or full demolition were disclosed in the article. One can only reach the conclusion that the Caller Times is providing cover for the City Council despite the facts.

Time to finish the job right.
Before rushing to go into debt we can’t afford to destroy a valuable public asset, one more step remains to heal the community division over the building and the site; conduct and complete a public process that asks for input into the redevelopment of the whole area with consideration of previous master planning and the possibility of retaining part or all of the Coliseum as a public open space. At this point there is no reason to eliminate any choices

A public committee should be appointed by the Mayor and Council made up representatives of all the stakeholders (i.e. of the Downtown Management Group, Bay Area Smart Growth Initiative, Coastal Bend Bays Foundation, Beautify Corpus Christi, Chamber of Commerce, the architects association (AIA), the GI Forum and LULAC) who are authorized to set up and conduct a community charrette with their own resources. We have plenty of talent locally and do not need one more highly paid consultant to tell us what we want. The group would be responsible for raising the money for the process, bringing about an overall public plan and planning for the funding, development and maintenance of the venue.

The Council could get on to other business while the public takes into its own hands the resolution of the biggest public fight since the beach closure issue. (Note both controversies were initiated by the same council). Through the community planning of a public open space project we have the strong possibility of achieving community consensus on a plan, overcoming bitter feelings and fueling redevelopment of downtown. Skipping the process and effectively turning it over to a group (Destination Bayfront) who has already defined the sandbox and what toys will be chosen from to go in it, and who will control it, further undermines public confidence. It also continues to feed the view that this Council ignores the public and does the bidding of a few in the development community. That can only lay the seeds for future battles, more dissention and prolonged redevelopment of downtown.