The Journal Star reports that any renaming of Carver Arena may need City Council approval. Whether or not that’s true, what do you think of selling the naming rights for the Civic Center and Carver Arena?
I personally think it stinks. The reason they need to sell naming rights is because they don’t have enough money, which begs the question, “why are they expanding if they don’t have enough money?” I thought the Civic Center was supposed to become self-sustaining, eliminating the need for the HRA tax. Now, not only do we get to continue paying these taxes, we won’t even be able to call the place the “Peoria Civic Center” much longer. If they’re that short on funds, they should scale back their expansion plans rather than strip the venue of its names.
O’Brien Automotive pays $150,000 a year for naming rights on the ballpark. Haven’t Peoria area residents paid enough in HRA taxes to earn having the name of our city on the Civic Center?
I don’t like corporate naming of public spaces.
We all knew it was just a matter of time. How disappointing.
Carver decided to up and leave town. There should be some sort of statute of limitations on naming a big public place after a guy who left town nearly 20 years ago. It strikes me as whining that he writes the PJS from Virginia to protest a name change.
It’s a discouraging sign of the times, but I say if there’s money to be had, let’s grab it. Who think to themselves, “Ahhh, the CARVER Arena… Now that’s where memories were made…” Get the money and continue to grow (though not by giving the money to a competing hotel chain…”
I guess my fundamental irritation is the idea that they’re collecting all this money in HRA taxes, but they need more.
Basically, I want them to say, “We know that HRA funds were supposed to be a temporary tax on Peorians until we were self-sufficient, and we know that we haven’t made good on that promise. But here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to try to become self-sufficient. The first step toward that goal is selling the naming rights. This is a common practice for arenas of this size. Whatever money we make on naming rights will be given back to Peorians in the form of lower HRA taxes. We will continue to look for ways to support the Civic Center without taxing Peoria hotels, restaurants, etc. , until the HRA tax is completely gone.”
It will never happen. But if they had said something like that, I wouldn’t be against the name change.