County’s playbook should ditch Dome, upgrade NRG

“Houston did super job, but stadium needs to be upgraded for game to return.”

That was the headline of John McClain’s column last week about the Super Bowl. And by most reasonable accounts, Houston did a remarkable job for what turned out to be a remarkable game.

But wait. To get more events, he writes, we need to spend more? What could make NRG Stadium competitive with the NFL trend of overbuilding stadiums?

Can NRG be expanded to hold 105,000 fans like the Cowboys’ big television that happens to have a football field under it?

What could be added to make it competitive with the $2.5 billion facility in Los Angeles?

The bones of NRG are ideal to watch February football. Climate controlled with great sightlines. It puts fans close to the field. Houston has many attributes that make it attractive to host large events. What more does NRG need? Reframing the issue: What needs to be fixed, how much, and who pays?

I don’t think the Texans can, as McClain puts it, “keep up with the Joneses.” Nothing can make NRG as overbuilt, stupid, slick or big as the newest stadiums.

I do think upgrades should happen before maintenance demands it. The cell and Wi-Fi service was substandard for too many years before the Super Bowl created the deadline to fix it.

Basic things in stadiums shouldn’t get so bad. Or maintenance and upgrades shouldn’t be deferred so long that they become more expensive to fix.

And speaking of things that became unusable, what about the Astrodome? If figuring out a good solution with what to do with that was simple or cheap or nonpolitical, it would have been figured out years ago. No matter what your opinion is on this, someone will hate it. Which applies to most 2017 things, but the Astrodome in particular.

McClain suggests, “The idea to earmark $105 million on the Astrodome when it could be better spent on NRG Stadium is preposterous.”

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett disagrees. After Sports-Radio 610 host Paul Gallant referred to him as a “boob” during his show about Astrodome and NRG renovations, Emmett called in to explain his views.

He sees the Astrodome as a historic county building that has little to do with Harris County’s obligations as it relates to NRG Stadium. Instead of tearing it down for $30 million, he prefers the plan to prepare it for possible additional uses for $110 million.

It’s a “if we build it, they will come” sort of non-field of dreams.

For $110 million, the county would refurbish the space to create 1,400 parking spaces. And then there would be large space above the world’s most expensive historic parking lot that could be used for some unknown private entity to do some whatnot.

At the same time, Emmett complained that he did not have enough resources in the $2.5 million he is given to maintain NRG Stadium.

What’s really going on? Finite resources and mostly bad options.

To simplify, the Texans and the Rodeo are tenants of NRG Stadium. They pay rent every year and have various expenses relating to their businesses. Harris County as the landlord has the obligation to maintain NRG Stadium. The lease agreement requires $2.5 million per year to be set aside for a “Capital Repair Reserve Account.”

However, the county also has an obligation to the tenants to keep NRG Stadium in “First Class Condition.”

That’s not tied to attracting major events such as the Super Bowl. It is merely an obligation of the lease.

Appendix A to the lease defines “First Class Condition” in part as safe, in good repair and “meeting or exceeding the standards of Comparable Facilities.” And “Comparable Facilities” are NFL stadiums that were constructed within five years before and after NRG.

But when Miami is spending $400 million to maintain its stadium, to keep NRG in First Class Condition likely costs substantially more than $2.5 million a year.

So the uncomfortable truth is that halfway through the NRG lease, the county wants to spend its finite resources on something that it considers an asset, but despite various well-intentioned efforts, is a rat-infested liability with no tenant. In the meantime, the county is fretting about how it is going pay for its obligations to keep NRG in First Class Condition for the benefit of its tenants and any events hosted there.

It would be great if there were money for both, but it is hard to hear the county poor-mouthing about maintaining useful facilities while championing the Astrodome, which these days mostly holds dreamy, theoretical, uneconomic plans for trying to figure out how to use it.