– The willingness to use public money to create and
subsidize for-profit and non-profit ventures alike

– The belief that tourism is your town's lodestone to
economic prosperity

– The ease with which boosterism can mushroom, and thereby

– Support the near-universal faith that “if we build it
they will come”

– All relying on the widespread willingness to focus on
benefits to the exclusion of costs and risks, to substitute board members for
financial analysis, and enthusiasm for data.

Using taxpayers' money to fund for-profit corporations and
non-profit public ventures is coming under increasing scrutiny from
tax-and-spend Democrats, borrow-and-spend Republicans, and don't-spend
Libertarians alike. We do have another model: the marketplace. It offers
incentives. Entrepreneurs have dreams of riches and nightmares of bankruptcy.
Venture capitalists and banks want to get their money back. They insist on
detailed business plans.

But note something often ignored. Even with those
motivations, one-third of each year's 800,000 new businesses fail within four years.
When those motivations are not present and public money is, responsibility is
diffused, boosterism replaces financial analysis, and the likelihood of
financial failure escalates even further.

Is that reason to oppose all taxpayer-funded development? Of
course not. But it is reason enough for public officials and media to apply a
loan officer's standards to public and private projects alike.

I'm neither booster nor basher of the rainforest. (How could
anyone be without more facts?) But I've been intrigued by it for the last five
years of its nine-year history. That's when I first started asking the
questions to which I have yet to get answers.

Iowa
needs bold ideas and “vision.” But it also needs to welcome the
questions that can morph that vision into reality rather than dismiss them as
the ranting of the unimaginative. And this is the media's responsibility. Tell
us to walk toward the rainbow, yes. But also remind us to keep our eye on the
road lest we step in something on the way.

After nine years of expensive fundraising the rainforest is
between $90 and $170 million short of its more modest $180 million (once $300
million) goal. Not one dime has been raised in two years. The project's been
rejected by Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
City and probably Coralville. Sen. Chuck Grassley's $50 million pork
contribution is on ice. And now the promoters are back in Des Moines, kind of like Harold Hill in
“The Music Man,” only without the 76 trombones.

So what lessons should we learn?

For starters, note that the sandbags in the rainforest's
heavy luggage have been there from the beginning. The time to have asked tough
questions was at the project's birth, not its death:

– The promoters' public relations have continued to shift
focus, from tourist attraction to educational training to scientific research
center. “There's no 'there' there.”

– Without focus there can't be business plans, or revenue
stream projections. (Independent economists think attendance projections are
wildly optimistic.)

– There's no detail behind the oft-quoted “$180
million,” not to mention ongoing operating costs.

– Secrecy, stonewalling, lack of transparency and a trail of
missed deadlines bedevil public officials, media and public alike.

Even more important than construction costs and overruns are
financial projections five, 10 and 20 years out. Virtually all new projects'
revenue and attendance projections are grossly overstated, sometimes as much as
tenfold. Rainforest promoters project annual attendance of 1.1 to 1.5 million
(roughly half of Iowa's
population). That's the equivalent of attendance at all U.S.
presidential libraries combined. The most poorly attended? Iowa's at 66,000 annually. Coralville's
Coralridge Mall gets 10 million visits a year. Yet fewer than 100,000 enter its
Children's Museum. Dubuque's nationally renowned
Mississippi River
Museum draws 300,000 a
year, the Living History Farms 100,000.

Major million-plus attendance attractions work best in
“destinations” with multi-million-population urban centers and other
draws, such as southern California or New York City. And they
start off with cash in hand, like Home Depot's $200 million contribution to Atlanta's newly opened
“world's largest” aquarium.

What works in places like Iowa? Community support; precise focus;
up-front financing; realistic revenue projections; knowledgeable, experienced
management; transparency with public and media; and relationship to the
locality, like Iowa's Living History Farms, or the Dubuque attractions' focus
on Dubuque's river, topography and rich history.

Iowans need dreams. But when dreams involve major projects
and public money it does no one a favor for enthusiastic promoters, officials
and media to emphasize the “Wow!” and wonderful and ignore inherent
risks and costs.