HOUSTON – Registered voters in the Bayou City don’t want to tear down the vacant Astrodome, but they can’t decide what to do with the historic structure, according to an 11 News/KUHF-Houston Public Radio poll released Sunday.
Rice University’s Center for Civic Engagement conducted the poll, which surveyed 500 registered voters in the city of Houston earlier this month. It had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.
Just a quarter of those polled supported a plan to tear down the dome and replace it with a park at a cost of $100 million.
"The best predictor we could find: how long you've lived in this city,” said Prof. Bob Stein, 11 News’ political analyst. “If you were here when the venue opened, there is maybe some attachment, some love, some memory of just seeing that dome. But beyond that, I cannot explain it."
The park idea was one of three proposals county officials unveiled in June.
The second option would involve keeping the stadium’s outer shell but converting the interior into a multi-purpose facility at a cost of $300 million.
Despite the higher price tag, more respondents favored that plan. Forty percent supported it. Fifty percent were against it. The rest were undecided or refused to answer.
The third option is the most expensive and the most ambitious. It would include a total redesign with a planetarium, a movie soundstage and other attractions for roughly $500 million.
Just 32 percent support that third option. Fifty-seven percent oppose it. The rest are undecided.
So despite the strongest support for the second choice, none of the plans attracted majority support. That means county officials will likely have a tough time securing taxpayer funding for any of the projects in the coming years.
"We can't just leave it sitting there wasting away," Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said, adding that the stadium is costing taxpayers millions of dollars a year in maintenance costs.
It’s important to note that the 11 News/KUHF-Houston Public Radio poll surveyed only city residents but it will ultimately be county voters who will weigh in on the Astrodome’s future – possibly as early as next year.
"I think it's one of those circumstances where it's going to continue to be a work in progress, but sooner or later, the county is going to have to do something with it,” Emmett said. “It's becoming an eyesore to the community. Icon or not, when we have the Final Four here next year, to have tourists from all over the country come and see this rusting hulk of an Astrodome, that's not good."
The Astrodome opened in 1965 and quickly became known as the “Eighth Wonder of the World” for its status as the only domed sports stadium on the planet.
Lifelong Houston resident Sonya Cobbin still remembers visiting the dome as a child.
"I'd like to see it become a hotel, so it could be like a convention center,” she said. “It shouldn’t be torn down.”
