How to win effluvium and influence refuse
The fireworks at last night's town board meeting occurred with the dismantling of the last remnants of the Visit Estes Park board (note to trustees - At some point, you have GOT to stop allowing unscientific surveys to be entered into public record or even given air time at the podium, and I'm referring to those from both sides, because we endured a whole bunch of silliness from CDIV last spring as well: They make a mockery of the actual science of polling, and waste everyone's time, including that of the respondent and poll "conductor". Would you appreciate if a stream of people utilized the public comments portion of the show to talk about how they examined the consistency of elk dung from 13 random sites, or consulted the four winds via their proprietary ether-Skype connection, to come up with this year's predicted snowfall totals?), but, and now we're back, the real news came during the update from the Rocky Mountain Performing Arts Center.
I don't know Al Milano from a mint chocolate Milano, but, mein Gott, this was the best RomPac could do? Weeks to prepare, not like someone asked him spur of the moment to update folks, and he brought three slides, let me repeat, THREE SLIDES, and apologized for every single one of them, as if he had just found them outside and decided to give them a whirl.
Slide #1 had animation. The seats disappear. Wow. We had that at our high school gymnasium as well, and it didn't take two hours for the parents and kids to set up the folding chairs and remove them. Al apologized for Anne Morris (note, Al couldn't even advance the slides himself), who he blamed for pushing the forward button too quickly. Right, because undoubtedly this was their 13th run-through, and Anne got nervous and stepped all over the fantastic demonstration of seats retracting under a floor. Please for the love of God tell me you didn't spend any money or time preparing this slide. Please please tell me you stole it from some other actual theater, because if this is what RomPac lured Al away from Texas for, my guess is wheels were up and he was heading for Mexico when you called.
We were prepped for Slide #2 as if it was a crude hand drawing that had been assembled the night before. Guess what? It was a crude schematic, a side view of the now-gutted building as compared to prior sketches, that had obviously been hand-drawn the night before. Not like Estes Park has been pursuing a performing arts center for a decade, not like you had weeks of advance notice that you had to make a presentation. This new plan comes from months of asking various groups in town what they wanted. Translation: We have no chance of building the monstrosity we wanted to build because we have no large donors, so we are making a virtue of necessity, and scaling back drastically.
No more balcony. Why did anyone ever want or think we needed a balcony? (Well, because last year, you told us if we wanted to attract big stars and big touring companies, we had to have a balcony.) Now local theatrical troupes can practice where they perform. (Um, okay, except they are practicing upstairs now, and performing downstairs, so how exactly is this revolutionary?)
Slide #3 was sideways. Everyone had to look at it with their head tilted. It was a footprint of the building as it engulfs both Elkhorn and Rockwell. But we all had to look at it sideways, because Al hasn't learned about the "Rotate" feature on PowerPoint. The breathless news here was, Al may (and he's really hopeful about this), may be able to get us an IMAX screen.
Well, this is what we've all been dreaming of since the town rejected a proposed IMAX screen twenty years ago. Now we can go and sit passively and watch something projected onto a screen. Who wouldn't want to give millions in donations to a glorified movie theater? Estes Park has never had a movie theater before, has never seen moving images projected onto a large white sheet as if real people were doing real things right in front of us, as, for example, might take place at a performing arts center.
This project is dead. So dead it doesn't even need burying. Thank God for the Barrel, because it made Al and the Seeleys realize all tourists really want to do in Estes Park is tailgate in a parking lot. Well, we've got ready-made flat surfaces scattered throughout downtown for that, and have no problem making more. So the planned boutique hotel and shopping complex is out, and a "primitive beer garden" (Al's words, not mine) is in. The next time someone (Al is soon to flee) appears before the town board connecting this property to some facsimile of a theater, it will be to let everyone know what Estes Park really wanted and needed all along was this keg tap and (aren't we lucky?) a surplus circus tent they just procured off Bidsquare.
Al Milano, according to the internet (something Al might look into, because clicking on the link to the supposed website for his Rocky Mountain Performing Arts Center is a nonstarter), was apparently a force in Texas arts circles, even earning himself a reputation as a "Quiet Bulldozer". For someone whose opening gambit was "I've moved five times since I arrived in Estes in January" (oh great, another carpetbagger who can't even bother to provide an actual street address, because at this point it's likely temporary employee housing at the Stanley), I completely get the bulldozer part, except the fire already did the flattening. And oh do I look oh so forward to another failed theater fiasco in Estes going dark.
I don't know Al Milano from a mint chocolate Milano, but, mein Gott, this was the best RomPac could do? Weeks to prepare, not like someone asked him spur of the moment to update folks, and he brought three slides, let me repeat, THREE SLIDES, and apologized for every single one of them, as if he had just found them outside and decided to give them a whirl.
Slide #1 had animation. The seats disappear. Wow. We had that at our high school gymnasium as well, and it didn't take two hours for the parents and kids to set up the folding chairs and remove them. Al apologized for Anne Morris (note, Al couldn't even advance the slides himself), who he blamed for pushing the forward button too quickly. Right, because undoubtedly this was their 13th run-through, and Anne got nervous and stepped all over the fantastic demonstration of seats retracting under a floor. Please for the love of God tell me you didn't spend any money or time preparing this slide. Please please tell me you stole it from some other actual theater, because if this is what RomPac lured Al away from Texas for, my guess is wheels were up and he was heading for Mexico when you called.
We were prepped for Slide #2 as if it was a crude hand drawing that had been assembled the night before. Guess what? It was a crude schematic, a side view of the now-gutted building as compared to prior sketches, that had obviously been hand-drawn the night before. Not like Estes Park has been pursuing a performing arts center for a decade, not like you had weeks of advance notice that you had to make a presentation. This new plan comes from months of asking various groups in town what they wanted. Translation: We have no chance of building the monstrosity we wanted to build because we have no large donors, so we are making a virtue of necessity, and scaling back drastically.
No more balcony. Why did anyone ever want or think we needed a balcony? (Well, because last year, you told us if we wanted to attract big stars and big touring companies, we had to have a balcony.) Now local theatrical troupes can practice where they perform. (Um, okay, except they are practicing upstairs now, and performing downstairs, so how exactly is this revolutionary?)
Slide #3 was sideways. Everyone had to look at it with their head tilted. It was a footprint of the building as it engulfs both Elkhorn and Rockwell. But we all had to look at it sideways, because Al hasn't learned about the "Rotate" feature on PowerPoint. The breathless news here was, Al may (and he's really hopeful about this), may be able to get us an IMAX screen.
Well, this is what we've all been dreaming of since the town rejected a proposed IMAX screen twenty years ago. Now we can go and sit passively and watch something projected onto a screen. Who wouldn't want to give millions in donations to a glorified movie theater? Estes Park has never had a movie theater before, has never seen moving images projected onto a large white sheet as if real people were doing real things right in front of us, as, for example, might take place at a performing arts center.
This project is dead. So dead it doesn't even need burying. Thank God for the Barrel, because it made Al and the Seeleys realize all tourists really want to do in Estes Park is tailgate in a parking lot. Well, we've got ready-made flat surfaces scattered throughout downtown for that, and have no problem making more. So the planned boutique hotel and shopping complex is out, and a "primitive beer garden" (Al's words, not mine) is in. The next time someone (Al is soon to flee) appears before the town board connecting this property to some facsimile of a theater, it will be to let everyone know what Estes Park really wanted and needed all along was this keg tap and (aren't we lucky?) a surplus circus tent they just procured off Bidsquare.
Al Milano, according to the internet (something Al might look into, because clicking on the link to the supposed website for his Rocky Mountain Performing Arts Center is a nonstarter), was apparently a force in Texas arts circles, even earning himself a reputation as a "Quiet Bulldozer". For someone whose opening gambit was "I've moved five times since I arrived in Estes in January" (oh great, another carpetbagger who can't even bother to provide an actual street address, because at this point it's likely temporary employee housing at the Stanley), I completely get the bulldozer part, except the fire already did the flattening. And oh do I look oh so forward to another failed theater fiasco in Estes going dark.
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