Remember, i'm just stirring conversation, which seems to be a plenty on this
So since the city does own this, lets explore the possibility of tossing the Cox after the CC opens. Couple of things to look at with that.
1 - What's the current contract with the Renaissance (or whatever it is now) since they manage the Cox Center's meeting space? Do we have to retain the space for some length of time or is there a buy-out or something similar available?
2 - If the meeting space is lost, one would assume all of the "traffic" would move to the new CC. So does that put another nail in the coffin for the "R" to survive under its new flag? Do you think the city would include some sort of construction option for at least some amount of meeting space tied to the existing skybridge? Do we even keep the skybridge?
3 - The big one. Would anyone be willing to contact the city manager to ask if the city would be interested in dozing the Myriad after the CC is open?
If #3 happens after 1/2 are worked out, then a couple of other assumptions have to have happened.
1 - The city will not close the doors as long as the place is budgetarily positive. If it's making money, they could even shudder part of it (ie the arena as suggested by Pete since the Fairgrounds one will be pretty close in capacity ability), and use the meeting spaces as needed per above point 1/2.
2 - The city will not close the doors and bulldoze until they have something sold. I'm sure they are looking at the Stage Center lot and are very unhappy with how that went.
3 - Any legal folks know if a plot like that can be speculatively sold as "broken up" before the grid is actually there? Meaning, if the city wants to sell off the land to developers, can they even do that before they doze and construct the road since right now, it's a single plot? I'm not up on the legal side of how that would work. The last thing we need is a Myriad sized plot of dirt in the heart of downtown where a functioning/occupied/maintained building stands.
My only other word of caution (dont hate me, i'm just playing devil's advocate for the other side since everyone here seems to be on the "tear it down" camp). This is speculative development....like ALL of C2S. With all of the C2S space 30 years from being developed, and supposedly prime real estate, what makes this so special? And being private development, like C2S, we have zero idea of what quality/type the development would be. We also don't currently have a market for office/residential to eat up that HUGE block of land. Throw something like the Stage Center plans on this plot and we'd flood the market on both sides...which also is not good. I'm honestly thinking we're looking at more of a 5 floor type structure space without current market. And with everyone pushing ground floor retail....we sure dont have the market to support that much of it. You manage to get all those structures built with something other than upscale residential, you might have something there though.....if a grocery store is part of it. That much ground retail would be equivalent to an entire shopping district, which is nothing to brush off in terms of how difficult it would be to convince retailers to move in. And we can't rely on only local shops....its going to HAVE to have chains to sustain/spur it.
Commence the shredding of my post....3...2...1.....
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