I can’t believe none of you wrote in to ask why I hadn’t reported on a Toronto Blue Jays game getting postponed due to falling ice puncturing a hole in the stadium roof, but I guess you’re all acclimated to waiting for the Friday roundup now for that sort of thing. But wait no longer! (Well, wait a few bullet points for that one in particular.)
- The city of Richmond built an $11 million training facility for the Washington NFL team in 2012, and is paying the team $500,000 a year to hold three weeks a year of practices in it, costs it had to dip into its school construction budget to pay off. So now the city wants to renegotiate the deal so that it’s no longer a money suck, or else it will kick the team out once its lease expires in 2020. No response from the team yet, but this is a pretty good cautionary tale about why one should never spend lots of money on practice facilities and expect an economic windfall.
- Some Portland, Oregon businesspeople who want to bring major-league baseball to that city say they’ve put in bids for two potential stadium sites, which doesn’t actually promise anything — they can use the land for something else if an MLB bid doesn’t go anywhere — but is more than nothing, I suppose. There’s still legislation passed in 2003 authorizing $150 million in bonds for a new stadium, to be repaid by state income taxes on players — which wouldn’t have penciled out 15 years ago, but might now, though it still has the problem that much of that tax money would be diverted from income that would be earned by people working in other entertainment jobs in the absence of a team — but how the rest of the money would be raised, or what team exactly would play in Portland, remains a mystery.
- A chunk of ice fell off the CN Tower and smashed a three-by-five-foot hole in the closed Rogers Centre roof on Monday, frightening players in the adjoining hotel, causing that night’s Toronto Blue Jays game to be postponed, and causing minor damage to a roof membrane. Here’s some video of ice falling off the tower, though sadly you don’t actually see it hit the roof.
- A private equity firm wants to buy Hartford’s arena for $50 million and do up to $250 million worth of renovations on it … and then the state would have to pay 7.5% a year in “rent” on the renovation costs? This sounds less like a purchase offer than a loan-sharking plan, right?
- People in Boise are really steamed about plans for a new $40 million minor-league baseball stadium that would be funded partly by public money. The word “carpetbagger” was used; parental discretion is advised.
- Puerto Rico suffered another island-wide blackout this week, but the Minnesota Twins–Cleveland Indians baseball game in San Juan went off without a hitch, thanks to months of work by MLB and lots and lots of portable generators. I’m sure residents who weren’t able to cook or shower or charge their phones for months on end were cheered that the ballgame went on.
- The new Los Angeles F.C. stadium features a section of seats that are locked closed during games, with rails for diehard supporters to lean against instead, and a 34-degree rake to make fans look more intimidating to opposing players. Opening day isn’t until April 29, so no visual evidence until then.
- MLS officials have met with prospective owners in Columbus who want to keep the Crew in town, while also conducting “a review of potential local stadium sites for the team.” The Crew’s current stadium is 19 years old. This is your dystopian future.
- The New England Revolution are threatening to move their practice facility out of Foxborough, Massachusetts unless they get new practice fields built. See Richmond item above for how that’s likely to work out.
- Reminder: Mikhail Prokhorov doesn’t own the Brooklyn Nets arena, he just owns operating rights to it, because property taxes, ew.
And here’s Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey, pasted over the site by me via Google Maps and Photoshop:
I mean, maybe, if the architects are super-creative and trim the corners just right? But soccer pitches only come in one size, and Red Bull Arena is pretty compact already, so I’d like to see something with actual measurements before saying for sure that this wouldn’t require closing streets or moving navigable shipping lanes.
