January 12, 2003
Rink Rhetoric Shifts
Lo and behold, a couple of weeks after I start hammering away on the matter of the "misleading 25%" figure when it comes to the Pioneer Courthouse Square ice rink, this new way of framing the rink debate makes its way into today's Randy Gragg column:
In one corner are the proponents of the $10.3 million rink, which would stand November to March, filling 80 percent of the square's central gathering space, charging admission from skaters. In the other corner are those who believe the rink negates the square's chief purpose as a free public space.
I have no idea if that 80% figure is an official figure Gragg squeezed out of Square management, or something he estimated himself, but it does seem to fit with the various visual representations of the ice rink we've seen so far. In addition, being laid out along a central diagonal, that 80% coverage makes the other 20% next to useless, since it's spread out thin around the edges.
Now, of course I can't claim to have pushed the issue of the real coverage figure into the newspaper. Yes, I get hits here from The Oregonian but that doesn't mean any of them have been from Randy Gragg. Maybe everyone realized the disingenuous argument from Square management at the same time.
But I would be remiss as a writer-type person (who, after all, must be at least somewhat arrogant to believe his opinions matter) if I didn't point out that I've been discussing that very issue for weeks now.
Meanwhile, the rest of the column's material on the rink gives a good overview of the forces organizing on either side of the rink project, and manages to point out what decisions have already been made (mainly of a financial nature) before ever bringing the public into the process to debate the issues involved.