It's crucial for Bowling Green's downtown redevelopment, and SKyPAC's potential alliance with Bowling Green's sister city will have business booming in downtown.

Owensboro plans to team up with Bowling Green to make western Kentucky an economic powerhouse. It hasn't been voted on yet... But the board meeting today was definitely moving in a positive direction towards teaming up with owensboro.

Zev Buffman who has worked in the business for years, knows firsthand what an alliance can bring. "You can negotiate better terms, you can negotiate routes more aggressively, and you can get better deals," said Buffman.

Here's what he means by routing: If the two join forces, bigger shows traveling down south from Louisville to Nashville for instance, would be more likely to make a stop in western Kentucky and squeeze a few shows in if there are two places willing to have them.

Plus, Bowling Green and Owensboro would both save money by splitting the cost of buying shows securing shows, and sharing advertising costs. "It's just going to make our arts community bigger and better and stronger," said Mary E. Carpenter, the Project Director of SKyPAC.

Roxi Witt, the General Manager at Riverpark, says they can prove their success.
"We are the anchor that hosts 650 events a year, and has 200-thousand people in and out of that center, on an annual basis."

And with that record, they say an alliance will make both cities stronger. "Tremendous opportunity to do things together," says Buffman, "I think this is a superb market. But Bowling Green doesn't need to go it alone, there's no need for that."

We'll let you know the final decision on whether or not SKyPACand RiverPark will team up. The ground-breaking ceremony for SKyPAC is November 5th at 10 a.m.