City Hall and voodoo economics
Nov 15 2011 Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday
Dear Editor, – As Jim Provan and others have pointed out, the economic benefits claimed by the Council for creating a civic square in place of the City Hall do not bear close examination. They are based on assumptions, heaped one on top of the other, which make the conclusions entirely unreliable.
How can it be, for example, that a square resulting from complete demolition will produce 210,000 added visitors per year whereas the partial demolition alternative – which is only 11% smaller - will produce only 100,000? It is surely easier to believe that the front part of the existing building could accommodate uses – e.g. tourist information and heritage displays – which would be more interesting to visitors than the same area laid bare.
The arithmetic becomes even more fanciful if one looks at the activities they are relying on to produce additional revenue. One of these is ice skating. The proposition is that skating could take place over a five week period and it will generate an income of £177,300 for expenditure of £127,000 resulting in a surplus of £50,300 per year.
The underlying assumptions are that the cost per skate would be £7.50 and there would be 675 skaters per day. For alternative options, simply throw a dice and reject the numbers that don’t fit the desired outcome.
Instead of theorising, the consultants and officers of the Council could have looked no farther than Edinburgh for a working example of what they had in mind. The outdoor rink near the Scott Monument was referred to recently in the Glasgow Herald (18/11/11) under the headline “Christmas ice rink faces axe as operator reveals it suffered loss.” The article explains that this facility was started in 1998 and now has a deficit which cannot be funded by the public purse. Councillor Gordon Munro is quoted as saying: “We are already a quarter of a million down from the ice rink so I would be most surprised if the Council supported it.”
Although I have personally supported the idea of a square – albeit with the retention of the front part of the City Hall – I have become disillusioned by the Council’s silly notions of making something more akin to a funfair than a civic space. They have even taken to calling it an amphitheatre within which Big Wheels, concerts and sports activities will make life unbearable for the people who live in and near it. The report the officers submitted to the committee this week contains no assessment, as it should have, of the effect these ideas will have on surrounding residential properties. It is an established planning principle that it is one thing for people to make a home, by choice, beside an existing nuisance but quite another to have a new one thrust upon them.
As a town centre resident I accept, as normal, the noise and drunkenness that occurs at least four nights a week outside my flat and I have never objected to a single application for new licensed premises. They go with the territory. However, like all residents who have made similar choices, I am entitled to expect a greater separation from outdoor entertainment programmes than the Council’s proposals would allow. It is clear that neither the officers nor the elected members have given any thought to the conflicts inherent in their amphitheatre idea.
On a visit to San Francisco many years ago I read in a local paper that the City Council had asked for a report from their Director of Planning on how they could plan the city to increase the number of visitors. The Director, very wisely, said re-shaping the city to attract visitors was the wrong way to go about things. They should, rather, “plan the city to be beautiful and suit our own needs and, if we do it right, the visitors will come to enjoy it too.” It is deeply disappointing that our Council has been less thoughtful and has so readily embraced the idea that a square in place of the City Hall could ever be a “must see” visitor attraction. They have, in fact, destroyed the case for one with overblown rhetoric about it ranking “with the best in Europe” and using income projections of the type that got Greece into the Eurozone.
Denis Munro,
Beaumont House,
St. John’s Place,
Perth.
PH1 5SZ.
Ferengi Rules of Acquisition: Rule 76. Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.