GARNET RIDGE, Ind. — The Garnet Ridge Town Council opened its regular meeting at 7:00 p.m. Monday with a public comment period of 22 minutes, during which the Garnet Ridge Chamber of Free Enterprise asked the council to take no action on a proposed $48 million arena at the south end of Route 9.
Vern Tadlock, chairman of the chamber, spoke for six minutes and 40 seconds. He said the town should not pay for the arena with public money. He said the town should pay for it with the arena it already owns.
“The market builds everything,” Tadlock said. “It built the diner. It built the lot the diner is in. If the town wants an arena, the market will build one, and the market will decide what the parking costs.”
The chamber cited a Fortune analysis from June, which found that state and local governments spent $33 billion in public funds on major-league sports arenas across the United States and Canada between 1970 and 2020. The analysis reported that the public spending did not produce lower ticket prices. Tadlock said the figure proved his point. He did not say which point.
Under the chamber’s plan, the town would finance the new arena by pledging the existing Garnet Ridge Civic Arena as collateral for a bond. Tadlock described the pledge as “private collateral” because, he said, the old arena is privately held by the town. Council members asked whether a town can be a private owner of its own building. Tadlock said that was “a question for the market.”
Council President Dolores Rainey asked for the vote to be taken by roll call. The motion to table the chamber’s proposal passed 4-1, with Councilman Gil Hastings voting no and saying he needed to see the pledge in writing. Hastings was asked to put the pledge in writing and said he would do so after the parking lot was discussed. The parking lot was not discussed.
The Center for Measured Outcomes said in a memo presented during the comment period that the arena’s economic benefit to Garnet Ridge could be estimated at between 0.0 and 0.4 percent of local output, pending further study. Dr. Marjorie Teller, the Center’s director, said the Center had applied for funding for that study. She said the study would determine whether the arena was already built.
Tadlock said the old arena’s bleachers would be reused in the new arena, which would make the new arena cheaper, since the bleachers would not have to be built a second time. Asked how many times the bleachers had been built so far, Tadlock said the question was not relevant to the free market.
The chamber’s proposal was tabled until the council’s next meeting, on Oct. 26. Tadlock said the chamber would be there. He said it would bring the bleachers.
The council adjourned at 8:03 p.m. Tadlock was the last speaker to leave the room. He stopped at the door, turned back toward the council, and said the market would tell them what it wanted.
“It wants this building,” he said. “It has been telling us for years.”