Two suggestions on this project: First, increase the seating to 5,000. That's the minimum seating required for nearly any Olympic venue. With all of the colleges and pro teams in town, we really don't have to build all that much in new sports infrastructure to host an Olympic effort if we just leverage what we're already planning in order to serve a future purpose. A little vision can go a long way. The Pond could be a great venue for hosting Olympic Badminton. With the Xcel Energy Center, the Roy Wilkins Auditorium and Harriet Island, you'd have a nice cluster of venues that could host a range of sports.
Second, don't ask the state to give any money for the new stadium. Instead, ask for the right to earn it. You do that through a program I call Books 4 Bricks. Right now, the average lifetime cost of a child dropping out of high school is a little over $400,000. We know where almost all of those kids are coming from: They're kids who were not reading at grade level by the end of third grade and they never caught up. With a targeted program of matching literacy volunteers to at-risk kids, we can match the efforts of both kids and adults with dollars to build civic infrastructure, such as The Pond. Kids and adults that meet certain goals can also earn a brick with their name engraved in it that would be incorporated into The Pond. If we can prevent 100 kids from eventually dropping out, we've covered the cost of the venue. More importantly, we've done three bigger things: We've helped kids read, we've built relationships between kids and caring adults and we've also given kids and adults a huge sense of ownership of their community.
We already have the organizational infrastructure in town to launch this kind of program. There are literacy and volunteer coordination groups that could make this a reality if they were given appropriate support. And the capital project isn't put at risk by being tied to this kind of a program. We can set goals that are challenging but achievable.
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