Local: The Civic Center caved

September 21, 2007
By Billy Dennis

Blogger C.J. Summers filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the Peoria Civic Center Authorities full line item budget. The PCCA claimed at at city council meeting that it’s piddly little four-page summary was the only document that it needed to make public.

Today, C.J. has two posts up, one linking to the PDF file that they emailed to him that looks pretty much like the full-budget, or at least more moer detailed summary. The other posts questions one of the items, a new scoreboard that replaces one that’s just five years old.

An excellence piece of citizen journalism, C.J.

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9 Responses to “ Local: The Civic Center caved ”

  1. anonymous on September 21, 2007 at 12:23 pm

    The old score board wasn’t five years old. It was here for five years but it was purchased used. Second, the picture was terrible and many of the features were hard to read. Get your facts right.

  2. C. J. Summers on September 21, 2007 at 1:20 pm

    Anon– So they paid $850,000 for a used scoreboard with terrible picture quality that they knew wasn’t going to last them more than five years? Not good.

  3. BJStone on September 21, 2007 at 3:37 pm

    $850,000? Holy crap, that was cheap. New ones without the bells and whistles the Civic Center scoreboard has run about 1.2 to 1.5 mil, and new fancy ones go for 2.5 million and up. I say thumbs up to the Civic Center for getting five years out of that thing at that price.

    Plus, I’m quite certain that the costs were also split with some of the tenants. I know the Rivermen helped to pay for that board, and I was under the impression the old Pirates regime (pre-Pat Ward) and possibly even Bradley helped pick up some of the tab.

    So, C.J., now it doesn’t look so bad after all, does it?

  4. C. J. Summers on September 21, 2007 at 5:53 pm

    Fantastic, B.J. Sounds like they really got a deal. Not that I don’t believe you, but I tried to find prices on new, comparable scoreboards and was unsuccessful. The closest I could come was Daktronics said they have scoreboards that range in price from $1,000 to $7,000,000. So, what was your source on those prices? Can you provide a link?

  5. The Peoria Chronicle » Blog Archive » Another new scoreboard? So soon? on September 21, 2007 at 6:03 pm

    [...] Some commentators over at the Peoria Pundit are saying the Civic Center purchased the scoreboard used and got it for a bargain. I have no way [...]

  6. BJ Stone on September 21, 2007 at 7:59 pm

    C.J. – not many of these companies (if any) are willing to print their prices on websites.

    Here’s some links I found:

    This one cost between 1.5 and 1.8 mil…

    http://www.news.missouristate.edu/releases/30962.htm

    Here’s another 1.5 million dollar board…

    http://superdome.com/uploads/ArenaMediaKit2008NBAAllStar3807.pdf

    Here’s one in Minnesota that cost 4 mil four years ago…

    http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/stories/2003/12/08/focus3.html

    And here’s one in the Carolinas cost 5 mil a couple of years back…

    http://www.centauth.com/arenafacts.html

    For the record, here’s an article for an earlier one (1997) in North Carolina that was supposed to cost only $400,000.

    http://hockey.ballparks.com/NHL/CarolinaHurricanes/oldindex.htm

  7. C. J. Summers on September 21, 2007 at 9:43 pm

    Thanks — the one from JQH Arena (the one that cost between $1.5 and $1.8 million) looks comparable to the Civic Center’s. Considering the Civic Center spent $850,000 on the one in 2002 and now wants to spend $700,000 more this year — that’s a total of $1.55 million — I wonder if it wouldn’t have been more cost effective to just get a new one in the first place.

  8. BJ Stone on September 21, 2007 at 10:00 pm

    Two things: 1) Getting five years out of on of these things is apparently a good thing from what I’m told and 2) at the speed of today’s technological developments the video portion of them is obsoleted every few years anyway.

    I think it was a great buy, particularly given the fact that the tenants helped to pay for it.

  9. BJ Stone on September 21, 2007 at 10:34 pm

    Oh, forgot…I agree that the 1.5 mil scoreboard in Missouri would be very similar, in all likelihood, to what the Civic Center has.

    And I forgot one more thing…the Civic Center sells ads with the video board for a premium price that they could not achieve without the video. So they helped offset the cost with those sold commercials as well. Those commercials you see during Rivermen and Bradley games…the revenue from many of them go to the PCC, some of the revenue goes to the tenants.