Controversy
The Task Force meetings were not without controversy. At first, task force member and University of Louisville athletics director Tom Jurich, along with University of Louisville president James Ramsey and Task Force member John Schnatter, were ardently opposed to a downtown site and supported instead a campus arena, or a new arena built near Freedom Hall at the Kentucky Exposition Center. Jurich and Ramsey would later support the waterfront site. Schnatter, joined by fellow task force member and Humana co-founder David Jones, strongly supported a new arena at the water company site, located four blocks down 2nd Street, or the Exposition Center, which was the cheapest option. They paid over $200,000 for a study that showed the water company site would be much less expensive than the riverfront site. However, the two dropped their lobbying effort after it did not seem to change the minds of the rest of the task force.
In the final site recommendation vote, Schnatter was the only one to vote against the waterfront site.
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