Sunday, February 28, 2010

How is it That an Embassy and a Football Stadium Both Cost One Billion Dollars?



This week, we saw news that the United States government is going to build a new, fancy, whiz-bang embassy in England. No expense is to be spared on this embassy, and it even has a moat. It will cost one billion dollars. Its cost is seen as excessive.

By contrast, the Indianapolis Colts stadium, built right here in the heartland, cost one billion dollars. Hoosiers cheered it as "essential to our downtown."

How does an embassy, a building of unsparing technology, fortified with the best anti-terrorism engineering, a building worthy of representing its country and built to be a structure of enduring utility cost the same as a big barn, with a lawn down the middle, flanked with poured-concrete grandstands and having a roof overhead that is partially on garage-door tracks?

1 comment:

  1. The question you posed, Cato, ending this post is the best one I have read today. My reaction, an internal, YE GADS. Back in '04, while I was a county executive, in a quiet way, I tried to stop the Council from acceding to Mayor Peterson's proposal for this Stadium, but failed miserably.

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