New survey will help shape Sikeston's future

There's a new survey out of importance to Sikeston and hopefully it will help the city to consider ways to move into the future.

The survey - commissioned by the city Vision Implementation Committee - touches on a number of topics that either attract people here or convince people to move elsewhere.

There's far too many facets of the survey to go into great details here and now.

So let me focus on the area of entertainment.

The survey of nearly 400 people was designed primarily to gauge opinions on why some people would work in Sikeston but choose to live elsewhere.

But the overwhelming feedback was the item missing from Sikeston involved a lack of entertainment outlets.

Now let's accept that "entertainment" means different things to different people.

The primary entertainment "shortfall" was a need for an improved movie theater. As you may recall, the city has addressed this issue which included a temporary shutdown of the Malco Trio theater complex - since reopened of course.

But it gets complicated when you try to define "entertainment" so the city has a potential direction.

Depending on just how far back to want to travel, Sikeston has had a roller rink, miniature golf facility, baseball batting cages, golf driving range, BMX track, go-cart track, etc.

But all of those entertainment facility has gone by the wayside.

We have a top-flight YMCA which offers much more than I could cover in this brief column. And we have an active Little Theater, Depot and art galleries.

But apparently there is a strong interest in additional entertainment outlets.

The Bootheel Golf course is now out of business and past efforts with facilities such as a Teen Town have proven less than successful.

So my question is this:

What affordable and realistic entertainment outlets can the city consider?

This question will be discussed extensively in the weeks and months ahead.

What would truly help this discussion is substantial input from you.

So here's your shot!