Replies

Funny (as in “coincidence”) that you’d mention that.

S. Illinois already has the “World Shooting Complex”, a LARGE facility, run by the State: Basically it is in the middle of nowhere, but only about an hour from downtown St. Louis. I happened to detour by there, curious about it, 10(?) years ago in one of my travels hither, thither, and yon. It was a nice day, but the place was virtually deserted. Some time later I read the Complex was losing money, big time. Ex Gov. Rauner wanted to shut it down. (Business decision.)

Curious, I made it a point to run by several times, in more of my travels, for a number of years. The odds were very stacked against me in swinging by when an event was “on”, but I still marveled at how the place was always deserted.

Apparently the Complex does draw lots of gun enthusiasts... a few times a year. That’s not enough to make it financially viable.

The thing is, I think this facility (not to mention the nearby astonishingly lightly used 19,701 acre Pyramid State Park) could both be at least revenue neutral for the State, if not money makers in the bigger picture, if properly promoted. But, while competent in other areas, IDNR (Illinois Dept. of Natural Resources) has not much of a clue when it comes to marketing what they have in the way of facilities and resources. And that goes doubly so for the rest of the state government!

There are a lot of such lightly used facilities in S. Illinois. A handful of the parks get heavy use during peak times in summer. However, they are the exception, from what I’ve seen, unless things have really changed in recent years. (One obvious exception was the 2017 eclipse: Friends and news articles around the area report it was packed!)

Worse... IDNR can’t properly maintain what they already have, but keep opening up new facilities, buying or otherwise taking on more land, etc.