How about a convention center?

I spent the weekend in Helena at my son's basketball tournament. This is our first year with "traveling" sports, so we're learning the ropes.

We've been to several tournaments now, and it seems that all a town has to do is create a tournament and teams will come out of the woodwork to play in it. I can't even imagine the economic impact to Helena from all of the families at restaurants, hotels, the malls, etc.

If we had a nice convention facility with, say, three or four courts in it, we could host a tournament dang near every weekend. Figure 30 teams at 7 players a team, you have 210 kids. Add two parents and a brother for each kid, and you have almost a thousand people in town.

Maybe our City staff should focus on finding a way to construct a first class convention facilty, rather than telling business people what their signs should look like?