"2006 World Equestrian Games, Aachen in numbers: Actual local economic impact: $328 million; 570,000 spectators from 61 nations; 1,700 employees and volunteers; 130 judges; 76 stewards; 100 veterinarians; 965 grooms; 1,200 journalists; 300 photographers; 380 TV crewmembers; 70 hours of television coverage broadcast in 157 countries; 2,500 bales of straw; 5,000 bales of shavings; 66,635 lbs. of hay; 40,000 catered meals; 6,000 honorary guests; 100 hostesses; 300 service/kitchen staff; 270 exhibitors; 68 car and van service vehicles; 120 drivers.
You don't have to do much math to appreciate the potential economic impact of hosting the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games at the Kentucky Horse Park in 2010. The numbers from the 2006 event in Aachen, Germany provide clear evidence of significant benefits to that city and its surrounding region. And they are the basis for concerns that our state legislature fails to recognize what such an event means to the economic welfare of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
The urgency, however, in securing legislative approval of governor Fletcher's proposal to bond $38.3 million for the construction of an outdoor stadium as well as improvements to an approved indoor arena and the roads at the Kentucky Horse Park is not entirely about the World Equestrian Games.
In fact, for those of us who will remain in Lexington and Central Kentucky for many years beyond 2010, the WEG is about the Horse Park and how we benefit from its presence.
If the legislature foregoes a permanent outdoor arena, we will be left in 2011 with no competitive facility to host the WEG's legacy: a slate of annual national equestrian competitions - events our region would gain solely because preparations for the World Equestrian Games were conducted with the intelligence to leverage this one-time opportunity as a long-term benefit to our economy and ourselves.
To fully appreciate what is at stake we think it is instructive to ask what will remain after the last visitor leaves the area following the closing ceremonies in October of 2010.
The true benefit to the region of this event hardly is limited to the dollars that will be spent in local and regional markets over a period of a few weeks in the late summer of '10. It's really all about ensuring that Kentucky remains the center of the equine universe in succeeding years even as other states are angling mightily to usurp the title. It's about recognizing a responsibility to nurture a $4 billion industry employing more than 80,000 Kentuckians, many of them our neighbors: ferriers; equine Insurance brokers; feed suppliers; tack manufacturers and retailers; veterinarians; diagnostic labs; farm staffs; farm realtors; bloodstock agents; management and staffs of equine journals, newspapers, magazines and organizations; Keeneland management and staff; faculty and staff or area equine education programs. Add to this an $8.8 billion tourism industry with the horse industry as its signature promotional attraction.
Among several states eyeing opportunity in the event that Kentucky falters, Maryland estimates that its own version of a Kentucky Horse Park - designed to include an outdoor stadium in order to accommodate the very same major annual national equestrian events park officials hope the WEG will position them to attract - would produce annual tax revenues of $11 million. The Kentucky Horse Park already generates roughly $17 million annually in tax revenues alone, more than half of which comes from out-of-state visitors -- and that is before the world arrives in 2010. At that rate, in figurative terms, the $24 million stadium facility proposed for the Kentucky Horse Park would pay for itself in only a few years. Horse Park management projects self-sufficiency by 2012, a projection the depends on their ability to host these events. Given the tools to succeed, a park which already attracts 900,000 visitors annually and produces a $240 million economic impact would no longer rely on tax revenues and instead would contribute revenues to a state general fund which, as everyone knows, is under constant stress from the demands of unmet critical needs across the state.
Officials of the World Games Foundation have a fallback plan in the evidently likely event that our legislators fail us on this issue. Their plan relies on the construction of a temporary structure for the 2010 Games —a wasteful yet, under the circumstances necessary throwaway of approximately $7 million. Of course, that structure would then disappear immediately following the Games, leaving the Kentucky Horse Park with nothing to leverage the heightened momentum gained from the Games.
We don't see how this could be more penny wise yet pound-foolish.
Yet, according to every indication from Frankfort, our legislative leadership is not focused on 2011. The focus is on 2008. Political gamesmanship is said to figure prominently in the reluctance of the '07 General Assembly to signoff on this project in a timely fashion. A sitting governor is being punished not only by the opposing party, but by prominent figures of his own, as well. And leading legislators have designs on the office, inspiring political calculation where good sense and meaningful policy should prevail. So much expenditure of energies, so little benefit to the people whose interests these individuals have been elected to represent.
Political careers do not register on our concern-gauge. We're interested only in seeing Kentucky, in its forthcoming role as America's ambassador to the world, place its best possible foot forward when opportunity knocks in 2010. We want to know that every conceivable effort is being made by our legislative leadership to ensure that the opportunity of 2010 carries our economy to new, uncharted levels and provides the tools to sustain the gain.
There has been worrisome talk of delaying action until the 2008 session; that the shorter off-year sessions were not intended to consider the time-consuming, demanding complexities of budgetary matters. We have here an exception that matters to everyone who calls himself or herself a Kentuckian. We call for approval of this funding during the current legislative session in order to ensure reasonable and adequate time to plan, design and construct a facility worthy of a major global competition and capable of serving future revenue-generating events for years beyond 2010.
At the very least, we call for action: be it approval or denial of this facility, so that we will then know whom to remember when in 2010 Kentucky's star rises or falls.
Failing now reduces this event to nothing more than a three-week wonder leaving all of us asking: what happened and why?"