Monday, August 30, 2010

Arena Politics


Anyone notice how they call Dale Lockett, the president and CEO of the ACVB, a "contractor" in this news piece? When it comes to convention business and marketing, I'll take his expertise over a politician and a preacher any day. Way to go ABQJou...what? KOB? For shame.

As an aside, I actually prefer the plans shown on the kob website over the latest ones. The renderings show a 15,000 seat arena, hotel, retail, residence combination all to the west of the railroad tracks. I like the intensity of this plan as it compliments the developing area behind the Century Theatre development. This plan would allow for some interesting spaces on 1st Street and Copper near the arena. This would also alleviate some of the issues that the Edo 'nabe has with the current plans as it would open up more adjacent land for development that better compliments that neighborhood. The arena-to-neighborhood transition is a tough design issue that I don't feel has been thoroughly addressed in the latest plan. But the plan as shown on kob assumes a resolution to the Big Bytes building fiasco. Perhaps it should be done now that the real estate industry is in a lull.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That plan is obsolete and I'm glad they dumped it. The plan included a wimpy hotel of about 15 stories. Under the new plan the hotel is a slender 35 story tower. Since the arena isn't going to be adequate in either plan, I just want to see the hotel get built. I also like the restaurants/shops plaza in the new plan.

Tim said...

It's the same "plan" but just crammed together more than the latest plan. The hotel was only made taller in the latest revision. My point was that I liked the idea of the entire project being located to the west of the tracks.