It wasn't even 15 years after the TD Waterhouse Centre was finished that the Orlando Magic began complaining it was obsolete.
The Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre was built about 20 years before the NBA came into existence. The last major renovation came well before the birth of Dwight Howard.
To this day, Bob Carr still doesn't have aisles.
There are just long rows of seats that extend beyond the curvature of the earth. So if you are sitting in the middle, you should arrive 20 minutes early to squeeze through before the curtain rises.
If a fire breaks out, your options are either to be polite and burn to death or to trample the slow, weak and aged.
As for having to go, a catheter would be easier.
It is time to dump this dump.
I may be a cultural hayseed. Of the four musical productions I've seen, all were Jesus Christ Superstar.
But even so, I know where Orlando is trying to go, and it won't get there with Bob Carr. That's why I support a new Orlando Performing Arts Center.
Downtown entertainment options now consist of getting trashed on drink specials, vomiting on your shoes and then getting tased by the cops. A new multiscreen theater should diversify things by bringing in more 16-year-olds.
But still, someone who moved here from California to split DNA for a living, and just shelled out $2 million for his loft condo, might want more.
He might want Yo-Yo Ma instead of Yao Ming.
The problem we have in this town is not a lack of sports. What we lack is class.
Do you think Scripps Research Institute turned us down for Palm Beach County because we might lose the Magic?
An arts center is a message. It says that there is enough money and sophistication here to financially support the finer things in life.
This is what high-wage companies look for when scouting cities, not whether we have a shot at hosting the Georgia-Miami football game in 2012.
These companies want a place that will not scare away the kind of intelligent employees they need.
"I am convinced one reason we did not get Scripps was the lack of a performing-arts center we could point to as an example of our philanthropic giving," Mayor Buddy Dyer says.
Miami is finishing up a $446 million arts center that is attracting so much development, builders are paying the city incentives.
Orlando and Orange County will have to prioritize a list of public projects to be funded with the resort tax. Contestants include the performing-arts center, a new Magic arena and renovating the Citrus Bowl.
This should be the ranking: performing-arts center, performing-arts center and performing-arts center.
That's where we get the most long-term bang for the buck. The arts complex would be the cultural center of the region and the physical center of downtown.
It would create trickle-down culture to spin off into museums, theaters and high-wage jobs.
So please, let's not go all Goober here and cut corners to add a beer stand to the Citrus Bowl or another $200 million to Rich DeVos' portfolio.
We don't need them. We do need a performing-arts center.