Hall of Fame Hypocrisy
Mayor Anthony Foxx tells the uptown paper that he’s still pushing for the ouster of Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority chief Tim Newman, and cites as a reason inflated attendance projections for the NASCAR Hall of Fame that the tourism booster group rolled out to help land the racing museum in the Queen City.
I wasn’t in the room during the interview, but I’m assuming Foxx said all this with a straight face. Amazing.
Only a few years ago, then-councilmember Foxx was in the thick of the pack cheering for the hall of fame. Despite publicly acknowledging at the time that city leaders were short on specifics about costs and financing for the museum and attendance projections for the same, Foxx supported increasing taxes to help seal the deal and voted to move it forward.
Then he voted to balloon its budget, by $32 million, to pay for a project expansion and exhibit upgrades. At the time, Foxx again expressed concerns over the lack of information that city leaders were provided. But again, Foxx supported it.
Now Foxx is saying that if city leaders had known then what they know now, they might not have invested in the racing museum.
That’s such an incredibly disingenuous statement on so many different levels, I’m not sure where to even start, but let’s try here: the only reason city councilmembers, Foxx included, didn’t know then what they know now is because they didn’t demand answers and accountability, both from themselves and myriad uptown boosters who were pimping for the hall of fame. This is what I reported back in the day for The Rhino Times, when Foxx & Co. were told about the need to pump an additional $32 million into the racing museum:
If ignorance is bliss, the Charlotte City Council has the market cornered on Nirvana.
Councilmembers expressed shocked outrage when they learned Monday night that the NASCAR Hall of Fame’s price tag had skyrocketed by $32 million, and demanded to know why they had been left in the dark about the ballooning costs until two weeks before they were supposed to vote on an updated Hall of Fame agreement. The answer, of course, is easy. The council was left in the dark because the council loves being left in the dark, especially when it comes to nasty little things like multi-million-dollar cost overruns.
And then this, when Foxx & Co. voted to approve the $32 million budget hike:
After councilmembers snagged plenty of camera time admonishing city staffers and hall of fame planners for keeping them in the dark until last week about the skyrocketing price for exhibits, the council voted 9 to 2 to approve the increases. Democrats Patsy Kinsey and Michael Barnes voted in dissent.
…
[Winston Kelley, executive director of the NASCAR Hall of Fame], said boosting spending for high-tech, interactive exhibits would attract more first-time visitors and generate more repeat business. But when pressed by Democrat Councilmember Anthony Foxx for concrete data that would back that claim, Kelly went into a tailspin.
“It is very much a qualitative, not a quantitative analysis,” he conceded. “One of the things we heard loud and clear from the facilities we visited, as well as the consultants we talked to, is our word-of-mouth, our repeat visitation, our long-term sustainability is based on how you come out of the chute.”
…
“The promise the [hospitality] industry was made in terms of a signature destination, tourism attraction,” [CRVA Chief Tim] Newman told councilmembers, “as you’ll recall this was the thing that we felt we could hang our hat on, that this is Charlotte, unique in all the world, that we do not do ourselves the justice of the investment we are making in the project if this action item is not approved.”
Instead of aggressively pushing to slam the brakes on the racing museum then and there, Foxx swallowed the booster babble hook, line and sinker, voting to go along to get along, instead of looking out for the best interests of taxpayers.
Now Foxx wants to blame someone else for the hall’s disastrous performance, instead of accepting responsibility for his own complicity in creating that disaster. Newman makes a convenient target, and certainly is not without blame.
But there’s blame aplenty to be shared by Foxx and his uptown-boosting coconspirators on the city council, who repeatedly voted to throw copious amounts of taxpayer money down the hall of fame hole, whether out of willful ignorance or gross incompetence and abdication of leadership.
I’m not sure which is worse, but neither is good.
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