This week the Wichita Eagle printed a letter submitted by Sedgwick County Commissioner Karl Peterjohn. The printed letter is quite a bit shorter than what Peterjohn submitted. The unabridged letter follows.
The Wichita Eagle editorial written by Rhonda Holman on June 29, 2009 now claims that the new Intrust Bank Arena in downtown Wichita lacks adequate parking. This is a major change by the Eagle editorial board’s position. I have repeatedly asked county staff about the available parking in and around this soon-to-open facility since I became a commissioner in January. I have been repeatedly told by county staff that adequate parking will be available when the Intrust Arena opens next year. The most recent public assurance I have received was only a few days ago.
In 2004, while I led the opposition to the proposed downtown arena in my role as the executive director of the Kansas Taxpayers Network, I repeatedly raised the parking availability issue. In 2004 the arena advocates claimed that arena parking would not become a problem and that the critics were wrong.
Voters were repeatedly assured that there was plenty of parking that would be available downtown for the arena. The Wichita Eagle editorial page was among the leading advocates for this project and ignored opponents arguments concerning this $206 million (back then it was described as a $185 million) project. At that time there was only a general area for this new facility’s location so this argument lacked specificity. The exact location was unknown when voters cast their ballots.
The Friday before the 2004 election I held a news conference pointing out the dimensions of the parking problem downtown in particular and the related location and capacity issues in great detail. At this news conference I provided a map of the Kansas Coliseum’s Britt Brown Arena and adjacent parking area available for comparison purposes with the existing 3,500 parking spaces for this 12,000 seat facility along I-135. I still have a few extra copies of this Britt Brown Arena aerial view. Arena proponents attended this 2004 news conference and claimed that the arena opponents concerns were invalid because of existing downtown parking. The Eagle editorial page repeatedly backed these arena proponents’ claims.
The 2004 election is now political history. I want the Intrust Arena to be a success because this project has now become very important to the entire community. The reservations I expressed in 2004 have not disappeared just because of time. The decision to eliminate some of the one-way streets with two-way streets will not be an improvement in traffic flow in my opinion. There will be challenges for people to become comfortable with access into and out of this new facility while participating in high attendance events when the arena opens in a few months. To get beyond this challenge for any new facility, the county staff and parking consultant need to be correct about the adequacy of parking for the Intrust Arena and I believe are working to accomplish this objective.
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