There has been an interesting disparity in media reports about the Astrodome over the past couple of weeks. First, this one from Channel 13 investigative reporter, Wayne Dolcefino:

The county judge warns the aging Houston Astrodome may soon become too dangerous for people to even go inside.
What do you do about an important piece of Houston history? Do you tear it down? The Eighth Wonder of the World has now become a legacy of how not to pay for a sports stadium. Long after the Oilers left and seven seasons after the Astros stopped playing here it sits.
When we went to the dome this week, it was warm inside and didn’t smell too pretty. It’s home to a few offices but the floor of the Dome floor is now just concrete.
“The dome is old and it’s falling apart,” said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett. “It’s time as they say to fish or cut bait.”
“Now we’ve got a situation where we have what was the Eighth Wonder of the World sitting there effectively unoccupied,” said Harris Co Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt.
And you are still paying. They are numbers many public officials probably had a hard time figuring out themselves. You still owe $38 million on the Astrodome. It’s property tax money and every year it’s costing millions just to keep it operating. In the last five years it cost $18 million. The tax assessor calls it a money hole.
“We’ve got to decide what to do with the domed stadium,” said Emmett. “It’s time to put up or shut up frankly.”
Hurricanes have nearly doubled insurance on the dome. The bill has been $894,000 just this year. And you think your utility bills are high? Look at this. The bill was $1.1 million. Operating expenses this year alone were $2.75 million.
The biggest money maker at the Dome is The Hideout. That’s the bar the Rodeo operates on the floor of the Dome. We get no money for that. The rest of the year the Dome was used just 13 days, making just $100,000.
“Frankly we can’t let people use it much longer, it will become a dangerous place,” Emmett said.
“The question we have to decide is if we can’t find something for the Dome to become, then they have to think seriously about tearing it down,” said Bettencourt.

Then, this one on the interminable Astrodome hotel redevelopment project:

Entrepreneurs looking to turn the iconic Astrodome into an upscale convention hotel have scrapped a “best of historic Texas” theme for a more modern, streamlined look.
A faux Texas courthouse and other features that played on the state’s past are out. Plans now call for including a section of the Dome’s seats, part of the diamond and an overall contemporary design that plays up the building’s cutting-edge nature when it opened in 1965.
“We’re going to have rides. There could be air rides that take you off the ground and make you say, ‘Wow,’ ” said Scott Hanson, president of Astrodome Redevelopment Co., the firm hoping to transform the Dome. “We’re going to have a few of those. They would be easy-going rides that would show off the venue.”
Astrodome Redevelopment still has hurdles to clear before it begins work. Willie Loston, director of the Harris County Sports and Convention Corp., which oversees Reliant Park, will update the Commissioners Court on the company’s progress in executive session Tuesday.
The court’s approval is needed before work could begin. And Astrodome Redevelopment needs to work out revenue sharing and parking deals with the Houston Texans and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, the major tenants of Reliant Park.
But Hanson and Astrodome Redevelopment’s chief executive, John Clanton, said the company is making progress and hopes to begin work on the interior as early as next April.
Hanson previously said the company had obtained financing for the $450 million project. But he and Clanton publicly announced the lender, Deutsche Bank, for the first time Thursday.

The article goes on to claim that the “entreprenuers” of the project have a new Atlanta-based partner who will supposedly add equity to the deal and make it more viable.
Frankly, this silly notion that entreprenuers can arrange private financing for the conversion of the Astrodome into a hotel has been going on for three years. Now, the Chronicle would have us believe Deutsche Bank has approved a $450 million financing commitment on a highly-speculative covention hotel project in during the tightest credit market in years? I’m willing to bet that any such commitment has more outs than the Stros lineup this season.
All of this imagery about the proposed Astrodome hotel would be all fun and games except that it is costing the County real money to maintain the Dome, probably around $10 million just since the dome hotel project was first floated. Given that we are three years into this and the entreprenuers are not even at the stage of cutting deals with the Texans and the Rodeo over use of the Reliant Park property during times of mixed use, just how long is the County going to dawdle over the Dome before moving on to more realistic uses of the property?

Anne Linehan over at BlogHouston.net continues to do a fine job of following the various rationalizations of several local governmental types over how to justify public financing for the proposed the Astrodome hotel project (Charles Kuffner comments, too). The latest proposal being floated is to give the deal $150 million in hotel and sales tax breaks over a ten year term to facilitate about half a billion in private financing for the deal. The rationalization is that the rebates are worth it because the tax revenue wouldn’t be there in the first place but for the hotel generating it. Plus, the hotel really is a good thing for Houston, so why worry about a measly $150 million over the long term?
Putting aside that dubious reasoning for the moment, the reason that this project is a boondoggle isn’t because of $150 million tax rebates over ten years. On a boongoggle of this potential magnitude, that’s peanuts. The real financial risk comes when the hotel falters in paying its private financing. In almost every case, the local government that backed the facility will be placed in the difficult position of either putting up additional funds and security for the project or face the politically untenable position of watching the project fail. Guess what politicians usually vote to do when the alternative is to be embarrassed with a failed deal on their watch?
The problem with boondoggles of this type is that they “eat” — they must be fed money when the operating losses start mounting. There is a reason that the promoters of this deal can’t arrange private financing. That is a reason for the county government to back off the deal, not to embrace it.

Cato Institute fellow Randal O’Toole was in town last week as the invitee of a Houston Property Rights Association luncheon and, by Tory Gattis’ account, provided an entertaining lecture on the overreaching nature of centralized urban planning and wasteful rail transit systems in various cities around the country. The Chronicle’s Rad Sallee caught up with O’Toole while he was in town, and notes the following observation by O’Toole on the impact of Houston’s biggest urban boondoggle:

Question: You say that for the most part, Houston gets it right, while Portland (Ore.), where you used to live, is a textbook example of government gone wrong. A lot of people would say it’s just the reverse.
Answer: Except for the light rail part, Houston really is a model for how urban planning ought to be done ó which is privately.

By the way, O’Toole has a new blog focusing on urban economics called the Antiplanner. Check it out.