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Sunday, April 16, 2000
Recreation isn't just kid stuff
Professor makes a case for an arena
Recent retirees aren't what retirees used to be. Rem-ember the stereotypical retiree who subsisted from Social Security check to Social Security check and used canned dog food as a hamburger-stretcher? That was their mom or dad.
The New Retirees have their own acronym, GRAMPIES. It stands for:
Growing numbers of
Retired people who have an
Active lifestyle, are
Monied, and are
Physically and emotionally
In
Excellent
Shape.
Many are early retirees because they could afford to retire early, including some young enough to have danced to that Who song that goes, "Hope I die before I get old."
Leisure class
They are among the reasons that a new multipurpose arena would be a good idea for Corpus Christi, says professor John L. Crompton of Texas A&M University's Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences.
He'll be the first to tell you that recreation is not kid stuff. It is the stuff of economic revitalization. "Leisure leads revitalization," he says.
Especially now, with these new retirees, he says. They are entering this stage of life with what Crompton calls "leisure skills," unlike their parents, whose waking hours were filled up mostly with distractions like surviving the Great Depression and World War II.
Pushing for arena
"Many cities see retirees as an emerging economic tool. It's the new smokeless industry."
Retirees choose their retirement communities based on climate and recreational opportunities, he says. A new arena would offer "multiple cultural possibilities," he says, from college basketball and minor league hockey games to concerts.
Crompton is himself an example of an emerging economic tool. Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi has discovered that it has access to College Station's brain power. Crompton's background is an asset to A&M-CC's efforts to get a multipurpose arena. So, the local university brass flew him in recently to meet with city and economic development officials, who'll be touting an arena as part of a sales tax election package in November.
He was preaching to the choir and basically just confirming their faith, but what he told them was that public investment in cultural amenities says something about a community.
And what it says is something that relocating businesses, entrepreneurs, blue-chip basketball recruits and retirees like to hear.
Incentive to stay
And don't forget the people who already live in the community. Give them something they'll love and they won't want to leave. Dell Computer Corp. once tried unsuccessfully to lure talent from Microsoft, Crompton said. We Texans tend to regard Dell's home in the Austin area as full of quality-of-life amenities - Hill Country, major college sports, concerts, a film festival, artists, famous local musicians, museums. But Crompton says Dell struck out in Seattle, not because of Microsoft but because of Seattle.
Crompton wasn't here to help his audience figure out how to pay for an arena. Perhaps another visiting Aggie academic, another time.
"I hope whatever they do here, they do well," he said. Don't cut out the frills, he said, because they aren't frills.
Just do it before I'm a GRAMPIE.
Tom Whitehurst
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© 2000
Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard
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