With the construction of the Juice Box and Reliant Stadium, one of the local political footballs that is lobbed around Houston from time to time is the following issue: What should we do with the Astrodome?
The local sports and convention corporation spends about $1.5 million annually to host a small number of events at the Astrodome and, even if the facility were to be mothballed, the corporation would spend $500,000 annually in maintaining it. Even razing it would be expensive, probably costing $10 million to $20 million. Moreover, Harris County still owes more than $50 million on bonds issued to pay for renovations at the Astrodome during the 1980s (remember Bud Adams?), and that debt will mature in 2012.
Consequently, The Astrodome is a knotty problem. It’s expensive to maintain and, quite frankly, the County is not spending the money to maintain it properly. As a result, it is a dump at this point, and it looks haggard next to gleaming Reliant Stadium and the new Reliant Convention Center that are next door neighbors to the Dome in Reliant Park. Unless something can be done to make some other use of the grand ol’ dame of Houston sports facilities, most Houstonians would rather see it blown up so that the space it uses could be transformed into more parking at Reliant Park.
However, this Chronicle article reports that the company looking to redevelop the Astrodome is planning on converting it into a 1,000 room convention hotel. The Astrodome hotel would be the second largest hotel in town, second to the 1,200 room Hilton Americas Convention Hotel next to the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston.
Although the Gaylord Texan Hotel in Grapevine near DFW Airport in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area is an existing prototype of what a retrofitted Dome could be, my sense is that this proposal for the Astrodome is not likely to occur without a substantial subsidy from Harris County. Consequently, let’s see if the Chronicle or any other Houston news media discloses the true taxpayer cost of retrofitting and maintaining the Dome in comparison to alternative uses of the property. Given the Chronicle’s abysmal performance in providing accurate information regarding the cost of the Streetcar Named Disaster, my expectations are not high.