Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Orlando Loves its Downtown Arena; Restauranteurs - Not So Much

The Orlando Sentinel reports on a series of failed restaurant projects around the heralded Amway Center in Downtown Orlando:
Before the doors even opened at The Club at NBA City, the new restaurant at the Amway Center is dead on arrival — with taxpayers left to pick up the expensive pieces.

Last May, Orlando officials signed a five-year lease with the restaurant's backers to finally fill the vacant space on the ground floor of the city-owned arena and even held a groundbreaking when construction workers began the build-out.

But the restaurant's backers defaulted on their lease with the city and never paid their contractor, leaving the space unfinished.

On Monday, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and city commissioners voted to take the unusual step of using taxpayer money to pay The Club at NBA City's contractor for its work and to finish the construction. The cost: $738,000.
Read more here.

6 comments:

  1. Chris LamberthJanuary 16, 2013 at 5:32 PM

    It must be noted that the new Amway Center is making a positive impact (traffic not withstanding) on the neighborhood west of I-4 along Church and South Streets. Hopefully development and improvements will follow into the Holden/Parramore neighborhood to the west

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  2. AnonymousJanuary 16, 2013 at 7:15 PM

    Aha, Negative Noah, who's to say it's not a owner problem in a tough economy, then a around the arena problem?

    http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/blog/2011/11/amway-center-earns-profit-in-year-one.html

    http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-07-03/news/os-economic-impact-nba-all-stars-20120703_1_economic-impact-spending-orlando-magic-ceo

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  3. Noah PranskyJanuary 20, 2013 at 9:38 PM

    Not much negative spin on that post, I have to say.

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    Replies
    1. AnonymousJanuary 22, 2013 at 5:06 PM

      And, it was a "negative spin", knowing it was another shot at those in favor of building a new stadium. Let's keep it real, would you of posted it if it talked about the Amway center helping bring more revenue to Orlando then going out monthly for it, or if it wasn't built at all?

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  4. Noah PranskyJanuary 20, 2013 at 9:45 PM

    Actually, in reviewing the second post from the above comment, the heralded economic study in the article was "commissioned by the Orlando Magic." So take the numbers with a grain of salt...

    Stadiums and areans do great things for communities when they bring in visitors from out of town...but the effects are tempered if the community is paying huge sums each year to finance the facility.

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  5. AnonymousJanuary 22, 2013 at 12:34 PM

    LOL, though your opinions would be better heard if you mustard up real numbers from local economist on the real future's overall impact of a NEW Tropicana at Channelside for the next century, opposed to reposting articles of by glass-half-empty columnist from cities with bad owners that seemed to not think location was much of a priority when building a stadium; We gotta give you credit, you do respond to your critics... Thanks

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