GWCC: YOU Gotta Be Kidding
June 24, 2009 | 8:56 pm
Remember that ridiculous statewide recycling campaign, “You Gotta Be Kidding” (no I’m not), that chided state residents into recycling by creating a bunch of fictional simpletons who didn’t recycle and then shooting down their nonsensical defenses?
Well, enter the big, fat state-run Georgia World Congress Center. From this morning’s AJC…
Georgia World Congress Center officials are turning off lights, cutting off the air conditioning and silencing the murmur of escalators this summer in an effort to save money….“We will be a lot more frugal with electricity when parts of the buildings are not in use,” GWCC spokesman Mark Geiger said.
Glad to see that it took a $6 million deficit to convince you to conserve energy GWCC. Let me author your own “You Gotta Be Kidding” webpage. No, no…it’s no trouble at all.
Meet GWCC: Hideously ugly downtown resident, who has $6 million in projected debt.
Home: Up top of “The Gulch”
Occupation: Hosting hair and chicken conventions
Why I don’t recycle conserve energy: Because I’m just a convention center with a paltry 3.9 million square feet of interior space. What kind of difference can I make?
Yeah. So, maybe the state wants to consider getting his own house in order before characterizing its residents as a bunch of energy-sucking yokels.
Am I missing something, or is Metro itching for a fight today?
Some people like to do yoga, run or meditate to alleviate stress. I like to yell at buildings.
Where else was I looking for a fight?
DM, you really ought to stop it with the attempts at humor and stick with what you do best and that is covering Decatur.
Hideously ugly as it may be the GWCC is a major employer and pumps hundreds of millions of dollars into our economy every year. They do host more than “hair” and “chicken” conventions. But even if that is all they did, those people bring money to our city, stay in our hotels, eat in our restaurants, spend money in our stores.
I any event, you’ve somehow turned a story about how the GWCC wants to conserve energy into a negative story about how the GWCC doesn’t conserve energy.
Thanks for the advice Conventioneer.
I understand GWCC’s impact to the downtown economy, but that doesn’t mean I must give deference to its two-faced approach when it comes to the environment.
Turning the story on its head was precisely what I meant to do. If the state of Georgia is so concerned about the environment, as it tries to show with the aforementioned ad campaign, then why is it that when you look behind the curtain, they aren’t even doing basic things like trying to conserve energy at massive state run facilities? That’s all I’m asking (veiled in my lame attempts at humor).
I happen to enjoy your humor, DM, so please keep it up. The canteloupe story was classic.
The chicken and hair show comments were funny and sharp. Sarcasm was the right tool for calling GWCC to task. GWCC’s state-supported contribution to the local economy doesn’t get an automatic “pass” on bad behavior or wasting state money. GWCC is far from being sacrosanct or above an appropriate sarcastic gouge.
Keep up the good work DM and sassy reporting.
DM, who cares what sensitive conventioneers say? Your humorous take was dead on, and topical as well. I don’t see where this turned into an economic comment.
Isn’t it funny how people get offended by comments against the things closest to them? As if they have some stake in the reputation of an institution, and feel the need to defend it.
Ditto what the others said (well, excluding Conventioneer). Kudos, my man.
I went to the (rather pitiful) ATL Green Expo in Building B last month and was impressed (as I explored multiple floors of the entire building) that the only section that was lighted, cooled, or had functional escalators was the tiny part where the Expo was held. I didn’t realize it was a totally new concept for them.
State government. The management of the GWCC is apparently the same people who decided to fire all those state employees at the Revenue Dept just before they were to process state income tax forms for 2008 and pay our refunds, thus allowing Perdue to invest the funds actually due to tax payers. Smart guys.
Conventioneer lauds the money brought in by out-of-towners and local jobs as a benefit of the GWCC. A more thoughtful and truthful cost/benefit analysis would question the quality of the resulting jobs. They are mainly part time, no benefit, jobs in the service industry. And the money spent by attendees goes to downtown hotels and chain restaurants, owned by large corporations. Little of that money stays in Atlanta. The service economy goes way beyond hotel and restaurant workers. Let’s not forget the people who work at the extremely large number of “clubs” encircling downtown ATL. I think it has an extremely negative impact on the community, and the benefits to the economy are limited to large corporations.