This a city that spent millions to refurbish Joe Becker Stadium to bring in a second-rate baseball team.
Joplin officials have a long history of ordering studies, getting the result they wanted and then following through with it.
They never had any intention of saving Memorial Hall.
Year after year, the city did nothing to save this historic building that was created in honor of our veterans. Every few years, they'd do some kind of study to see what needed to be done, but they never did it.
Last year, a bond issue was put before voters to save Memorial Hall. It was voted down and rightfully so, but it gave city officials the excuse they had been waiting for. Now they can blame the demolition of Memorial Hall on us.
And it's not just our elected officials.
The private money went into the architectural monstrosity that is the Cornell Center.
Why couldn't our community elite find it in their hearts (and their pocketbooks) to do something for veterans and for the preservation of history?
Perhaps it's because they wouldn't be able to slap a name on Memorial Hall. Not meaning to pick on the late Harry Cornell, who did a great deal for this community, but there was never a chance that we would have a Cornell Memorial Hall or a Plaster Memorial Hall or a John Q. Hammons Memorial Hall.
You don't get your name on a building unless it's new.
The battle to save Memorial Hall is still not over. People are organizing to try to keep that stately building from becoming a victim of the wrecking ball.
Of course, our elected officials seem to think they can sway public opinion by offering to put in a park and perhaps a small structure in which the veterans' items that currently are in Memorial Hall can be housed.
The last thing we need in Joplin is another park.
What we really need are elected officials and unelected elite members of our community who understand that a reverence for history must be a part of our path to the future.
(This post was originally my column in the June 18 Turner Report Newsletter.)
8 comments:
Randy you are not wrong. I can appreciate your position and there was a time, back in the 1990s, when I agreed that much more effort needed to be made and put forth into, what’s the current terms young people like to use today (reinvigorate?) toward the building to not only keep it modem, but keep it relevant. It did not happen.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the elected officials during that time chose not to invest more funds to provide proper infrastructure support. It was the bare minimum done to keep it operational as long as some revenues could be recouped.
30 years later, for the current elected officials to catch the blunt of the blame for decisions made by elected officials for at least 60 years (perhaps longer) is misdirected.
I don’t blame the influential members of the community for raising funds for and building a venue that less than 10 percent of the 50,000 current residents of Joplin and probably leas than 5 percent of the population in the extended metro area will ever set inside and appeals to so few people. This is Wort’s legacy and Cornell’s legacy. They will never care again for a project in Joplin as the one they completed.
Memorial Hall’s time has come and gone. Let it go. The tough decision has been made to take it to the ground. I’m old enough to know it’s no good to look back at what should have been done and what was a failed effort and what didn’t work, instead let’s focus on looking forward to what will happen next and if city elected leaders will make the best decisions moving forward instead of kicking the can down the road for another generation of leaders to tackle.
As a kid I remember going to memorial hall watching the shriners circus, then joplin banned those activities. Later in life it was boxing and wrestling, then joplin banned those activities. Then as I got older I went to several concerts at memorial hall, then joplin banned those activities. It's like the city has been against the hall my whole life.
That all set aside, this building was built as a memorial for the men and women who gave their lives for our freedom. Not built for people who just served, built for people who were fking killed in war!!! You can't tear something like like down and not regret it eventually. You can't just go around tearing down memorials because you can't profit from them. They have to be maintained passed on to the next generation and so on.
The building is a memorial for the dead and we are just going to tear it down? Shame shame.
The writing was on the wall as soon as the Cornell center was dreamed up....all they saw over there was a good place for a parking lot
No one banned those events. The market changed. The carnival moved to the mall. The concert events ended who Al Zar died and the casinos took over the concert venues. The city was negligent for not updating through decades. Now, it’s too expensive to remodel without a large tax increase that was already turned down.
Well maybe we could have then turned it into a Casino, backed by the Government and Indian Tribes - so all those with gambling problems could be stealing from their employers and non-profits and ruining the lives of their families in the name of progress, or they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
Sincere question for the readers of this blog, how many of you have set foot inside or even attended an event at the arts complex?
If my math is accurate, the arts complex has a social media following of 2,800 people that’s 5.6 percent of the 50,000 population of Joplin and when you take into account the population of Joplin swells to 250,00 people Monday-Friday from 8-5 pm (those numbers are from a law enforcement study in 2005) 2,800 social media followers means 1.12 percent of the people inside of Joplin each week are following the arts complex.
The website has no current information, with articles published in 2021.
If I were interested in renting the venue for an event, no information on how much to rent it, space available, size of the space or the amenities offered (tables, chairs, AV equipment, etc) cannot be found on the website.
It was said the venue was built for less than 5 percent of the population of Joplin for those who possess 75 percent of the wealth. I believe it. Those who raised the money and built it do not want the average Joplin resident or the average person from the extended metro to have access to it or attend events at the arts complex.
There is another way.
If the Hall is torn down save the interior plaques and memorials,
photograph the entire building and draw up plans to reconstruct
a new building much like the old. Will be used for events the Cornell Center is not made for--cage matches, UFC events, and so on. These are popular. Use the grants and $ the city is adept at getting from the Federal government for the new building.
Hold the city accountable to get this done, not to sabotage it with
prohibitive taxes on private and real estate property, like they will try to do soon now that they have 2 communication specialists on staff to put out puff pieces on how effective the city is and how more taxes are a very good thing.
Put the plaques inside the new building, save the outside memorials.
Stops the new park option that will be Spiva Park only larger with more
space for homeless campers, that the Cornell Center and most of us do not want.
We have a debt to the dead. A large and proper debt. Let us repay it with this plan.
Randy is correct.
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