Wednesday, December 3, 2014

28 Pages Of Boondoggle Propaganda With No Mention Of The Trinity River Vision's Shining Cowtown Wakepark Star

Yesterday when I read and blogged about The Trinity River Vision Boondoggle's Explosive 28 Page Fall Propaganda Update it did not occur to me til later that I saw no mention made on any of those 28 pages of The Boondoggle's Cowtown Wakepark.

The propaganda made bragging mention of all the other Trinity River Vision Boondoggle's products and programming.

I first learned of the Cowtown Wakepark over four years ago. Riding my bike I came upon the pond you see here. This pond had me wondering why the Trinity Trail had been moved to accommodate the pond and what the purpose of the pond was. I remember seeing a lot of newly installed Boondoggle signage with messages like "The Trinity River Vision is Underway".

After I blogged about being perplexed by this pond the Fort Worth Connie D pointed me to a website touting the soon to open  Cowtown Wakepark. I blogged about this on September 30, 2010 in Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision's Cowtown Wakepark To Be The Premiere Wakeboarding Facility In The World.

In that blogging there is a very embarrassing J.D. Granger quote about Cowtown Wakepark....

The Executive Director, JD Granger, states: “Cowtown Wakepark will be one of the shining stars of the dynamic improvements happening on the Trinity River right now. We are very excited to have teamed up with the best people in the field of wakeboarding and we are working diligently to help make Cowtown Wakepark the premiere wakeboarding facility in the world. We want everybody in Fort Worth to be able to experience the fun of Wakeboarding, and Cowtown makes it affordable for everyone in Fort Worth to take up the sport.”

So, Mr. Granger thought Cowtown Wakepark would be a shining star among the dynamic improvements happening four years ago on the Trinity River?

Can anyone tell me what those improvements were?

A shining star? Have you seen Cowtown Wakepark. Shoddy, tacky, cheap looking, unlandscaped are descriptive words that come to mind upon seeing this shining star.

The Boondoggle will work diligently to make Cowtown Wakepark the premiere wakeboarding facility in the world?

Now why was there no mention made of this shining star of the world's premiere wakeboarding facility on any of  the 28 pages of  The Boondoggle's propaganda?

Has the Cowtown Wakepark gone out of business? It did not seem to me to be a very viable business. I think at most only six wakeboarders could be zipping around the pond at the same time. The zipping around the pond could only take place during the warm time of the year, further limiting the revenue stream.

And really, how could there be enough people willing to shell out $25, or thereabouts, to get pulled around a little pond for a half hour, or thereabouts, with the pulling being done by a mechanical device strung up overhead?

When I first saw this first instance of actually seeing some result of the Trinity River Vision's Boondoggle I remember wondering how it came about. As in, how much did The Boondoggle spend to alter the Trinity Trails and move the dirt to make this pond? What did the operators of the Cowtown Wakepark pay to The Boondoggle?

In other words, what were, or are, the financial arrangements between The Boondoggle and Cowtown Wakepark? Is this part of the secret shenanigans that can not be made  public? Part of what should be a public record, with a copy of that record denied to anyone requesting to see it?

Anyone know if this shining star of The Boondoggle is still in business?

UPDATE: One of my co-blogging corroborators, upon reading the above pointed me to two blog posts about Cowtown Wakepark. One of those blog posts is on my blog,  the other on the Star-Telegraph blog. Note, that is Star-Telegraph, not Star-Telegram. The Star-Telegraph has news you won't find in the Star-Telegram, such as the blog post titled Wanna Wakeboard? with photos of what happens to Cowtown Wakepark when the Trinity River goes in to flood mode. Apparently Cowtown Wakepark is not part of what the Trinity River Vision's flood protection plan is protecting.

And then on my blog, I'd forgotten I taken photos of the Cowtown Wakepark's shoddy tackiness  and blogged about it in Trying To Wakeboard Today At Cowtown Wakepark. Is the quality level represented by Cowtown Wakepark what we can expect if the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle ever becomes something we can see?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Local hero Brian Luenser needs to photograph Granger's hillbilly mud pit and show us its true beauty. I don't know of anyone who can boost the color intensity of photos like ol' Bri'.

I borrowed the term local hero from the December issue of Fort Worth Magazine and I got hillbilly mud pit from Durango Texas at Blogspot.