RM 11-06-92 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Remarks to the South Bend Redevelopment Commission In Opposition to a $3 Million Bond Issue To Begin the College Football Hall of Fame Project �- November 20, 1992 With the selling of these bonds, South Bend will plunge into a financial disaster of the first magnitude. This project will never get the corporate funding promised by the Kernan administration when it boasted that it would raise fifty per cent of the $14 million price tag within 60 days. That statement went into effect 120 days ago and the community has yet to hear of the first pledge. Obviously, corporate America is not anxious to squander its charitable funds on a project which has such a poor track - record to date. Why should South Bend bail out the National Football Foundation which has failed after 43 (yes, 43) years to establish a successful College Football Hall of Fame? Beginning in 1949 the NFF began to put on a number of black -tie dinners in the New York City area to raise money for a Hall. Those fund- raisers, carried on over a period of time, eventually caught the interest of New York State officials who told the NFF to either stop the fund- raising or begin the Hall project. State authorities were apparently alarmed by large sums of money being collected and then plowed back into more fundraising- -and for the usual "administrative" expenses. Thirty years later the Hall finally became a reality at Kings Island mainly due to the generosity of the Taft Broadcasing Company. The NFF, after three decades of fundraising, contributed only $250,000. As a community, `�► should we be consorting with an organization having such a shady past? This is the organization that has repeatedly overstated what the Hall will draw. It was expected to draw 300,000 yearly at Kings Island. It never came close to that figure and, at the end, was only drawing one -tenth of that figure. In early 1991 when there was a deal to move the Hall to Memphis, an NFF consultant said that it would draw 300,000 there. The Kernan administration is now confidently talking about the Hall drawing 200,000 as a "worst- case" figure. The reality will be that after a couple of modestly good years, perhaps in the 75,000- 100,000 range, the Hall can be expected to fizzle as an attraction. We will be hard - pressed to equal the Kings Island attendance of 30,000- 40,000 unless the Kernan administration brings in the dinosaurvisplay as was done to pump up attendance at the Studebaker National Museum. Isn't it curious that a final legal agreement between the City of South Bend and the NFF is still not a reality? We keep hearing that the attorneys are still working on it. Surely, there is some behind- the - scenes activity going on which bodes ill for this project. For example, no national officer of the NFF spoke in favor of the Hall at the Nov. 5 hearing before the State Board of Tax Commissioners on the bond issue which brings us together today. National officials, to my knowledge, were not at the July 29, 1992, public