Vote is likely to doom Astrodome
HOUSTON — The Astrodome, once lauded as the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” may soon be a landmark of the past.
About 53% of voters rejected a ballot measure Tuesday that would have raised property taxes to pay for a renovation of the aging, shuttered stadium.
The nostalgic value of the now rusty dome, closed in 2009, may have been lost on new voters in Houston and surrounding Harris County, which is home to about 4.4 million people, officials said.
“Some people were scratching their heads saying, ‘What dome? The salt dome?’ They don’t know what the Astrodome is. Think about all the people who have moved into Harris County since the dome closed,” said Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack.
Many local sports fans are drawn instead to the adjacent gleaming Reliant Stadium, which opened in 2002 and hosts the Houston Texans football team. The Texans advanced to the NFL playoffs in each of the last two seasons, posting their best record ever last year.
By contrast, the Houston Astros baseball team, which was named after the dome where it spent 35 seasons, just had its worst season, breaking the major league record for strikeouts.
“There’s not a huge groundswell of people who want to keep it. A whole lot of taxpayers said, ‘ Hey, it’s time to move on,’ ” Radack said. “You have to admit when you drive by and look at the Astrodome and Reliant Stadium — it’s quite an image.”
Some supporters disagreed, and were still hoping Wednesday that the iconic stadium might be saved.
When it opened in 1965, the Astrodome was the largest air-conditioned stadium of its kind in the world, named for Houston’s space program. Three years later, it hosted the “Game of the Century” between the University of Houston Cougars and the UCLA Bruins, the first NCAA regular season basketball game broadcast nationwide in prime time.
“Every stadium in the world that has an enclosed roof, artificial turf, skyboxes or animated signs owes a debt of gratitude to the Astrodome and its groundbreaking design and features,” said Stephanie K. Meeks, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation based in Washington, which joined the campaign to save the dome. “The vote reflects that many Houstonians support revitalizing the Astrodome and returning it to public use.”
The referendum would have authorized up to $217 million in bonds to turn the Astrodome into the “New Dome Experience,” clearing seats and 350,000 square feet of exhibition space inside and creating 400,000 square feet of plaza and green space outside.
The bond issue would have cost the owner of an average $200,000 home in Harris County about $8 more a year in property taxes.
Recent studies estimated that demolishing the Astrodome would cost at least $29 million.
No private supporters have surfaced to back the renovation.
Now the building’s fate rests with the Harris County Commissioners Court, which voted unanimously to place the bond issue on the ballot. Some of the five members have said they favor demolition.
“That does appear to be the most likely outcome at this point,” said Joe Stinebaker, spokesman for Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, who leads the commissioners court. Unless private funding surfaces, Emmett supports demolition.
Radack has f loated a plan to save some demolition costs by turning the site into an enormous retention pond. “Just because it failed doesn’t mean Harris County Commissioners Court is going to have the money to tear it down — we’ve got a lot of needs right now,” he said.
The commissioners’ next schedule meeting is Tuesday. It won’t be clear until Friday whether the dome is on the agenda, staff said.
Leading up to Tuesday’s vote, local and national preservation groups made the case for saving the stadium on social media, at community meetings and by touring 30 sites countywide in a 26foot truck they dubbed the “Dome Mobile.” Inside, visitors wrote favorite Astrodome memories on a wall.
The Astrodome was home to the Astros and the NFL’s Houston Oilers, hosted the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King in 1973 and the Houston rodeo. But it hasn’t been home to a sports team since 1999. It housed evacuees from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 before it closed four years later.
At an Astrodome auction Saturday, thousands of people lined up to buy stadium seats, pieces of AstroTurf and other memorabilia.
“The turnout that exceeded all expectations showed the Astrodome means something to people in Houston,” said Andy Grabel, a public affairs office manager at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Mark Jones remembers stopping to see the inside of the Astrodome before Katrina, and volunteering to help evacuees there after the hurricane.
“It was run-down, rusty. I’ve walked past it a dozen times over the past dozen years going to games at Reliant. It just stands out — you have this beautiful, ultramodern stadium, and you have what is effectively an abandoned building next to it,” he said. “It’s no jewel.”
Jones, chair of the political science department at Rice University in Houston, said the preservation cam- paign failed to persuade voters that a renovated Astrodome was worth the price — particularly the older, tax-averse conservative voters who typically turn out for an off-year election.
He said Harris County residents, especially those in Houston, may not be as sentimental as other Americans about the Astrodome.
“Compared to other cities, Houstonians are less convinced with arguments of historical significance — Houston tears things down and builds new things,” he said.
And when it comes to tearing down stadiums, Jones noted that cities often make way for the new.
“Most old stadiums get torn down, like Tiger Stadium [in Detroit], because there’s no use for them and they almost always occupy valuable real estate,” he said. “This was an attempt to find a medium between tearing it down and using it.”