The Daily Citizen, Dalton, GA

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February 10, 2012

Trade center needs vision



The Northwest Georgia Trade and Convention Center should not have been built.

We feel confident the majority of Whitfield County residents agree with that statement, and we are pretty sure that most of its elected officials would agree, too.

But it was built. And for the past 21 years, local officials have struggled to figure out what to do with it.

The trade center is set to cost the city of Dalton and Whitfield County about $950,000 combined this year, since the City Council and Board of Commissioners must equally fund its operating deficit. Before the trade center’s bonds were paid off last year, the facility cost the two governments upwards of $2 million in some previous years.

The city can pay all of its share of the operating deficit out of its hotel/motel tax. Since those taxes can only be used for tourism-related projects, the trade center really doesn’t cost the city anything. But there’s just one hotel in the county, and its hotel/motel tax doesn’t even pay for half its share of the operating deficit, meaning it must dip into its general fund to cover the rest.

The trade center’s supporters note that convention centers, civic auditoriums and the like rarely pay for themselves. That’s why profit-minded businesses don’t build many of them. But they say that isn’t the point, trade centers generate economic growth by helping bring in people who shop in stores, stay in hotel rooms and eat in restaurants.

Locally, trade center officials can point to the record $1.3 million in hotel/motel taxes collected in Dalton and Whitfield County last year as proof that efforts to bring in tourists are working, and they can point to the fact that those revenues peaked around events such as the state American Legion convention and Jehovah’s Witnesses meetings as evidence the trade center plays a big part in those efforts.

But is that tourism worth almost a million dollars a year? Efforts to measure the economic impact of facilities such as the trade center are, at best, an inexact science. And it’s even harder to determine whether spending that million dollars elsewhere, or even leaving it in taxpayers’ pockets, might have generated even more economic growth.

Many trade center opponents would like to simply shut the building down. But do we really want one of the largest buildings in Dalton, particularly one that is so visible from our county’s busiest street and from I-75 to remain empty? What sort of message does that send about our community?

There are no easy answers. We know that and local officials know that. They’ve long skimped on maintenance for the building, even though for several years many have said it needs a serious overhaul.

But we can’t keep muddling along.

The City Council, the Board of Commissioners and the trade center board need to sit down and develop a vision for the trade center. They should also discuss the role it should play in the community and develop a plan for it to meet those goals.

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