What’s the biggest failed entertainment project in your town or city?

23 comments

  1. We used to have a wonderful lights in the park and the money raised went to a good cause.

    But, then COVID happened, and TOO MANY PEOPLE came. As it was a car only thing.

    So, our moronic mayor forced them to end it and it got moved to the middle of nowhere.

    Albany politicians are corrupt and stupid.

    [https://pallights.com/](https://pallights.com/)

  2. We had an ArtzFest annual weekend that lasted from 2012 to 2014, but then disappeared.

  4. Locally they tried to do a movie night in a local park. Project it on a big inflatable screen. I don’t know if it was a lack of advertising or just plain bad luck but no one came. I brought the kids and we were like 3 people in a crowd or 12.

    They did it again later and maybe 500 people showed up.

  6. It was an entertainment shopping center, called the “Center of Entertainment,” which featured a bowling alley, a comedy club, a diner, a “whirleyball” court, and (IIRC) a movie theater. The locals loved it, but the place didn’t generate nearly enough cash flow to support itself. It wound up being a teen hangout, frequented by lots of kids who loitered around but didn’t spend any money.

    After it closed down, Sears took the building over and it housed a retail outlet until the company went under. Now it’s a UHaul Location, and most of the structure is used as rented-out storage space.

  7. I don’t live there anymore, but when I lived in Williamsburg, VA, the city government made a big deal out of declaring an “Arts District” in a part of town that was kind of boring. The only visible thing that happened was putting a couple of sculptures in an empty lot, and 10 years later there’s still nothing except a couple city signs that say “Arts District.” It’s not a huge deal but it cracks me up every time I see it.

  8. There was an outdoor amphitheater where they would do plays and musical events. They had a ‘Shakespeare in the Park’ and ‘Music Under the Stars’. They were doing full productions and seemed to be popular when I left home to go see the world. When I came back, it was no longer a thing. The amphitheater is still there but the seating is gone and the grass is overgrown around it. The locale University built a brand new fancy auditorium and the productions moved over there.

  9. Series of failed minor league sports teams and accompanying venues. I think we have the highest attendance MiLB team or close to it and we’ve missed a deadline to build a new stadium by a year or so for now so… we’ll see if it sticks around.

  10. Soldier Field remodel… 3rd largest NFL market with smallest stadium in league. And no dome means no NCAA Final Four, Super Bowl, etc.

  12. Back in the 80s my small hometown looked into converting an old farm into a dog racing track. As with every Massachusetts town, in the end it was voted on in what I’ve heard was the most contentious and rowdy town meeting of the last 50 years. On one side you had the new town residents who wanted to bring more money in, and on the other hand you had the old time residents who were angry that a farm was being converted into an avenue for gambling. In the end the pro-dog track side won.

    Except it didn’t matter because gambling was illegal in Massachusetts.

  14. I got two:

    First, West Dallas along Northwest Highway and Stemmon Freeway (I-35) was supposed to be a relatively nice entertainment strip at one point, but developers mismanaged the money and eventually it just became a stretch of stripclubs and other seedy establishments. Or so that’s what my dad used to say

    Second, the City of Irving tried to stiff-arm Jerry Jones when he wanted to build a new stadiun in the 2000’s to the point where the Cowboys pulled up all their roots and built AT&T Stadiun in Arlington and moved the Cowboys operation and practice facility to Frisco. Following the decision, Frisco has become a huge boomtown and Irving is a shell of its former self

    I don’t know if you can fully accredit that to the Cowboys relocation, but the optics aren’t great. The mayor lost their bid for re-election over this

  15. Well, a Broadway musical tanked so hard, one time, that not only did the show close, the theater’s ownership itself went under, and sold the building to a church.

    I’m sure there’s worse, but that’s got to be up there.

  16. There were a bunch of projects in Staten Island that started, stopped, are empty, etc…

    They built a minor league stadium, I don’t think it worked out. They were building a ferris wheel but that fell through (I am visiting NYC, all these things to do, let’s lose half a day to go to Staten Island to ride a ferris wheel?).

    But NJ takes the prize on this one – American Dream fka Xanadu aka Disaster in the Meadowlands. They built an indoor ski slope? We are 2 hours from some not so bad skiing. Etc. They were about to, or did, default on their bond payments over the summer. Their biggest mistake is there is no direct train from Manhattan. I think you have to change buses. No one is changing buses to go shopping in NJ from Manhattan, it does not happen.

  17. Richmond, VA just has a massive company spend 10 million dollars trying to get the city to vote yes on a casino. Their campaign convinced an additional 10% of the population that a casino would be a terrible idea.

  18. I used to live in Las Vegas, but like so many Vegas transplants my family’s from SoCal, so I’ve done the I-15 more times than I could ever count. Those of you who are or were regulars on that stretch of 15 may have noticed that some tiny little desert town out in the Big Empty was trying to construct a water park. I think this would’ve got going c. 2006 or 7, let’s say?

    You may have noticed it being slowly erected.

    You may have noticed it attaining apparent completion.

    Not long after that, you may have noticed it looking increasingly abandoned and derelict.

    Who’s bright idea *was* that?

  19. They wanted to build a Wizard of Oz theme park in Niagara Falls that failed to get off the ground.

    LEGOland too was looking for a site in Niagara Falls, but chose a location in NYC instead.

    A lot of people would say the downtown Bass Pro project on the waterfront, but Buffalo dodged a bullet there looking at how Destiny USA ruined Syracuse’s chance to develop their waterfront.

    Instead we have a Children’s Museum, a Packet Boat house where you can watch boats being built by hand and a carousel, with a ton of apartments and restaurants on the way.

  20. Well..the small town I grew up in had a bunch of parents that came together and raised money to create a community center. They wanted to make a hang out spot for kids in town because there wasn’t anything to do and parents were noticing kids were turning to drugs and alcohol. They thought it might help a little.

    The town shut it down. Other people in town, including the mayor, argued that the community center would “create crime,” and that other people from towns in the area—you had to drive a good 10-15 miles to get to the next closest town—would go into the community center and “start a bunch of trouble.” I remember my friend’s mom was trying to help open the center and she suggested the school have after school hour programs like an “open gym,” where kids could play basketball, volley ball, something. The town shut that down too.

    So, kind of like an entertainment project.

  22. Our city put a lot of money into the Redskins training camp. We also just voted down building a casino for the second time. The first time it got voted against they didn’t like the answer so they held another vote. This time the No side gained ten points. One of the backers went on the radio or a podcast and was straight up racist. They were criticizing middle class black people for being against it. Anyway. Richmond.

  23. Baltimore hosted an F1 race a few years ago.

    Cost us tons, brought in very little and the contractor didn’t put the roads back after the race so we were on the hook for repaying, putting sidewalks back and replanting trees that were removed

    All around huge failure.

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