Arena Study to Include Thalia Mara

The original push for an arena came after the Downtown Partners trip to Little Rock a few years back. (I was on that trip.) The idea was inspired in part by the Verizon Arena (it was Alltel Arena then), whose management told the group that they specifically avoid having much in the way of professional sports... the fundamental problem is that minor league teams are middling draws when they win and bad draws when the lose.

Verizon Arena hosted an arena football team for 7-8 games the year we were there, I think, and that was it. (The idea was, I suppose, that arena football is exciting and novel enough that people might go even if their team isn't winning.)

Instead, the idea is to avoid a major sports schedule so that you have dates open for Taylor Swift concerts, Paula Dean type stuff, the circus, festivals, tractor pulls or whatever.

I'm not sure what the 2011 numbers were like, but Verizon Arena was having some trouble in 2009 and 2010 with losses, in part because they were about 10 years in and the arena needs updates and repairs, while some of the corporate pledges that the initial arena effort started had to be renegotiated. By and large it operated on thin margins according to the management, who seemed to run a pretty tight ship.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5248/is_28_27/ai_n55090273/

The question for Jackson is really whether an arena should be our next phase of development; it's sort a chicken-and-egg problem when it comes to the arena vs. big music acts and so on... are they not coming because the Coliseum sucks, but would come for a new arena? Or are they not coming regardless of the facility. Maybe a feasibility study can help with that determination.

Good points, Todd.

I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer, but I don't think it is the current state of our Coliseum that is the problem. It's more that Jackson can't or won't support the events or artists that could or would come through.

To produce a show of a Madonna, Maroon 5, Beyonce, JayZ, Kanye level crowd costs MILLIONS and the shows are quite amazing. But can enough Jackson and surrounding area people support that? Not really... I mean, I saw WAY back(80's) in the day when KISS came, Bon Jovi came, some others here and there. I saw an acoustic set with James Taylor in the late 90's... But overall, not that many huge acts come through Jackson anymore. Even if one of today's acts did come through? Do we have the people to support it? Would a Katy Perry or GaGa be boycotted and all over the news? Like when Marilyn Manson tried to come to town? Even the always questionable and annoyingly ever present in some form Chip Matthews manages to get better gigs at his ramshackle bars than the Coliseum. He got Snoop Dogg, Motley Crue, Vanilla Ice, Seether and others and those were the just events I bartended, not even going in the nasty bar part...

Why? Well, IMO Jackson is geographically GREAT and centered for it's inhabitants to go to other cities and visit (3 hrs to Memphis-great shows, 3 hours to NOLA-great shows, 4 hours to Mobile-great shows), 3 hours to the coast-great shows). But Jackson is geograpically alone out here in Central MS. When I am in Raleigh, NC and they have HUGE acts coming though, the city also has Durham and Chapel Hill (roughly 3 Jacksons) all together and a pool of over 1.5 million folks to bring in. In Tampa, where I work... there are AMAZING acts coming through (But St. Pete and Clearwater are right here together-3 Jackson, all together) and there are over 1.3 million in the metropolitan area. Sooo, how is our little 300K gonna sell the tickets that pay the bills for those kinds of acts to come in?

Arena football? In MS? Sports arena? We can't even keep a team. Our hockey team went away and our baseball team moved to Pearl. We don't have a professional team really... I mean, we can still function as a city when some of the biggest numbers and folks flood downtown and Fondren for JSU Stadium games. Our biggest drive is SEC, and that's only part of the year. What will fill the seats for the other part? Will my tax dollars, or my kids, or theirs be paying for this?

I really DO want a good venue for music, for artists to come, for sports... and even for a circus or a tractor pull. But we have places "that'll do"... Can we not spend the money on things the city really needs? Like some water pipes, roads, and maybe even the ever-looming Fortification projects?

Just some random musings on the subject...

Maybe we should put the money into fixing the roads and pipes and promoting what Jackson has that others don't. Any city can build an arena, not everyone can have our blues, local musicians, welcoming people and everything else in this week's BOJ issue.

Lizwaibel, I like that idea. It seems like it would be a lot more practical, and better use of urban space to take that money they have pledged and just fix up the coliseum (aka the arena we already have) than spend millions building a new one. Just my opinion, but I'd much rather see our downtown grow and promote small local music venues than some huge and unnecessary venue that might bring some big acts to town, but will largely go unused. Small venues can be rented out and have the potential to bring both money and people to Jackson a lot more consistently, than some huge act that comes to town every once and a while.