The Charleston Daily Mail provides some answers to my South Charleston Tech Park questions.

• Dow Chemical Co. pays $10 million annually ($7.8 million net) for upkeep, but the State’s going to manage to reduce that amount to $1.8-$1.9 million?  Who says the government isn’t more efficient than the private sector?!?  Still a deficit mind you, but a pretty amazing proposed accomplishment by the agile and efficient public sector.
• The State is going to tear down an old building.  Who’s paying for that?
• Dow is throwing in $10 million to get rid of the property?!?  Because they’re such strong supporters of the State of West Virginia and the Kanawha Valley?  Someone might want to check with the Valley’s many former Dow employees.
• The State will use federal stimulus money to convert one building into a “green” building and save $1 million in heating costs?  How much will that cost?  How long will it take to accomplish?
• “I still think it could serve as a catalyst for West Virginia University and Marshall University.”  Just like the West Virginia University Research Park and Huntington’s Kinetic Park?
• “He said it is projected that by the end of 2012 the park will be home to 300 jobs with an average salary of $100,000 a year.”  I’d love to see the basis for those projections.
• “The governor said he’s asked stakeholders to come back Monday with recommendations on what should be torn down, renovated or otherwise changed.  He promised that all of the figures will be made public … WHEN THE STATE HAS A FINAL PLAN.”  (Emphasis mine, of course.)

I think we have our answer.  The Governor did not need to use the word “FINAL.”  I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.  I hope everyone can come up with a plan before next Tuesday.

I am baffled by media coverage of the South Charleston Tech Center story. While I understand that a race to meet a company’s artificial deadline, one politician’s decision to snub another, and the possible destruction of formerly thriving facilities make for interesting stories, I do not understand the media’s, government’s and higher education’s utter and complete silence concerning a subject of utmost importance: Has anyone prepared a detailed business plan that analyzes what it would take to make the South Charleston Tech Center a viable property?

Dow obviously has determined that it cannot operate the South Charleston Tech Center profitably, whether as a research park or as far more mundane rental property. Potential buyers that Dow has courted over the years surely have reached much the same conclusion, or the property would have sold long ago.

So what makes the “Friends of the Tech Park” think they are going to be able to turn things around? Some really basic questions:

• How much revenue does the site currently generate?
• How much does the site currently cost to operate?
• What are the ongoing maintenance costs for the facilities?  The deferred maintenance costs?
• How much additional revenue is going to be generated next year?  Two years from now?  Five years from now?
• Who is going to provide that revenue?  The private sector?  Government agencies?
• What is going to change to make the property a mecca for private sector companies?  Is the “mecca”-nization of the property going to cost anything?  If so, from whence is that money coming?
• How is the property going to be marketed?  Is a “government” park going to attract non-government tenants?
• How is West Virginia’s higher education research establishment, which on its best day is not spoken of in the same breath as North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park research establishment, unless, that is, Charleston Newspapers are providing the coverage, going to support this effort?
• Isn’t the movement of government offices anywhere largely a zero-sum game unless someone expects to hire a lot more government employees?  What’s going to happen to all the rental property currently housing government employees?  Why is this mass move of government agencies a net positive?
• What makes anyone think the Higher Education Policy Commission, which owns a single piece of property that has not been well-maintained, or state government, which owns a lot of poorly maintained properties, is going to be able to turn things around?
• How is the environmental calculus that led West Virginia University to decline a “gift” of much of this property different now?

There might be a beautifully bound plan that answers every last one of these questions in exquisite detail and contains every chart and graph I’d ever want.  But if so, why is no one quoted in the newspapers mentioning it?  And why is no reporter asking for it?

In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sherlock Holmes solves the case based on the fact that a dog did not bark.  In this case, no one seems to be noticing the eerie silence.