Having displayed a remarkable ability to minimize outside participation in the “open call” for Astrodome redevelopment proposals it conducted half a decade ago, the brilliant and methodical minds behind the Harris County Sports & Convention Corporation now appear ready to demonstrate similar mastery of the process of public-opinion polling. The corporation is counting actual votes in the online poll it set up last week, which allows website visitors from any country to choose from one of 2 kitchen-sink redevelopment proposals — or the garbage-disposal option pictured above. With 5,800 “votes” cast, longtime corporation executive director Willie Loston notes that the “save the Dome” options are winning by a landslide. But wait! Maybe they just haven’t been asking the right people?
To solicit more participation, Loston has asked some of Reliant Park’s tenants — the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, the Houston Texans and the Offshore Technology Conference – to encourage their constituents to take the survey.
Asked if that could be construed as an attempt to manufacture support for a more costly park makeover, Loston said he does not see it as an attempt to shape the survey’s outcome.
Note to contracted visitors: Local Zip Codes begin with “770.”
- ‘Save the Dome’ leads poll by a landslide [Houston Chronicle]
- Latest Astrodome Redevelopment Proposal Features Large Domed Space for People To Mill About, Wondering What To Do with Astrodome [Swamplot]
- Astrodome coverage [Swamplot]
Drawing of flattened Astrodome: Reliant Park
It really does look like a garbage disposal!
And a billion more dollars we don’t have will go down the drain.
Built for 2.5 mil, and costing a billion in death. Wow why build anything? Sure would like to see the world cup and (pie in the sky) the olympics in Houston. Perhaps those events would be enough impetus to restore the dome to it’s former status? No doubt more municipal bonds, and public debt though.
I wouldn’t mind world cup but rather NEVER see the Olympics. And I don’t even like soccer, but the last time the US held it, it went well.
I suspect you’re right, wonder how long the olympics will continue to be a money losing proposition for the host countries? Look at Greece, Olympics sure haven’t helped their financial situation, and my friends in the UK complain incessantly about the money being spent in London. So begs the question, why bother, for the love of sport? Well it comes with a mighty large price tag and probably decades of debt, heh Montreal still hasn’t paid off olympic staidum (1972)..
Why don’t Harris County and the City of Houston sell the Astrodome to the Chinese? Let them turn it into an international banking and commodities trade space with hotels and restaurants and entertainment center. The only exception would be that the dome can not be demolished.