View Full Version : Let's get in debt even more for something we don't even need!
This is a rant.
I have to say, living in the country and enjoying the economic slow down has been great. I haven't worried about the whole coutryside being run over with development. But I can feel it picking up again.
About 15 miles from here, a rural area that is between a city and a smaller town, the county officials have decided that what they need instead of 1500 acres of farmland is a HUGE athletic complex. It will have tons of buildings and 20 baseball/other types of sports fields. They just broke ground on it. It will supposedly attract hundreds of thousands of people to sports events there.
WTF?? There wasn't even a need for this, with all the other sports venues in the county.
Why do people have to create a need that isn't even there, and then destroy farmland to build it with monies they probably don't even have?
I am so ticked off. And I might as well kiss our beautiful dark night sky goodbye when all those lights go on there. I'm still reeling from a 1,300 acre city that went in just 8 miles from here a couple years ago.
I'm ticked. :devil:
Got to admit, CathyA, that when I read the title of your post I thought it would be a rant about Black Friday! :laff:
Sorry this is happening in your neck of the woods...
iris lily
11-22-11, 9:26pm
yes, athletic community centers, giants ones, are the rage. Yet our populace gets fatter and fatter. I'm sure the city fathers used those "fatter and fatter" numbers to justify the latest athletic palace.
People! walk a few. jog one. weed your garden. those are just a few ways to expend calories.
Now that said, I do have a membership to a gym.
Are you near coatesville, pa per chance?
there was a family farm there that they were fighting eminent domain because the township wanted to take over their farm and build an "athletic complex" that seemed to have no purpose in the area. It was because a developer owned the neighboring land, and pitched this idea of "growing the community" by combining that land and the land owned by this one family for generations into this large shopping, athletic, and housing complex -- he just needed the city to take over the remaining farms to use as "public land and services" via eminent domain, and then he would get the contract to build both the public spaces and the houses.
The thing is, there seemed to be NO purpose for this -- as there was no demand for the supply. Even the township PEOPLE said that they didn't see how this would be beneficial, when the historic parts of coatesville could use the sprucing up with contracts that would go to this builder!
Anyway. . .
There is a new athletic center in this one neighborhood here in wellington, and it's already completely booked out. There's already a large community center there (pool, skate park, indoor skate/basketball, indoor track, athletic fields, play ground), but apparently they needed a SECOND one.
on the plus side, it was basically old warehouses, so it's now a nice new center, and BOTH places are very heavily used here. It's also caused a domino effect in that side of the neighborhood -- there's a fair bit if gussying up the place around the center, and I think it's going to domino all the way to lyall bay (which is beach front). The whole area has been rather depressed looking, and now the houses are being purchased and fixed up.
perhaps regentrification is not what you were looking for, but. . . yeah.
ApatheticNoMore
11-23-11, 2:30am
I thought you meant a sports stadium, and I just nodded. Sports stadiums, I wish they wouldn't build those either ....
A similar thing is going on here with the development of an F1 racetrack on the outskirts of the city. Only thing is, halfway through its amazingly quick city approval, the investors could not come to an agreement and all construction has stopped. Who knows what will happen eventually but now we have many acres of destroyed environment - many humans and wildlife have been affected and not in a good way.
Perhaps athletic venues are like so many other development projects - the money is made in the flipping and the investors don't give a flip about the toll.
These developers and business people are so stuck in one way of thinking, and tunnel-visioned. They're like addicts trying to get their next fix. I find them disgusting. They'll do anything/ruin anything to get what they want.
Gardenarian
11-23-11, 2:43pm
I am in complete agreement with you on this one. I can not understand the amount of land and money and energy being put into sports. I live in a town of around 3000, and we have 4 playing fields - most them empty at any given time.
Then we have a little 1/4 acre that is for the community gardens, for which there is an enormous waiting list.
I'm thinking of starting a new group - "Food not Sports"!
I'm thinking of starting a new group - "Food not Sports"!
DO IT! That would be a great campaign, and I bet you'd get lots of support.
I am not opposed to sports facilities that are designed for regular, daily use by the community. But most places could probably make better use of school facilities rather than building somethign entirely new. This in one nice thing they did with the new middle school in my home town -- they actually open up the gym at certain times of the day when it isn't being used by the kids so that the community can use the facilities (weights, basketball courts, etc.) That's a win-win situation, if you ask me, and good use of limited resources. Also can be a moneymaker for the school (or at least generate enough in use fees to pay for the lights, heat and janatorial services. But building huge stadia and grandstands that get used once a week for 3-4 months a year? Definitely not a fan...
lhamo
yes, athletic community centers, giants ones, are the rage. Yet our populace gets fatter and fatter. I'm sure the city fathers used those "fatter and fatter" numbers to justify the latest athletic palace.
People! walk a few. jog one. weed your garden. those are just a few ways to expend calories.
Now that said, I do have a membership to a gym.
You are right. The gym is certainly appealing when you don't want to go out in rain or worse, freezing fog! Or 100 + degree heat. but I don't have a gym membership. And I haven't been going out in that freezing fog either.
These developers and business people are so stuck in one way of thinking, and tunnel-visioned. They're like addicts trying to get their next fix. I find them disgusting. They'll do anything/ruin anything to get what they want.
Amen to that! I moved out of a congested Philadelphia suburb, King of Prussia (home of the largest shopping center in the country, I think) to what I thought would be a more countrified farther-out suburb, only to find that it's every bit as congested as K of P and the township supervisors are working on making it even more like King of Prussia!
We have a bridge to nowhere, built with Federal funds from one of Obama's construction worker relief programs, a Sheraton Hotel in progress, and positively invasive widening and resurfacing work being done on the PA Turnpike.
I've been thinking of starting an Onion sort of newspaper making fun of the township. The hotel is particularly hilarious because there's nothing nearby but a Holiday Inn, two gas stations, a Starbucks wannabe, and a neighborhood sandwich and beer place that looks like it hasn't been remodeled since it was built circa 1900. For a masthead, I'll take a shot of the bridge on a gray day, when the fog-colored concrete disappears leaving visible only a row of trees that appear to be growing in mid-air.
These people are MORONS! Have they not heard of Peak Oil? Have they not noticed that people are traveling less because of the Great Recession?
I try to console myself by thinking that the snazzy Sheraton will one day be a nice place for the homeless to stay.
I think there needs to be a separation of sports and state just like that of church and state (which needs to be toughened up) and for EXACTLY the same reason. I'm thinking here of the big sport franchises demanding that municipalities build them sports complexes at tax payer expense so the owner and players can make billions while the public can't afford even the cheap seats. (which I realize is not the issue you are talking about here, but hey, a rant is a rant!) When I tell people that I don't do religion I usually say "and that includes professional sports!"
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