Tuesday, May 07, 2013

Board Of Public Works Scheduled To Approve $2.4 Million Contract For World Sports Park Tomorrow

I doubt that it will do any good, but if you believe it's a horrible mistake for the City of Indianapolis to be spending tens of millions of dollars on construction of a new sports stadium to host international cricketing events, you might want to take time to attend a Board of Public Works meeting scheduled for tomorrow. The agenda for the meeting includes the awarding of a $2.4 million bid to a company called Renascent, Inc. for the "World Sports Park." The meetings are normally held in the Public Assembly room at the City-County Building starting at 1:00 p.m., but the information isn't provided on the Board of Public Works' website or the city's website listing for public meetings so I can't say that for certain. Anybody know anything about this company? Its president is listed as Linda Campbell and the manager is listed as Larry Campbell, which means it's likely another business taking advantage of the compulsory set-aside MBE/WBE racket the Ballard administration has established.

UPDATE: Check out this e-mail Councilor Zach Adamson received from Dennis Rosebrough, a member of the Board of Public Works, defending the World Sports Park boondoggle. Rosebrough likens criticism of the expenditure to those who criticized former Mayor William Hudnut's construction of the Hoosier Dome, which was leveled to make room for a new stadium and convention center expansion before hardly a dollar of the principle owed on the debt had been paid down. Rosebrough is a PR flack for the BMV. I don't know why the hell we allow government employees to be appointed to these boards. He has no business serving on this board. He has a life-time membership in the downtown mafia and all that that implies, which means he will always screw over the taxpayers to support the corrupt pay-to-play establishment that runs this town.

From: Rosebrough, Dennis [mailto:drosebrough@bmv.IN.gov]
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2013 9:28 AM
To: Adamson, Zach W.
Cc: Robertlparrin@aol.com; 'Laura Sniadecki'; Miser, Lori; neil.bloede@hotmail.com; Lotter, Marc E.
Subject: RE: Global Sports Complex
Good morning Councilor. Thanks for sharing your opinion. Improving parks infrastructure seems to be an appropriate use of the funds. At the end of the project, we end up with first class athletic fields that can be used for many activities including soccer, lacrosse and other games that require fields. The design does not preclude any use including cricket or Gaelic sports. In the worst case scenario, we end up with a beautiful, multi-functional recreational facility on the east side of the city that can be used by young and old. It could also become a regional center for emerging sports like cricket and draw thousands of people to our community in the future.
There were those who thought a domed stadium addition to the Convention Center was foolish and that even involved a new tax. As a member of the PR group for the that project, we heard all of the arguments. With Mayor Hudnut’s and the City-Council’s bold vision, it was built - and as they say, “the rest is history.” Obviously, this project is not even in the same league (maybe $5 million cost and no tax impact vs. $50 million and a new tax), but it does represent a “vision” for our community. I will proudly continue to support this project.

Dennis L. Rosebrough
Deputy Commissioner - External Affairs Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles

8 comments:

guy77money said...

Looks like they hit the jackpot here's what I found on the web:


COMPANY OVERVIEW

RENASCENT INC is in the Excavation Work industry in INDIANAPOLIS, IN. This company currently has approximately 10 to 20 employees and annual sales of $1,000,000 to $4,999,999.

Jon said...

Nice puff piece, perhaps he might look up the cost of the Dome. How about 77.5 million dollars, that's just a touch more than 50 million dollars. By the way the tax for the never paid off the dome but hey that Indy politics.

Unknown said...

This is probably the same Dennis Rosebrough that was a flack for the Airport Authority for several years. Went around singing the praises of how the "new" airport would be the salvation of Indianapolis.
As it turns out, Bart Peterson "sold" the airport to Hendricks County, which now gets all the tax money from a multiple of new businesses around the new entrance to the airport.

Unigov said...

Parrin and Bloede are members of the Board of Public Works, yet use private email to conduct business.

Downtown Indy said...

Interesting timing of this. Just yesterday WRTV-6 ran a story about how despite blowing through $420 million our streets are still largely crumbling into gravel.

AND the windfall (waterfall?) $$ obtained by selling the water company has about run dry, so to speak.

CircleCityScribe said...

...instead of $2.4M for a unneeded and rarely used "World Sports Park", how about increasing the hours our park's swimming pools are open??? It would be great to be able to have night time swimming when the temperatures are over 80!

(Didn't Ballard cut back the pool season and number of hours they're open a while back?)

Of course I can think of 3 shootings in the last day or so off the top of my head: 42nd/Post, 34th/Brouse, and Washington/Sheridan...I wonder if that money were better spent on hiring more police...

Pete Boggs said...

This insanity would've been roundly criticized in 2007, during a much better economy, on the basis of out of touch government & out of control spending.

Citizen Kane said...

"...maybe $5 million cost and no tax impact..."

Right, I guess when you steal the money from ratepayers, you don't have to acknowledge that it is a tax.

500 million dollars down the drain - Rebuild Indy - What a joke. As mentioned by another commentator, the roads are worse than ever, meanwhile they come up with silly projects to spend money on - but, of course, is any setting aside any money for maintenance? The Parks are maintained now, but somehow we can create a world-class facility that entices cricket players to flock to little park on the eastside. It is all so silly, so sad and so criminal.