Quote:
Originally Posted by Novacek
No data more recent than 2012 for Phoenix? No data at all regarding the SA expansion? No job data for Phoenix, despite later claiming it as unrealized.
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Not only that, but the writer is not comparing an apple to an apple, to an apple. Phoenix may have been sixth largest city in the country in 2000, but damn, it's in the middle of the freakin' desert. I'll elaborate but first, a caveat.
To anyone reading this who happens to be from Phoenix, I'm not knocking you or the city itself. I'm sure Phoenix is quite nice. I've never been there and do have it on a "to do" list someday, but I'm struggling to find something major in Phoenix itself that would attract me to visit, and visit repeatedly. Yes Sedona and other parts of Arizona are picturesque, and there's the Grand Canyon, which is only a 3 hour and 40 minute drive from Phoenix. Phoenix does have some tech biz along with the commensurate banks, medical and government jobs you'd expect along with business heavyweights like Boeing, Freeport Mc-Moran and US Airways. There are also universities, hi-end spas, golf courses and a desert botanical garden, all great to have in a large city.
What I don't see happening in Phoenix and what separates Austin from a lot of other cities are major city centric draws like those that bring people to Austin. I don't see ACL and SXSW sized events being promoted in Phoenix. I don't see an F1 race there any longer after a brief two year stint from 1989 to 1991. I may be wrong, but I don't think people refer to Phoenix as the "live ___ capital" of anything.
Austin has in spite of its torrid growth of the past couple of decades still retained a good portion of its live music reputation. We're a burgeoning foodie town now though we're not (as Stooge mentioned) at a 2 or 3 star Michelin rated echelon yet. We've already discussed the Austin versus SA night life comparison in another thread but I'd wager you could substitute Phoenix interchangeably in that conversation with SA as the similarities are probably very close.
My point is that to have a successful convention center, a city needs more going for it than sheer size alone. This article's writer seems to have forgotten or not realized that. Austin's 1.2 billion dollar endeavor is necessary because we already know that we don't have enough space to land the bigger fish of the convention world. We have TWO 1000 room hotels next to and within a few blocks on our convention center. Hotel rooms aren't our problem. Many of the conventions we'd love to land or used to host (think Dell) are too big or have outgrown our digs. It's not that we're throwing a bunch of money into a convention center and large hotel then "hoping" the conventions come. We're beyond capacity to host and know we're missing out of conventions that either wanted to stay or come here but can't because we don't have that capacity.
I find it interesting that so many articles questioning everything related to Austin's status come out in San Antonio publications. So SA's former city manager is putting her two cents in here in Austin. Don't be haters, SA. I don't think we in Austin are competing with you. We're two very very different cities a relative stones throw from each other, and in the same State. That's about the extent of our commonality.
End of rant!
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