Posted Jun 19, 2010, 12:15 PM
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You talkin' to me?
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Calgary, AB
Posts: 1,322
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Finally some decent pushback from the proponents of the convention centre. The coalition to save the view are just using their financial numbers case to disguise their real reason for fighting this, which is to save that view..
Quote:
Different point of ‘View’
Boosters of new trade centre crash news conference
The gloves came off Friday in the debate over new convention centre for Halifax.
A news conference put on by the Coalition to Save the View came to a barroom brawl-style conclusion when boosters of a new convention centre crashed the event and took verbal jabs at talk of renovating the existing facility. Coalition supporters punched back with statistics.
The coalition is promoting renovations to the current centre as a lower-cost alternative to building a new one two blocks away as part of a complex that would also include a highrise hotel and condominium development.
"It would be extremely costly to renovate the existing trade centre, and in the end we’d be left with something substandard," Peter Hendrickson, president of Tour Tech East, said during the news conference at the Khyber Arts Centre on Barrington Street.
Trade Centre Ltd. added more sizzle to the debate shortly after the coalition’s news conference started by posting on its website a 2007 consultant’s report that shreds any possibility of renovating the existing complex.
Coalition members called the news conference to bash proponents of the project planned for the former site of the Halifax Herald Ltd. building on Argyle Street. They say the supporters have been feeding taxpayers faulty financials to support their case. Those documents and the 2007 consultant’s report are all posted on the Trade Centre Ltd. website.
"There is no business case for a new convention centre," said coalition member Beverley Miller.
She said proponents of a new centre have provided inadequate economic analysis and have failed to consider the implications for taxpayers.
"If we’re being asked to spend $140 million, and have to pay financing costs, we have to consider the huge increase in convention attendance required," Miller said.
Coalition members reiterated their previous arguments that the convention sector is on the decline and Halifax is too small for a big new convention centre that would leave taxpayers footing the bill for years to come.
Renovating the existing 25-year-old complex is a reasonable alternative, they say.
Hendrickson made a comment about thinking small and staying small, and he started to quiz coalition members on the validity of their numbers and statistics.
Coalition member Allan Robertson interrupted and suggested the question-and-answer session be turned back over to the working media. Hendrickson then made an abrupt exit.
When a bunch of other supporters of the Argyle Street proposal headed for the exit, a gaggle of reporters gave chase, microphones at the ready. The result was what public relations people call a crash-and-burn — reporters lined up to get comments from convention centre supporters while the coalition’s news conference virtually disintegrated.
"It will be interesting to see how all this plays out," Robertson said to a colleague.
Robert Zed, chairman of the Zed Group, an event management company in Halifax, said it makes sense to analyze the viability of a new convention centre. But he questioned the coalition’s credibility in opposing the project on an economic basis after first arguing that its priority was protecting the view of the harbour from Citadel Hill.
Mary Lou Crowley, president and CEO of the Mental Health Foundation of Nova Scotia, said her organization’s major annual fundraiser sells out at 800 people and more space is needed. She said the Argyle Street proposal sounds terrific.
"We had to turn away 100 people last year because the existing trade centre did not have the capacity," she said.
Ian Taylor, a coalition supporter, said all taxpayers in Nova Scotia, not just those in Halifax, should be concerned that the province is considering investing in the project without assessing whether it has a proper business model.
"If they want to build it, they should create a new business tax to pay for it," he said.
He said general taxpayers should not have to shoulder the burden.
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