As ya'll probably heard at some point or another in your lives even if your interest in sports is non-existent, Houston boasts the first domed stadium ever built. The Astrodome was billed as the "eighth wonder of the world" when it was first unveild in the 60s, and for 30 or so years, it was the home to football and baseball in Houston.

Along the way, people decided it was a bit more trouble than it was worth as a sports arena. The thing is just massive. Baseball games never sold out. Football games were sort of weirdly configured. The scoreboard took up half the stadium. There were few modern luxury boxes. Astroturf was accused of causing injuries. And so on and so on. I mean the building is so big it has its own weather patterns.

The first to go were the Oilers. Bud Adams had pitched a hissy fit about the lack of luxury boxes late 80s and got the county to fuck with the scoreboard and put some boxes in and build some new ramps. That wasn't good enough for Adams, so he picked up the team and headed to Tennesses. Then, the Astros started noticing all of those throwback stadiums all over MLB, and wanted one of their own. So they moved downtown to Enron Minute Maid Park. And then when the Texans franchise was announced, part of the deal from the NFL was that we were required to have a new stadium. So a building that dwarfs the Astrodome was built right next door, and when that was finished, the last group that used the Astrodome, the rodeo, pulled out and headed for greener pastures.

So from, 2002 or so, the Astrodome has been sitting, unused--except for that one, exceptional time--in the Reliant complex, waiting for someone to decide what to do with it. When they opened it up to house Katrina victims in 2005, they realized that no one ever bothered to save some of the historical stuff in there.

Weirdly, everyone is ridiculously reluctant to suggest tearing it down. This is not characteristic of the region. We regularly tear down old buildings if they look at us funny. We could give a rat's ass about historic significance, and we think nostalgia is something that should be treated at the Medical Center. But no one wants the Astrodome to be torn down. So we awkwardly pass by it when we walk from the train to the Texans games. And we pretend it's not smack dab in the way of getting to the carnival rides from the livestock show.

All sorts of suggestions have been floating around the city for the last ten years about what to do with our Wonder of the World. Some people suggested turning it into the world's largest parking garage. Others thought it'd be cool to put an amusement park inside. An idea that everyone thought would actually be pulled off was to put a hotel and convention center inside. They had plans and funding and everything and they were ready to make that happen. But the Texans and the Rodeo, for reasons that still mystify me, said no to that. And apparently their leases allows them to say no.

So while they put the finishing touches on the roof on Reliant Stadium that was damaged during Hurricane Ike, while they get ready for the rodeo which starts in a few weeks, the Astrodome sits there, waiting for someone to figure out what the hell to do with it.

Next month, an outfit called Astrodome Studios will pitch their idea to the County: turn the building into a major motion picture stuido. Swamplot gave some details on the plan this morning, but I've heard about it for a few months now.

As far as ideas go, it's not a bad one. The building is huge. They could build entire cities in there, or have several productions going on at once without tripping over each other. Graham has worked concerts and the Rodeo, and he says that the power distribution is quite sophisticated. A lot of the infrastructure for a movie studio is already in there. The building is air conditioned, so the idea of working in Houston in the middle of the summer isn't as repulsive as it might usually be. (Apparently that is a major problem with the airplane-hangers-turned-into-movie-studios in Austin.)

And Houston is cheap. You know that report that everyone's citing comparing middle class in various cities? The one that says $50,000 income in Houston is the equivilant of a $123,000 income in New York? For someone in Los Angeles to have an equivilent lifestyle as someone in Houston, they'd have to make $80,583. This sort of data could considerably cut production costs and attract major studios to Houston if we had a world class facility for them to use.

I think it's an awesome idea, and the people wanting to do this thing have some details on their website on how they'd covert the Astrodome. I'm not quite sure what the Texans and Rodeo would think of this, but I'm sure some sort of "no shooting 10 Sundays in the fall" arrangement could be made with the Texans. The Rodeo is a little trickier, but since this idea means the building can be closed to the public, they may be happier with it.

It'd be pretty cool if something like this could be done with the Astrodome. I think it'd be good for the city, and it'd be good for the Astrodome to be used again.

It is, after all, a Wonder of the World.

Tags: houston, movies