By: Diane Benjamin
I heard a copy of days ago that tickets to the May 4th Stars on Ice show were discounted by 50%. Even that didn’t help.
Instead of posting this report under “Arena” on the City website, it is under BCPA:
http://www.cityblm.org/government/advanced-components/documents/-folder-1702
The Coliseum/Grossinger Motors Arena will never be successful. The only people that don’t know that are on the Bloomington City Council. They are too chicken to end it.
It would be really nice if the Executive Director was not trying to shine up a horrible event. It doesn’t matter that the fans in attendance had a nice time when the event is losing over $60k. Even if all of those fans come back and bring a friend, we are still losing over $50k. If the City is going to continue to have this albatross, why not actually try to understand why the event failed and go from there?
Thanks Mike Matejka! Your vote to build this disaster is still costing the taxpayers MILLIONS!!!!
I heard a rumor he’s thinking about running for the County Board!
I am also embarrassed for the performers. Can you imagine skating in with about 800 people in that huge arena and trying to keep a smiling face. Since 200 were comped does that mean only about 600 tickets were sold? Time to ditch that albatross.
I did not think it possible but ice skating beat out Connect Transit in the most money lost in a single day for Bloomington city government. (Connect transit about $35,000 a day). I wish this were Game of Thrones, we could have Mike and Judy drawn and quartered.
There are way too many establishment interests tied to the Arena- vendors, jobs, the Downtown cronies, and Unions (for maintenance, upkeep), just to name a few. The overwhelming majority of citizens realize that the Arena is a losing effort and will never turnaround. The rest or in denial or the inner circle. Sadly, it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Personally, I think they should sell it for a $1 and cut our (taxpayer) loses.
Part 2—-used the link and looked at some other SRO events.
3/23 BCPA Liner Notes 98 in attendance and lost over $10,000….
4/12 BCPA Rudolph Beach Party 24 tickets sold and lost more than $1500
3/22 BCPA Havana Hop 106 attendance and lost more than $4500
That Executive Director knows how to book. I love the executive comments….I would change the title to them
however. Call it “Polishing a Turd”.
Trying to steal my stories? 😎
Nope….I respect your work and know you spend a lot of time doing research. I followed your link and could not believe that they even hold the show with some of the attendance as shown. We will just say I come from a background where I did investigative support work in another state where TV stations radio stations and the newspapers actually served the public.. Being pretty much retired now I laugh at the poor excuses of media (over the air and newspapers) here. The people I worked around would have a field day here.
😎
The information provided by you in this article leads me to believe that the Arena is skating on thin ice.
🙂