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Hey, thanks so much for joining us for Last Call.

Boy, do we have a lot to talk about this week, Bill.

We're going to talk uh about spending more money on the convention center in the downtown stadium.

Uh Kendrick Lamar is there next week, Wednesday, uh the fourth.

Gee, I'm busy.

Yeah.

Well, he's probably going to pack the place.

I'm sure he is.

I'm sure he is.

Uh, we need big venues like that.

So, the regional convention and sports authority says it needs about $155 million over the next 10 years.

The St. Louis County uh officials in St. Louis County say they don't want to spend any money on it, even though in the past the state, the city, and the county all put in the money to pay for that facility.

Who's going to pay for it if indeed they should?

Well, I don't I don't know.

I'm just a little tired of the dome always needing some more money.

You say it needs 150 million for the next 10 years.

It seems like if we give it that in two years it'll need another 200 million for the next 15 years.

And I I understand all the arguments that, you know, boy, we need a convention center and we have to compete with Nashville and Indianapolis and, you know, we used to have to compete with Chicago and New I mean, we keep going down.

New York.

What are you saying?

They have to compete with Hillsboro, right, and Sadelia.

But but it just I I I just don't see throwing hundreds of millions of dollars to the dome.

I I just think it's interesting that $175 million was the price tag on refurbishing the dome, which would have kept the Rams here.

Who knows for how long, but it would have kept them here for at least a decade or so, probably.

And then maybe he had a chance to build another stadium.

So, here we are today, 155.

I'm just thinking the same way you are for uh Kendrick Lamar concert, the Battlehawks.

I You got to come with me.

You got You got to tell me something why it's worth it a little bit more.

That's all because you can still do um what is that with all the tractor pools?

Monster Jam.

You could still do all that in an antiquated facility, you know.

I don't think the roof is about to cave in.

So, I think it's to make the place really, really nice.

And I just don't know that I'm ready to go.

Well, you know, and I remember when this all was starting, it was like, well, no, this is an addition to our convention center.

Guess what?

It was a football stadium stadium.

That's what it was for.

Once the Rams left, there's no need for that dome.

You two concerts, two concerts scheduled for this year.

Two.

Last year, there were two.

But the Battlehawks are killing it.

They are our most successful.

Killing it.

27,000.

27,000 in a place that was designed to hold what 60 65.

It's killing it for the USFL is what it is.

I'm just feeling like, you know, if Governor Kho is going to have the special session and he wants St. Louis people to vote on giving money to Kansas City, maybe they should give us the money for the dome.

Our crushing need to fund that dome, left with the Rams.

You know, it's it's not that much money when you consider I believe the authority already has $96 million in the till because they they got some of that Rams cranking money, right?

So, they need to go another 60 million or so over 10 years,$6 million a year.

That for a city our size, we should be able to foot that.

Well, then they should that might be the devil in the details.

If you'd said like actually we just need $6 million a year for 10 years.

Yeah.

that I I'm not saying that this makes it right, but I'm saying that sounds a lot different than we need $155 million.

That that's a big difference.

It's like some one of your kids coming up to all the time.

Dad, I need $25.

Okay.

And then the next day, you know, I really need 40 bucks.

I mean, that's what happens.

The dome just keeps w and the thing, you know, and the agreement was to end payments in 2024.

So, nobody reigged on their agreement.

Everybody paid up and they said, "But we're done now."

That's sort of like when, you know, when your kid reached a certain age, it's like, "You're 30, dude.

Start paying your own phone bill."

You know what I mean?

Whatever.

I mean, so yeah.

And but we keep trying to say that this is some greater thing.

It was far the Rams.

Rams are gone.

This is a little bit off the uh off the platter.

Uh but off the menu, I should say, but Illinois, speaking of money, uh their gas tax is going to go up again on July the 1.

It's already the second highest in the country.

Does anybody here see any evidence of this high gas tax working in Illinois?

I mean, I good for them.

I mean, I mean, but when you go on the highways in in in the Metro East, do you say, "Oh, these are great roads."

Well, when when you drive 57 to Chicago like we did the whole time like Bryce was in college, the the highway was fine.

It was better than Missouri.

Now, I don't know that the gas tax is going to 57 north and south, but it was way better highway than between here.

I was just on those highways last weekend.

I had to drive up to Wisconsin yet again where my sister lives, and you just spend so much time in Illinois.

I will say, not only are those roads reasonably wellmaintained, they have a cop hiding out like every two miles, something one never sees in Missouri.

No.

And and and besides, they're not allergic to raising money, you I mean, Illinois knows they desperately need money and they're going to raise taxes.

They're going to have gambling.

They're going to have all the things that we don't want to do.

And the gambling tax and the because we don't we don't we're a business that doesn't like income.

I think it's good for Missouri gas stations because nobody I know who lives in the Metro East area buys their gas in Illinois.

They all wait till they come over here to go to work and go, "Hey, I got to fill it up today."

Nobody who lives in Metro East buys their gas over there unless they have to.

All our sin taxes will be lower.

Gambling is going to be lower.

The dispensary tax is lower.

So that's that's shame on us.

I don't know.

I will just say uh driving through the metro.

I don't see much evidence that those roads are any better than the roads in the greater St. Louis area run by MDOT that we talked about earlier.

Well, I do I guess runs like throughout the state, but and I'm not picking on the metro east side, but it's older stretches of road, harder to fix because the bridges and overpasses, all that, but once you get in, it's just better.

Well, and you have two sets of interstate, the ones going through major cities and the ones out in the rural areas which just don't get as much traffic and as much dirt and junk on it.

So yeah, once you clear the metro east area, and I drive up to Green Bay every year, yeah, those highways are nice, but so are a lot of the ones in rural Missouri, too.

So Alvin, uh, let me ask you about the Lyall Mansion, uh, which tragically burned this past week.

I don't know if it's reparable.

It's an 1842 structure and uh local leaders had intended to preserve it and keep it open and enjoy it forever.

But I apparently according to some published reports the homeless were you know living in it at times and uh I guess they weren't told to get out.

Uh who's to blame for this?

It just seems like there's a lot of blame to go around.

I mean, if it's this this magnificent structure 1842 and it seems like it's been years and years like going back past administrations and all that, somebody needed to just do something.

There was a place it was where um Rock Hill turns into um that goes to 40.

I forget MC something.

Uh Mcnite.

Okay.

Right there in Manchester was a place called Fairfax House.

It had been there forever.

They couldn't figure out what to do with it and nobody wanted and the 7-Eleven wanted to build there or Quick Trip whatever.

Quick trip went out, but they physically moved the house someplace.

Why?

I mean, somebody just needed to take an action on this.

I just don't understand.

Well, people tried.

I mean, they raised some money.

There was a very proactive campaign to try to deal with this house.

And the older woman was constantly saying, "Hey, city, you've got to secure this.

Board this up."

I think you got to blame the city for this.

I think this goes back to this, you know, what happened in recent years where the basic services weren't getting taken care of.

They could not get the right city agencies to just get off their butt and take care of But the board of alderman could have said, "We're allotting this much money to fix this place.

Go fix it."

They could have done that, right?

Well, yeah.

I mean, my understanding was that there was money that was actively being raised and it was going to be fixed, but in the meantime, they just needed it secured and the city just couldn't get it fully like nailed up so that people couldn't get in there.

That's a different I mean, but seriously, and I'm not talking about Reed Mlelen, the fictional business.

Me and you could have gone down there and boarded up the place.

This is a big issue.

This is a big issue in the city between the Millennium Hotel, the railway exchange.

We don't know how to handle problem properties.

And if you Google church burns in St. Louis, I think we've had three or four in the last year or two alone.

And we're losing some magnificent structures.

I don't know if it's the neighborhood's problem or the city's problem.

Properties division isn't uh Well, when you talk about downtown like railway exchange building, I don't know what you can do with that.

I mean, certain buildings, I don't know.

Yeah.

Well, I think one fact is is that once you figure out a good way to board it up, there's going to be some folks come in right behind you and figure out a way to unboard it so you can keep boarding it.

And if somebody's looking to get out of the weather, they're going to take your boards down and they're going to end up in that building anyway.

And I think what happens is is there's so many people to blame that really then there's nobody to blame.

It's gone.

Okay?

And so now we can point fingers or we can try to do better on the next one, but that house is gone.

And I've went by that building hundreds and hundreds of times and I will admit I feel no special loss.

I I mean I'm sorry to see it go.

Well, you have no love for the bees in people's backyards and the other pollinators.

Well, if we had every if we had every building around from 1842 still around, we'd have no place to live.

We need to send you to an empathy workshop.

Collaboration collaboration collaboration works.

We'd be then we'd be like Boston or Rome where visitors came to see our buildings.

That's it for this edition of Donnybrook.

Thank you very much.

We'll see you next week at this time.