Here lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what is to be done with the half-finished amphitheater on the west bank of the Tombigbee River.

The last estimate I saw for completing the project was $4 million, a sum the city of Columbus does not presently have and may not have for the foreseeable future. To date, $3.85 million has been spent on the project, all of it provided through the state’s bond appropriations. It’s a dilemma for sure. Too much has been invested in the project to abandon it, but the project costs too much to complete.

What to do?

One option would be for the city to sell or lease the facility to a private group, perhaps at a bargain price, which might allow the purchaser to complete the project and open it as a concert venue as originally intended. Since the city hasn’t spent any of its own money on the project, any revenue from the sale would be a profit. The city could also capture some sales tax revenue from a viable concert venue. Restaurants, shops and hotels, might draw business from concert-goers.

That would be a conventional solution, one of the first I considered.

But then another idea – you might even call it an epiphany – emerged, one that would capitalize on what Columbus does best: tourism.

Think about it.

Each year, approximately 4 million tourists visit the ruins of The Colosseum, which means it’s a bigger draw now than when it was in good working order.

One million people visit Stonehenge every year. Anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 people shop at Istanbul’s historic Grand Bazaar each day.

Do you see what I’m driving at?

The future of Columbus is Ruins.

What if the story of the Amphitheater we presented to tourists was not that of an uncompleted edifice but the tale of a once lavish showplace that, over the generations, has deteriorated into its current state?

We could invent a history of the amphitheater to rival that of the Colosseum. I envision flocks of tourists gathering to watch historical reenactments (for example, the memorial battle between Roberticus and Kabirius on the steps of the amphitheater). Tour guides could regale audiences with tales of how the amphitheater was periodically flooded to stage maritime battles – which really isn’t that great a departure from reality, when you think about it. We could reimagine all of Rufus Ward’s columns on the history of Columbus as events that happened at the amphitheater. Compressing all of these events into a single venue would make it a one-stop shop of Columbus history.

Of course, any themed tourist destination requires more than just one attraction. Fortunately, we have an even older ruin to capitalize on, the Magnolia Bowl, where Generals and Bobcats faced off against foreign hordes of Tigers, Lions, Yellow Jackets and assorted other organized beasts.

About six years ago, I visited the old KiOR biofuel plant on The Island. At that time, a salvage company had finished removing much of the materials from the decommissioned plant. What remained was a landscape littered with concrete posts and pillars of various sizes, some as tall as 20-feet high, along with the stone skeletons of buildings and other structures.

If the area has remained in that state, the story of the biofuel plant becomes The Columbus Stonehenge, a mysterious shrine where rituals were performed by some long-forgotten sect, possibly the Rotarians.

If it’s not too late, Leigh Mall could become our Grand Bazaar, further capitalizing on tourist dollars.

The beauty of the idea is that it requires so little to achieve. Sure, we would have to find two local groups to bicker over who gets to do the tours. But we’ve met that challenge before.

Apart from that, though, there’s not much to do. In fact, the less we do, the better the ruins. I have great faith in the city’s public works department to meet this standard.

We can do this, Columbus.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].