"Mayors and local elected officials often like to support big, large-scale development projects. It gives them something that they can point to and claim as a record of a major public advance. It’s easier to take the money and build things like that than deal with rather more intractable urban problems like the quality of the schools or drug problems or the overall level of violence and criminality. Those are tough things to tackle. They take time and a lot of money. Doing big projects, particularly big projects where you can argue that visitors are paying the tab, that’s a nice quick simple fix."

The whole convention center/hotel phenomena at this point is hard to figure after all the the research, then real life examples of those who ignored it.

Brookings Institute
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Convention Hotels
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Upwards of a billion dollars on that boondoggle just doesn't make sense; especially since Metro is busy cutting schoolteachers, police, fire, and insisting on across the board cuts. It's a fairly expensive field of dreams to be diving into, and given the experience of co-ownership of the Titans & Predators facilities, you'd think there'd be a little more caution in evidence. Not so much, though.

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Dirty deeds done dirt cheap! Special holidays, Sundays and rates!

Pigeon Forge is in the mist of the Convention Center and Host Hotel craze. The State Building Commission approved public financing of this boondoggle. Even after a citizen appeared and offered testimony before the Commission demanding they stop the bond funding approval.

Two studies authored by Dr. Heywood Sanders were entered into testimony and the record. Those studies made clear building publicly funded convention centers are not economic development activities, and that host hotels only add to the problems of under performing convention centers.

The State Building Commission approved the Pigeon Forge application even though it was incomplete, submitted past deadline, and had various deficiencies, such as millions of dollars in authorized bond funds which did not appear on the master budget–as required by the enabling legislation.

Add to this the arbitrary and capricious action by the Department of Finance by way of failing to promulgate rules and regulations governing the application process and procedures. They just made it up as they went along.

Dr. Sanders is a very well studied man. His articles and lectures are second to none.