Transcription of Judge Hidalgo's new remarks on the Astrodome
In a video live stream on Wednesday, August 28, Judge Hidalgo addressed the current status of the Astrodome project. Below I've transcribed her remarks, which begin at 08:49 in the video.
Q: Has the county made a decision on what to do with the Astrodome?
Hidalgo: There was a decision on the Astrodome; $105 million had been committed by the previous judge to a project that, when I came in, we had our team study it, and it turned out that it was a design that wasn't going to make sure that we got contracts in the Astrodome [My note: I assume she's referring to tenant lease contracts] and basically would have ended up with a building that didn't have air conditioning, which no convention was going to rent that out. It wouldn't have had the finishes, it would have gotten rid of all the seating. So it wouldn't have looked good. It wouldn't have been ready for use. So I felt very uncomfortable investing $105 million on that, knowing that that kind of money could go to flooding.
So we're working with the Astrodome Conservancy, hopefully for them to to run a public process to come up with a new idea and how to fund it, and make sure it's partnerships that fund it. But the current plan is inadequate. It would be unfair to taxpayers to spend money on that, and we can't dictate a new plan, because people feel so strongly about it. So we're in conversations with the conservancy about that.
_____________
My comments:
So we're almost literally back at square one, after a full decade of research, think tanks, competitions and public input. The only difference is that there is now a conservancy in place, which wasn't the case 10 years ago.
The judge made a couple of comments that are disturbing:
"...no convention was going to rent that out..." It's an almost unbelievable failure of either understanding on her part or communication to her team by the conservancy, that she is even mentioning conventions. As Judge Emmett said many times, the Astrodome has not been considered and should not be considered a convention hall. No stakeholders have advocated a convention hall. Harris County and Houston do not need another convention hall, especially at that location. Trade exhibitions and public exhibitions like boat shows are not conventions.
"...it would have gotten rid of all the seating..." Surely she knows that almost all of the seating has already been removed and sold. What I hope she was referring to is the part of the Emmett plan calling for a large section of seating tiers to be re-installed, apparently at the insistence of the Texas Historical Commission. IF that's what she's talking about, it would mean that, in order to free up budget dollars for AC, the planned restoration of seating tiers was going to be delayed, to be done under a second phase in some future year. But if she and commissioners believe that all of the seating has to be restored, that's a big problem.