Remember when Charlotte city councilman John Lassiter, I think, floated the idea of a publicly-funded soccer plex? It would draw regional tourism dollars, or some such fantasy. Anyone else recall this?
Anyway, here’s Jacksonville’s experience:
Over the last three years, Onslow County has funneled a little over $550,000 of its tourism money into a soccer complex in the White Oak township that has yet to open.
Friday, commissioners wanted to know why. The board also asked when the facility at the former Tabernacle School would open and how much the county would still be asked to fund before that happens.
Meeting at the Onslow County Museum on Friday for the last of a scheduled two-day workshop, the board discussed issues regarding the county’s tourism funding, chief among them the current status and future direction of the Onslow Classic Soccer Association’s Tabernacle Soccer Complex.
In 2004, the county allocated $202,881 to buy the land from Onslow County Schools and added $350,000 in 2006 for construction of the facility, as well as to assist in the wake of certain permitting problems that had developed with the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources, chairman Martin Aragona Jr. said. The money was taken from the county’s tourism budget. The county is leasing the property to the Jacksonville-Onslow Sports Commission until the soccer association earns nonprofit status.
And I think Wilmington has a soccer plex as well. Soccer plexes seem to be the new go-to item from some tourism playbook somewhere. The telling point is that they all tend to assume and depend on local soccer leagues raising tons of money to make the numbers work, money that usually ends up coming out of local park and rec budgets, instead.
From the outset a soccer plex would seem to be a horrible tourism “investment,” but as every other town and city has one, just what is the point?
