Our Voice: The Link should get another chance

Kennewick voters may have shot down the idea of expanding the Three Rivers campus with a sales tax increase, but the effort will be in vain only if supporters give up.

Lessons can be learned from failure, and we encourage backers of The Link to regroup and try again.

We think the proposal was solid and reasonable, but not enough people fully understood it. Despite efforts to explain the project to the community, there were people on Facebook who questioned why the Tri-Cities needed another movie theater and why the public should pay for it.

Posts like this on social media are an indication that voters were not as informed as they should have been about the proposal. And that is a shame, because the vote was relatively close.

About one-third of registered voters in Benton County voted in the Aug. 2 primary election, and 47.5 percent approved the plan. About 98 percent of the votes have been counted so far, so the results likely won’t change much.

Breaking it down a bit further, the proposal is 295 “yes” votes short of passage. It is a close enough call that The Link backers should be encouraged to give the project another go.

The $35 million plan to modernize the Three Rivers campus would have added 50,000 square feet to the convention center, 30,000 square feet to the Toyota Center and connected the two buildings with a 2,300-seat permanent theater called The Link, which would accommodate touring Broadway productions.

The Three Rivers Convention Center is in desperate need of expansion, and is losing out on tourism dollars that are going to Yakima and Spokane from the convention event business.

Our facility peaked with 258 events in 2013 and has been on a decline ever since, with 201 booked in 2016. Eight events moved to Spokane in the first six months of this year.

Tourism officials say that expanding the facility could result in 50 percent more demand and $106 million in annual spending.

In addition to the convention center expansion, The Link would have been a great new amenity for the Tri-Cities. Some Broadway-style shows can be held at the Windermere Theater, but the offerings are limited because the arena must be made available for sporting events.

The Link would have allowed for multiple showings of touring productions, as well as providing a venue designed specifically for the arts — not ice hockey.

Of course, what people balked at was the funding mechanism to pay for the improvements. There are people philosophically opposed to new taxes who always will vote “no” when a tax increase is proposed.

That’s why an aggressive marketing campaign is so critical.

The project would have been funded by a sales tax increase of two tenths of a percent — or 2 cents on a $10 purchase. It would raise about $3.5 million a year, and end after 20 years when project bonds are paid off.

This means any Washington resident shopping in Kennewick would have helped pay for the improvements, not just city residents. It’s not a bad plan and we don’t think supporters need to go back to the drawing board completely.

They need to evaluate the feedback they received throughout the campaign and be prepared to respond accordingly. Then they need to try again.

The Link proposal is a good idea. Backers just need to do a better job getting that message across.

This story was originally published August 11, 2016 at 4:19 AM with the headline "Our Voice: The Link should get another chance."