It certainly doesn't feel like Christmas. It got up around 50 degrees here today. The closest thing we had to snow on the ground was the frost I scraped off my car. I guess technically there's 3 full days before Christmas so you never know. Ok, anyone who has even stopped by my blog briefly probably made the astute assumption that I'm a hockey fan and that my favorite team is the Pittsburgh Penguins. That being said, I was of course following the whole casino awarding process quite closely. There were three plans competing for one award. The North Shore plan, which didn't really seem remotely plausible. The Station Square plan, which was good in theory, but bad in execution. The Isle of Capri plan, which, in addition to the actual casino, was also committing 290 million dollars to a new multi-purpose arena for the county. Of course, the Penguins would have benefited greatly from the Isle of Capri plan. Setting the hockey angle aside, I don't understand how anyone can look at the plan and not feel like it was the best one. There is not one person in Allegheny County who can say that the arena wouldn't host an event that they might attend. My Grandmother, who rarely left Washington County, went to the arena for the circus and the Billy Graham revival.
Heinz Field hosts somewhere in the vicinity of 25-35 events per year. Steelers games, Pitt games, the WPIAL championships, and some large concerts when available. PNC Park has 81 Pirate games and good weather large concert events. If scheduled carefully, an arena can be put to use 250-300 times a year or more. 41 hockey games for the Pens, concerts, the circus, ice-shows including Stars on Ice, Disney on ice, Sesame Street on ice, etc., Monster Truck Rallies, Pro-Wrestling, basketball games, and on and on. Hell, Pitt used to hold graduation ceremonies there for the entire University. How do you turn that down and face the people you just screwed? It can't possibly have had anything to do with the actual casino. Everyone involved knows that on some level none of the plans were going to meet their 1 year earning projections or their 5 year earning projections. Where exactly are the people using these machines going to come from? I know that people plan vacations to gamble, I get that. However, what does Pittsburgh have to offer to compete with Atlantic City, Vegas, Niagra Falls, etc.? And the casino is only slots. No table games. Serious gamblers need a tad more than slots. It absolutely baffles me how you can be a fully functioning adult and turn down 290 million FREE dollars. I guess instead of laying out money for season tickets next year I'll have to invest in the Center Ice package on satellite so that I can see the Kansas City Penguins or Cows or whatever the hell they end up being.