A million here, a million there, and pretty soon we're talking about serious money

Lo and behond, the David L. Lawrence Convention Center continues to bleed red ink:

The authority, which owns local sports venues and parking garages, has failed to earn a profit at the Downtown convention center. Operating the building is projected to create a $3.8 million loss in 2008. Revenues are projected to reach $5.9 million, but expenses would be $9.8 million.

Of course, people like me have been criticizing the convention center almost from the moment it was built. The reality, though, is that we are stuck with it. So what's to be done? In my opinion, we need to spend just enough money to keep the building safe, functional and attractive -- but not a penny more. That means no publicly funded convention center hotel, an idea whose time will never come.

Conventionally bad thinking

Some bad ideas just won't die:

Downtown Pittsburgh can finally move ahead with plans for a headquarters hotel, with 400 to 500 rooms, adjacent to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.

That's because the state Legislature this week included a $34 million subsidy for the $103 million project when it approved projects paid for from the slots development fund. The fund, based on 5 percent of taxes paid by slots casinos, also is helping to pay for a replacement for Mellon Arena. (From the Post-Gazette.)

I wrote this article for the Pittsburgh Business Times last year. I don't think much has changed since then:

Most of the time, Downtown hotels have only about a 60 percent occupancy rate, which to Strunk means that the city doesn't need any more hotels -- least of all a publicly subsidized one adjacent to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. ...

Pittsburgh's real problem is that it is competing for conventioneers in an overcrowded market, said Heywood Sanders, a professor of public administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Sanders has studied the proliferation of convention centers nationwide and has closely followed the situation in Pittsburgh.

"What has gone on in Pittsburgh is what has gone on in lots of other cities, which are often faced with convention centers that don't perform as their proponents had hoped or promised, and so it is argued that what you need is an adjacent hotel," Sanders said.

As in Pittsburgh, officials in several other cities have failed to lure a private investor to take on the cost of building a convention center hotel, and so local governments either finance the hotels and assume ownership, or give subsidies to private developers.

Strunk sees that as evidence that the hotels won't be profitable, and he believes that even the most optimistic convention center projections will leave Pittsburgh with a glut of hotel space most of the year. ...

Sanders said convention center hotels in several cities, including Houston, St. Louis and Philadelphia, have failed to perform as expected.

"You're dealing with a pretty unforgiving market environment when it comes to running a hotel. If people aren't staying there, you can't pay the bills, and if you have to lower your rates to do it, then you put downward pressure on everyone else in the market," Sanders said.

We should never have expanded the convention center. Spending public funds to build a hotel there will only compound the error. How far would $34 million go toward shoring up public transportation in Pittsburgh? Fixing our sewers?

Nah, much better to spend it on a hotel that will sit empty half the year.

Blast from the past

Hey, remember Tom Murphy? The mayor who presided over Pittsburgh's descent into state receivership? The guy who wanted to level Downtown and replace it with a glorified shopping mall? The guy whose bribe, er, I mean, contract, for the firefighters union ensured his third-term victory?

Well, as Mark Rauterkus discovered, some people still listen to what this guy has to say (from the San Jose Mercury News):

Tom Murphy, a senior fellow with the Urban Land Institute, was mayor of Pittsburgh overseeing the development of a stadium. Failure would have meant losing the Steelers. The odds were long that the team would stay in town and even longer that a new stadium could be built, but the city got it done.

``The referendum to pay for the development was defeated by 70 percent. But we decided we're going to do it anyway, because the Steelers were important to Pittsburgh in terms of our psyche and in terms of who we were,'' Murphy said. ``We were a Rust Belt, declining city and we were losing our Steelers.''

Murphy said $262 million was raised from the team, the state and hotel and sales taxes to build a baseball park, a football stadium and a convention center. The former mayor believes the development succeeded because it was incorporated into the city, rather than standing apart.

I drove around Heinz Field recently on my way to the Children's Museum. Seems to me there is still an awful lot of vacant land surrounding it. And I'm glad the article mentioned the convention center, which has consistently failed to live up to expectations since it was built.

The best part, though, is how Murphy practically boasts about defying the will of the voters. Then again, considering that he was twice re-elected mayor, maybe he's right to scoff. Maybe people truly do get the government they deserve.