KUHF Houston (which has asked us to please start calling it "Houston Public Radio" because, um, it's just a personal decision that I want you all to respect alright?) reported a snag in plans to turn the Eighth Wonder of the World into a ginormous hotel and convention center. Because Jehova knows how bad H-town needs another one of those.
Leroy Shafer, of the Livestock Show and Rodeo, explained their opposition to HPR, in a quote featuring the reason, featuring examples, featuring a vision of a future that frightens Mr. Shafer something awful:
"This is a major entertainment complex featuring food, featuring amusements, featuring merchandise shops...The plan for this thing is for thousands of our spectators to go in there and eat and shop and spend money. If they're eating in the food shops inside there or they're buying from the shops inside there, then they're not buying on our grounds."
Here that? THEY'RE NOT BUYING ON OUR GROUNDS!
That's the rodeo's grounds in the back there, dwarfing the dome.
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I think you're already hit on something, mentioning Jehovah. As I can recall, the only really big meetings that have been in the Astrodome in recent years -- outside the cows and drunken reporters soused by the HLSR staff -- have been the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Maybe you could have a big JW theme park... Watchtower tracts everywhere, at least two people knocking on your hotel room door in the middle of the night to witness and maybe some big Michael Jackson memorabilia exhibit with a gimmick like, "Crazy Tom Cruise makes our guy look good!"
In any case, you can't talk smack about the Eighth Wonder of the World. It's. simply. sacred. Like Astroworld. Oh. Wait. They've gone and torn that one down now, too, right?
What do you do with a big empty stadium, anyway? I mean, it's, like, totally more inconvenient than your empty neighborhood Home Depot or WalMart. And there are only so many spanking new branches of HCC that you can underwrite.
It's hard for classes to "make" at your local community college (I mean you, Paul Revere campus.) if you have too many sites. Wish community colleges had that one figured out.