FARGO — The committee chosen to sift through proposals and recommend a convention center project to the Fargo City Commission has been terrifically transparent. Spearheaded by chairman Charley Johnson, a good human, the committee has been up front every step of the way since voters approved a hotel tax hike for the project last year.

Let’s hope things stay that way.

The convention center will be an exciting upgrade for Fargo, a city that in recent years has reverted to a propensity for short-sightedness and small thinking. Think of the much-needed renovations to the Fargodome that were twice proposed and twice rejected, the second time by a dishearteningly wide margin.

I’m fully behind the convention center and any other major infrastructure project that’s needed, properly funded and can be supported by facts and data.

[I went on record early as saying the Fargodome site is the best for the convention center](https://www.inforum.com/opinion/columns/mcfeely-fargodome-site-the-right-one-for-convention-center) because it obviously is, for various reasons. But if the committee chooses another site, that’s cool. The members are earnest in their desire to do the best job they can. They’ve allowed the process to play out in public.

That’s why what happened recently is a snag that needs to be addressed. Johnson, in typical fashion, tells me he will do so at Friday’s regularly scheduled committee meeting.

After a downtown site was selected as one of four finalists — along with the dome, Brewhalla and Scheels Arena — [city staff raised concerns that the downtown proposal had issues.](https://www.inforum.com/news/fargo/fargo-convention-center-committee-tweaks-timeline-and-request-for-second-round-of-proposals) Namely, the proposed downtown site on city property that is currently a parking lot next to the Fargo Public Library and City Hall has a sewer line running underneath that couldn’t be accessed if a convention center was built on top of it.

Good to know. At a subsequent meeting the bidders — EAPC Architects Engineers in partnership with the Kilbourne Group — [changed the proposal and instead submitted to the committee that they wanted to repurpose the largely dormant Fargo Civic Center](https://www.inforum.com/news/fargo/designers-for-downtown-fargo-convention-center-scrap-city-hall-parking-lot-plans-set-sights-on-civic-center) into a convention center and leave the parking lot alone.

The committee largely nodded its collective heads and accepted the new proposal like it did the old one.

One tiny problem: The new proposal isn’t the old proposal. In fact, it appears entirely different, including that it’s on a different (albeit nearby) site.

And so, since the original proposal was subject to a semi-deep dive and a scoring formula, why not the new one?

It is not a proposal that’s been tweaked slightly. It’s a new version.

Read more @ https://www.inforum.com/opinion/columns/mcfeely-should-the-downtown-convention-center-proposal-be-revisited

McFeely: Should the downtown convention center proposal be revisited?