The Pecan Park Eagle

Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation

If you have not yet seen the news, check out the front page headline in today’s June 20, 2013 Houston Chronicle for the story by Kiah Collier entitled “A conventional idea for Dome”. The Harris County Sports and Convention Center Corporation is recommending a $194 million dollar proposal that would convert the old Astrodome into a world class major exhibit and activity space that would simply fit right in with how it was intended in the first place. They could even play football there again and also become  a major help to the needs of events like Houston’s annual OTC convention.

Three aspects of the plan are emphasized:

(1) They would remove the 60,000 seats now in place and fill in the one-story underground space to create a street-level exhibit and meeting space. The exterior would be landscaped in attractive greenery.

(2) Potential uses would include swim meets, graduations, community events, football and soccer games, and as a central space for use by the growing Offshore Technology Conference. A 350,000 square foot meeting space leaves the door open for an infinite number of convention uses by groups from all over the country, including the major political parties.

(3) The “transformation” is expected to take 30 months for completion. If the plan gets on the ballot in November 2013 with a funding plan showing the public/private plan for making payment on the project, and this plan is approved, then work could actually be put in place to start by August 2014 and be finished and put into use by the 2017 Super Bowl that Houston will be hosting.

The Astrodome in 2013 (Bill McCurdy)
~ with no help ~

The Astrodome in 2017 (Harris Co. Sports, et al)
~ with planned renovation ~

They say that this plan is about $80 million dollars cheaper than a similar proposal the same group made last year because of the agreement to bypass restoring the underground level in favor of filling it in.

Let’s see what happens next. At least, we seem to have moved an inch from doing nothing and paying for it to finding an actual cost on a serious good plan for action.