Cirque Du Soleil has been talking to staff since last year about using the Parade Stadium field as a location for their performances. The proposal is Cirque will lease the field from August 22 to October 28, 2005 and pay the Park Board $50,000 for that use. The Park Board will do some initial site preparation, and then Cirque will spend another $225,000 on doing site preparation, such as adding gates, removing ball field lights, etc. Rietkerk says this is an advantage for the Park Board, because of plans for installing an artificial turf field at this location, and would have to do construction preparation work like removing sprinklers and fences anyway. He says this will save some money because Cirque will do some of that work. When Cirque leaves town, they will do nothing further to the site. It will be left in whatever state it is in -- unusable for recreation.
All parking will be handled on site using the existing lots to the east and west of the field, except for perhaps a few performances where larger crowds might result in some overflow parking, which the Park Board is trying to work with Dunwoody to accommodate across Dunwoody Blvd in their parking lot there. The plan is to close the Vineland entrances to all of those lots during Cirque performances, and have all traffic enter/exit from Dunwoody. Note that Cirque Du Soliel gets ALL of the parking revenue thus generated, until it exceeds $225,000, after which they share it with the Park Board.
A typical Cirque performance expects 350 to 375 cars, and there is parking on site for 500. Cirque's performance tent seats about 2500 people.
and
Commissioner Vivian Mason supports Erwin, and says that not enough notice to neighborhoods (residents, institutions like the Walker, and businesses) was done [in fact, none]; that they learned about it through the newspaper and then contact her [its Mason's district], often irately. She asks if staff has yet contacted the neighborhood, and the answer is no. She asks if there are costs for dismantling bleachers and fences, and who pays them. The answer is that the Park Board will be paying for that.
As usual the staff comes to the commissioners with little or no information on the costs involved in one of their "cooperative projects" with a private business. Notice how quick they were to bring out the $$$$ they will receive. If I were a commissioner (wishful thinking :-) I would like to know an estimate of the NET gain to the MPRB. Also doing a little math 500 cars X 68 days (lets say 1 performance per day) x $5.00 per car = $170,000. In order for the MPRB to get any parking revenue if they max out parking for 68 performances it will cost over $6.62 to park your car ( if I lived in the neighborhood I'd be concerned about parking too as people will be looking to save a few $$$ by parking in front of my house) . I imagine there may be a few sold out performances and that in this town paying over $10.00 to park for an event is nothing but I feel we will be once again subsidizing an event attended mostly by suburbanites.
Liz Wielinski Columbia Park Not a fan of any circus but the MPRB
REMINDERS: 1. Be civil! Please read the NEW RULES at http://www.e-democracy.org/rules. If you think a member is in violation, contact the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list.
2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait.
For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________
Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:mpls@mnforum.org Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
