When Joe Giancola told me his ideas for the armory Friday, I had a "glitch-in-the-Matrix" moment because I had read two seperate blog posts in the previous few days questioning the utility of investing in convention centers as an economic development strategy.
One was by Steven Malanga at City Journal and the other was by Matthew Yglesias at Slate. I offer these links purely as grist for the mill.
There are a number of differences between the situations they are discussing and what we would be looking at here, the primary one being that Giancola is talking about spending his own money and nobody, that I'm aware of, is talking about subsidizing him.
Renovating an existing building already somewhat suited to the task is also a far cry from building a brand new one for millions of dollars. Then there is the difference in scale and the question of how the market here compares to that of Baltimore or Boston.
The big meeting at the Armory is tomorrow night at 7 p.m., and it will be interesting to see who shows up and what they say.
A perfect place and an excellent building for a microbrewery/brewpub. It would attract tourist dollars from Killington, probably employ more people than a convention center and provide a centrally located entertainment venue.
Posted by: Matt Robare | 01/10/2012 at 11:34 PM