The first story involved the City of Katy, an Exburb City on the far Western reaches of the Houston region who it seems has caught a fever with the only cure being more
Katy plans convention center, hotel. Jenny Aldridge, Houston Business Journal
The estimated $10 million project will be anchored by an 80-acre retention pond south of Kingsland Boulevard and will include a 50,000 to 60,000-square-foot convention center. The city is currently in negotiations with Houston-based Simpkins Group to purchase the 10 to 15 acres for the project, and hopes to have a deal inked by September, according to Kayce Reina, director of tourism and marketing for the city.
Plans also include a 4- to 5-star hotel, with several well-known hotel brands showing interest. Officials declined to disclose what hotel brands expressed interest.
The first issue here is obvious. When you think of the great boardwalks of America you think of Coney Island or Atlantic City. Being generous (very) we'll remain in Texas and say Kemah and the Pleasure Pier are examples of the type. All of these share an important geographical feature. Namely, they are situated on a natural coast line.
You are not going to find, across the world, any great boardwalk built on the banks of an 80-foot retention pond. And while supporters might look up to the Woodlands and say "but wait, their waterway is man-made" I would counter that it's also surrounded by a master-planned community that took decades to construct and develop to the point that the waterway made sense. It would also be prudent to mention that the Woodlands is known more for it's golf than it is for giving good boardwalk.
It also mentions, in the same story, that Sugar Land is considering the building of a convention center, which I'm sure will be anchored by a taxpayer-subsidized hotel.
Then we have the story of Dublin Texas, who is continuing to beat the great white whale of tourism to death despite all evidence to the contrary.
Is there life after Dr. Pepper? Dublin wonders. Emily Schmall, AP via Chron.com
But Dublin without Dr Pepper is turning out to be a hard sell. At the annual summer festival in June — the first since 1980 in which Dr Pepper's birthday was not celebrated — the town saw how far its largest tourism event had fallen.
Five line dancers in tap shoes performed to a near-empty set of bleachers. The bicycle race was canceled after the organizers failed to show. An arts and crafts fair included only two stands. Food options were also slim: the Surfing Cowboy's Cajun shrimp on a stick or a Mexican taco truck.
Let's be clear here. "Tourism" development is NOT, nor has it ever been, about that murky cure-all for bad policy known as economic development. The arguments that convention centers and public-subsidized events create Billions in economic benefit are hazy constructions built on fuzzy math. They have about as much basis in reality as do estimations of public attendance at rallies and un-ticketed events.
The only reason these unelected tourism bureaus create playpens are to justify their (to quote Mel Brooks) "phony baloney jobs". They have been given a charge to increase tourism so they follow the play-books of other small and mid-size townships the only way they know how. In many cases what they seek to replicate (a boardwalk) is something that they've either seen in the news or to places that they've recently visited. Make no mistake that the Houston push for a more "walkable, livable central core" is nothing more than Euro-yearning by a group of people who recently obtained a passport and realized that the world's great cities are so for a reason. Amazingly, these same sycophants rail against the homogenization of the American suburb while trying to attain the same thing in American cities.
Want to see something sad? Go to Santa Barbara, California and walk around downtown. It has the feel of Europe, but sanitized, as if a great US corporation came in and tidied up all of the rough edges, took away anything that might be offensive to the creative class, and plopped it right back down in the middle of an area who only had to sell it's soul in return.
This is the big problem with Houston Financial Derangement Syndrome. It's a disease that sucks the soul and uniqueness out of a community in exchange for a Stepford Wives version of something vaguely touristy. Unfortunately, the business of soul-sucking is expensive and is always paid for by the people who can afford it the least. In return for these faux-palaces of authentic fakery the public is left with little money in the public coffers to do things such as pave roads and maintain parks.
In other words, they're left with something closely resembling Houston.
