And more!
- A corporate consultant wants free land in Saskatoon so he can build a $20 million, 8,000-seat stadium for a soccer team in a league that only has two teams so far, but promises it’ll work out because it’ll “bring more people to downtown.” Or if that doesn’t work for the city council, maybe he’ll take something else: “My background is finance, and I’m accustomed to developing complex financing structures. We can lend some ideas and some support to the city, in how we ultimately do that together with them.” Unless, you know, maybe this is more of a Shelbyville idea.
- The Atlanta Braves got approval for $40 million in subsidies for a new spring-training stadium in Sarasota County, Florida, which will hopefully not be underwater by the time it opens.
- The city of Phoenix is set to vote on Tuesday on whether to sell its Sheraton Hotel to raise an estimated $255 million toward a new Suns arena. The Sheraton is reportedly bringing in $7 million a year in revenues, so I don’t actually know why anyone would pay $255 million for it, but if the city has found a sucker to buy it, they should jump at the opportunity. Then taking the windfall and handing it over to the Suns would be beyond stupid, of course.
- Smith College economist Andy Zimbalist points out that it doesn’t really matter if nobody’s showing up at Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers and San Francisco 49ers games, because football stadiums are dark so many days a year anyway that they’re “not a very good economic proposition.” Woo, silver lining! Zimbalist also says that having a football team does “provide some coherence to a city’s culture,” which, you know, maybe this wasn’t really the best day to make this argument.