LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – Some frustration remains on the Lubbock County Commissioners Court as they review a new design for the Lubbock County Expo Center.
“Basically, we’ve wasted seven-and-a-half million dollars on this project already. I don’t want to waste another dollar,” Lubbock County judge Curtis Parrish said.
$375,000 was allocated to architecture firm Parkhill to create schematics for the potential layout of the venue off the North Loop and University. Randy Jordan, who has led this public-private project since the very beginning, acknowledges things have taken a lot longer than anyone had hoped for, but says this meeting is step two in the next phase of the center.
“I believe the people of Lubbock County want this expo center, I know they do,” Jordan said. “We need it, we’re the largest city in the state of Texas that doesn’t have a facility that can take care of some things, dirt events and what not. We need the center.”
While Parrish is in favor of the expo center, he wanted a few stipulations on continued support from the county, which weren’t agreed to by other commissioners, Monday.
The first would’ve given the center until June 22nd to secure its private funding. Parrish says he wanted to add this amendment to a resolution of support.
“How many versions of this have we gone through with them?” Parrish asked, “dozens, and they’re still not able to raise that money.”
The second amendment would’ve required increase in reserve money to support the next 20 years of facility operations. Jordan says the proposed increase from five to ten million just isn’t feasible.
“10 years ago, 8 years ago, we were hoping that was going to be $10 million dollars,” Jordan said. “The economy has not allowed us to be able to do that so we went to the next best thing. We pulled back on what we’re going to spend on the expo center, so we need to pull back what we think we need to hold in reserve.”
Judge Parrish says otherwise.
“The more money we put into setting aside for operations is less money they can put into construction,“ Parrish said, ”which means more money that they have to come up with to build this facility.”
The new construction manager-at-risk, Lee Lewis Construction, is hopeful a full plan will be made for the center this winter. It’s something that has some excited about our future.
“We’re excited,” Jordan said. “Today was another step in getting us going again.”
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