Is the arena a ‘Golden Goose’ for investments?
The “Golden Goose” doesn’t play basketball — but it does lay golden eggs. It’s those so-called golden eggs that make this city a city that has been getting better and better. I’m using golden eggs as an analogy for the annual economic impact, i.e., the city’s revenue intake in both dollars and jobs.
Looking forward, arena activity is the golden goose and the golden eggs it will lay come in the form of increased jobs and sales tax dollars. These are vital for our city. Can you imagine taking away this economic impact? Whatever revenue levels fall to, assistance programs, both immediate and the future, would take a substantial hit.
Some have said this is about basketball and we don’t need a new arena, ignoring the fact that it’s more than two decades old and wasn’t even designed solely for basketball. It was designed for hockey. Which reminds me, we no longer have that hockey team we built it for.
Things change. Hockey went away, but the NBA took its place. We have grown and our needs as a city aren’t the same as they were 30 years ago. OKC got the Thunder because Seattle refused to build an arena. It’s certainly possible, perhaps probable or even likely, we could lose them the same way.
For many of us who do not attend the games, can we tell ourselves that our day-to-day lives would not change if they leave — or would it?
That’s those “golden eggs” — they impact us all. You may not regularly attend either — or maybe you have never. That’s not a requirement to realize benefit from this, because every one of us has not only been positively impacted by taxpayer-funded growth, which is substantially paid by non-OKC residents, but will continue to be going forward. And, if we vote it down, we will likewise be impacted, but it won’t be pretty.
Jim Holman is a retired automobile businessman who lives in downtown Oklahoma City.