The Meck Deck’s Jeff Taylor is looking for video of the Charlotte Coliseum implosion to go with his insightful commentary. Cone has it, along with a few memories.
My coliseum memories include a couple of Grateful Dead shows and a couple of Hornets games. The crazy thing about the whole situation is the Hornets, in my opinion, were a well-run, competitive franchise. The Mugsy Bogues-Larry Johnson version played a steady, team-oriented style of basketball, while the Glen Rice-Dell Curry- Anthony Mason version combined athleticism with crisp back-door passing. I realize George Shinn wasn’t the most popular guy in town. But if Charlotte was bound and determined to have an NBA franchise, it’s too bad it couldn’t be the Hornets, because who knows when the Bobcats will be competitive.
Meanwhile, Greensboro’s grand public venue parties on as the Grasshoppers honor the one millionth fan to walk through the turnstiles at First Horizon Park.
I was ready to dismiss yesterday’s lead-up as more N&R rah-rah, but Hoppers president Donald Moore offered some interesting insights that should serve as a warning to cities with taxpayer-funded stadiums:
Based on attendance trends for minor-league baseball teams in similar-sized markets across the country, the novelty should have worn off by now. When the stadium was built, Grasshoppers President and General Manager Donald Moore’s accountant predicted a decline in attendance each year in the park’s second and third seasons. And with only two other minor-league clubs experiencing continued growth in each of their first three years in a new park since 2000, it would have been foolish not to expect such a drop-off.
“As a rule, you blow it out at the start and then things stay relatively the same or they start to fall,” Moore said. “We had to be conservative, to say, ‘Five years into this thing, can we still afford to be here?’ “
Moore added that First Horizon creates a unique experience for fans because they can “actually go down there and touch it and smell it and feel it and play on it, they enjoy that.” That’s true during the games, too, as the sight lines, especially the hillside down the right field line, are right on top of the field.That said, it will indeed be interesting to see how long the Hoppers are able to keep it up.
