St. Louis MLS team – Field of Schemes

Friday roundup: Coyotes late with arena rent, Winnipeg move non-threats, and good old gondolas, nothing beats gondolas!

September 25, 2020October 5, 2020 Neil deMause

If you missed me — and a whole lot of other people you’ve likely read about here, including economist Victor Matheson and former Anaheim mayor Tom Tait — breaking down the Los Angeles Angels stadium deal in an enormous Zoom panel last night, you can still check it out on the Voice of OC’s Facebook page. I didn’t bother to carefully curate the books on the shelves behind me, as one does, so have fun checking out which novels I read 20 years ago!

And on to the news, which remains unrelentingly newsy:

The Arizona Coyotes are late on their rent payments to the city of Glendale, or maybe not late according to their lease which gives them until the end of October, but still later than usual. The rent payment is $500,000; the Arizona Republic notes that the city is currently spending $13 million a year paying down arena debt plus $6.1 million a year in arena management fees and maintenance costs. Man, this whole thing was a bad idea.
Former Winnipeg mayor and current Winnipeg Goldeyes owner Sam Katz has signed a ten-year lease on Ottawa’s minor-league baseball stadium, and swears this is totally unrelated to his displeasure with his successors in Winnipeg city government trying to renew his stadium lease there to raise his rent from $1 a year and eliminate $700,000 a year in tax breaks and parking subsidies. “I don’t threaten, never threaten,” said Katz. “What I am saying to you is we have a lease for a ballpark in Ottawa.” That is surely not a thing that anyone would ever say as a threat!
The great Alissa Walker of Curbed weighed in on former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt’s proposal to build a gondola to take people to and from Dodger Stadium, and reached three important conclusions: “A stadium built at the height of car culture on a mountaintop with 16,000 parking spaces is working exactly as designed”; there’s no way you’re going to fit 12,000 fans onto a means of transport that even if packed to the gills would require people to start loading on two hours before game time and then continue doing so in even numbers until the first pitch; and there’s already a fast, efficient public transit technology to get people to Dodger games that doesn’t require massive spending on infrastructure, and it’s called shuttle buses. (Walker also calls gondolas “a kind of combination transit-slash-sightseeing ride,” which is both pretty damning and entirely accurate.) Add in that Los Angeles, unlike Oakland, already has plenty of existing bus routes leading to the stadium, and it’s really a no-brainer, unless you’re a rich dude looking to get city approval for a private gondola concession, in which case gondolas are the future, man, get with it already.
There’s a petition afoot in St. Louis to oppose the city’s plan to tear down a block of vacant buildings to make way for parking lots for St. Louis City S.C.‘s new stadium, presumably on the grounds that St. Louis already has too many vacant lots. A City S.C. spokesperson says the team is “exploring the opportunity” for a parking garage with stores on the first floor; hands up if you think it’s likely that they’re actually going to build this on their own dime.
The owners of the Tennessee Titans have come out against building a major league baseball stadium next door, which would seem to put a fork in the plan, even more than that the entire idea of an MLB team in Nashville is kind of dumb. So let’s take one last (?) opportunity to enjoy one of the more bonkers stadium renderings of our time.
If I had had to put my money on the next sports franchise to be displaced by the effects of climate change, I wouldn’t have wagered on a <strike>minor-league</strike> junior hockey team in Iowa having to shut down for a season because their arena was damaged by a derecho, but here we are.
The Super Bowl may or may not have live fans in attendance and, uh, yeah, that’s really the whole story.
This story has nothing to do with stadium shakedowns, except that it ends with the line “If it’s too expensive for the literal state of Florida to make some improperly obtained evidence go away, the defendant in the case will foot the bill himself,” so yeah, it really kinda does.

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Friday roundup: If you’re watching TV sports in empty stadiums by summer, count yourself lucky

March 27, 2020March 27, 2020 Neil deMause

Michael Sorkin, who died yesterday of COVID-19, was a prolific architecture critic (and architect) and observer of the politics of public space, and so not a little influential in the development of my own writing. I’m sure I read some of Sorkin’s architecture criticism in the Village Voice, but he first came on my radar with his 1992 anthology “Variations on a Theme Park,” a terrific collection of essays discussing the ways that architects, urban planners, and major corporations were redesigning the world we live in to become a simulacrum of what people think they want from their environment, but packaged in a way to better make them safely saleable commodities. (I wish I’d gotten a chance to ask him what he thought of the Atlanta Braves‘ new stadium, with its prefab walkable urban neighborhood with no real city attached to it.) In his “Variations on a Theme Park” essay on Disneyland and Disney World, he laid out the history of imagineered cities starting with the earliest World’s Fairs, up to the present day with Disney’s pioneering of “copyrighted urban environments” where photos cannot even be taken and published without prior approval of the Mouse — a restriction he got around by running as an illustration a photo of some clouds, and labeling it, “The sky above Disney World.”

I really hope this isn’t the beginning of a weekly feature on great people we’ve lost to this pandemic, though it seems pretty inevitable at this point. For now, on with the other stadium and arena news, though if you’re looking for a break from incessant coronavirus coverage, you won’t find it here:

In addition to the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers stadium getting to continue construction during a coronavirus shutdown of all “nonessential” businesses, construction will also continue on the Worcester Red Sox stadium, and the St. Louis MLS team stadium (though the club says it will “take the necessary steps to protect every member of the team”), and the Las Vegas Raiders stadium (despite a construction worker testing positive for COVID-19), and the Phoenix Suns arena renovation, and the Los Angeles Dodgers stadium renovation. Though some more cities are at least talking about shutting down construction sites like Boston has (mostly), so we’ll see how long this lasts.
As for existing sports venues and convention centers left empty by the cessation of pretty much all sports not played on a computer (or featuring marbles as athletes), they’re being pressed into service as emergency shelters and open-air hospitals and makeshift legislative meeting rooms and coronavirus testing sites and parking lots for rental vehicles that nobody wants to rent because who leaves the house anymore?
The Tokyo Olympics has been pushed back to 2021, which is expected to add $2.7 billion to the games’ price tag, though that could come down if hotels and security companies and the like agree to take a pay cut rather than forcing the Olympic committee to re-book everything a second time. NBC, meanwhile, is hosed on its plans to launch its streaming service with Olympic coverage, if you can find time to shed a tear for a massive media conglomerate’s streaming video business model amid all this.
MLB and its players union have reportedly agreed to a deal on salaries and service time and other issues surrounding playing an abbreviated season, including the shortened amateur draft that owners originally proposed in their plan last winter to eliminate 42 minor-league franchises, back before it looked like the Coronavirus Recession would kill them on their behalf. Meanwhile, the NBA is getting ready to finish its season in the summer without fans, which is probably a best-case scenario for all sports, especially given that a Champions League match is now thought to have been the spark that set off Italy’s coronavirus epidemic, and the Chinese Basketball Association has extended its 10-week hiatus for fear of the virus flaring up again like it has in Hong Kong, and even the more rose-colored projections involve a summer where “Americans might get restaurants but no music festivals, offices but no crowded beaches, bars with spaced-out seating.” There are still a lots of ways the curves can bend here, and while a few of them involve sports in 2020, hardly any involve letting people watch live sports in large numbers — unless maybe things have been brought under control to where massive testing and contact tracing and quarantine of those infected and their contacts can be enough to let us gather en masse again, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Actual non-coronavirus stadium news! Opponents of the Oakland A’s stadium project, including shipping companies that are worried about the impact on their businesses at Howard Terminal, are suing to block the fast-tracking of its environmental impact report, which is becoming a common move in stadium battles in California. (The fast-tracking is, I mean, not the suing. Well, both, really.) The A’s ownership decried this as reeking of “cynicism and desperation” coming “at a time when our community is coming together in the midst of a global public health crisis,” something that Pacific Merchant Shipping Association Vice President Michael Jacob called “pretty cynical and desperate.” Damn, I promised no coronavirus content in this item, sorry about that.
Real actual non-coronavirus stadium news, except for it actually being news: The desiccated husk of Sports Illustrated is speculating that the Carolina Panthers could move to South Carolina, because stadiums can host the Final Four or something? If you can make sense of this word salad, please post your interpretation in comments.
Won’t anyone think of the giant flags?

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State board gathers in small, enclosed space to approve St. Louis MLS subsidies

March 18, 2020March 18, 2020 Neil deMause

Hey, it’s actual stadium subsidy news! The world may be padlocking its doors as we speak, but the Missouri Development Finance Board did find time to approve $5.7 million worth of tax credits for the expansion St. Louis MLS team‘s new stadium.

The vote was unanimous, with board chair Marie Carmichael saying afterwards, “I feel a lot better about this project. It is certainly more doable.” (The team’s initial request, for $30 million in tax credits, was rejected last December after it was determined that the state was plumb out of tax credits after its next $5.7 million.) Though at least one board member noted the, uh, problematic timing of all this:

Although he voted in favor of the project, board treasurer John Mehner raised concerns about approving the project at a time when the world is focused on battling the coronavirus.

“I’m worried about the optics … and whether this is the exact right time to take action,” said Mehner, who suggested waiting for up to two months to take up action on the tax credits.

There’s also the question of whether the sports world will ever be the same as it was just a couple of weeks ago: Leagues are already looking at returning to play games in empty venues, possibly much smaller ones that could effectively be used as TV studios; this could be the new normal for a long while if predictions are accurate that we’re likely to be on a “roller coaster” of reopenings and reclosings as the virus waxes and wanes over the next year or two.

And then there’s the question of how sports leagues survive the economic hit of canceling most of all of their seasons — while some leagues are sitting on deep reserves of cash, that’s not true for smaller leagues like MLS (and certainly not for minor-league sports). Will the league’s strategy of continued growth underwritten by continued expansion still be viable in a world battered by a months- or years-long economic crash? We’ve seen leagues before that have gone on hiatus because of what seemed like a momentary crisis and then never returned; I’m not especially expecting that for MLS, but there could still be major repercussions for its business model.

In the meantime, I guess take comfort in the fact that at least some business as usual is still going on, even if you can’t go to work or school or the weed store. Sure, it’s the business as usual of tax money being handed over to private enterprise to underwrite their profits, but we’ve gotta cling to whatever normalcy we have now, right?

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Friday roundup: Dolphins owner seeks Formula One tax break, Tacoma okays soccer subsidies, plus vaportecture from around the globe!

March 6, 2020March 6, 2020 Neil deMause

Happy coronavirus panic week! What with stadiums in Europe being closed to fans and stadium workers in the U.S. testing positive for the virus, it’s tough to think of much right now other than what song to wash your hands to for 20 seconds (this is my personal preference). But long after we’re done with our self-quarantines, the consequences of sports venue spending will live on, so to the week’s news we go:

Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross is seeking a sales-tax exemption for tickets to Formula One racing events at his stadium, saying that without it, Miami might not get a Grand Prix. The tax break is expected to cost the state between $1.5 million and $2 million per event, but Formula One officials say each race would generate an economic impact of more than $400 million, and what possible reason would they have to lie about a thing like that?
The Tacoma city council voted 8-1 on Monday to approve spending on a $60 million, 5,000-seat stadium for the Reign F.C. women’s pro soccer team. According to a letter of intent approved by the council, the city will provide $15 million, while the city parks agency will provide $7.5 million more, with perhaps another $20 million to come from federal tax credits for investing in low-income communities. The parks body still has to vote on the plan on Monday as well; given that Metro Parks commissioner Aaron Pointer — who is also a former Houston Astro and a brother of the Pointer Sisters — said he doesn’t see “really any benefits at all” for the city or its parks, it’s fair to say that the vote there will be more contentious than the one in the city council.
Brett Johnson, the developer behind a proposed $400 million development in Pawtucket centered around a pro soccer stadium, says he has lots of investors eager to parks their capital gains in his project tax-free under the Trump administration’s Opportunity Zone program, but it might take a while to work out all the details because reasons. But, he added, “My confidence is very high,” and confidence is what it’s all about, right?
Nashville’s Save Our Fairgrounds has filed for a court injunction to stop work on a new Nashville S.C. stadium, on the grounds that no redevelopment of the state fairgrounds can take place without a public voter referendum. This brings the total number of lawsuits against the project to … umpteen? I’m gonna go with umpteen.
There’s now an official lawsuit against the Anaheim city council for voting on a Los Angeles Angels stadium land sale without sufficient public meetings. The People’s Homeless Task Force is charging that holding most of the sale talks in private violated the state’s Brown Act on transparency; the city’s lawyers responded that “there could be a myriad of reasons” why the council was able to vote on the sale at a single meeting in December despite never discussing it in public before that, though they didn’t suggest any specific reasons.
Wondering what vaportecture looks like outside of North America? Here’s an article on Watford F.C.‘s proposed new stadium, though if you aren’t an Athletic subscriber you’ll be stuck with just the one image, though given that it’s an image of Watford fans stumbling zombie-like into the stadium out of what appears to be an open field, really what more do you need?
There are some new renderings of the St. Louis MLS team‘s proposed stadium, and once again they mostly feature people crossing the street, not anything having to do with watching soccer. Are the clip art images of people throwing their hands in the air for no reason temporarily out of stock or something?
Here are photos of a 31-year-old arena being demolished, because America.
The Minnesota Vikings‘ four-year-old stadium needs $21 million in new paneling on its exterior, because the old paneling was leaking. At least the stadium’s construction contractors will be footing the bill, but it’s still an important reminder that “state of the art” isn’t necessarily better than “outmoded,” especially when it comes to new and unproven designs.
And speaking of COVID-19, here’s an article on how travel restrictions thanks to the new coronavirus will cost the European tourism industry more than $1 billion per month, without wondering what else Europeans (and erstwhile travelers to Europe from other continents) will do with the money they’re saving on plane tickets and hotel rooms. Where’s my article on how pandemics are a boost to the hand sanitizer and canned soup industries?

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St. Louis passes two bills to give MLS team tax breaks worth mumble-mumble-something

March 2, 2020 Neil deMause

The St. Louis Board of Aldermen passed two bills on Friday granting full exemptions from property taxes and sales taxes on construction materials to a new St. Louis MLS stadium, and here’s how various news outlets described the public cost:

St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

One bill will provide 25 years of property tax abatement on the value of the new construction, saving the owners about $34.5 million.

The other measure allows a sales tax exemption for materials used to construct the 22,500-seat stadium and related facilities. An estimate on what that’s worth has not been released yet.

KSDK;TV:

The approvals pave the way for subsidies, including partial tax abatement, sales tax exemption on construction materials, amusement tax abatement and special taxing districts that would impose a 1% sales tax. The taxing districts will require additional legislation.

KMOV-TV:

The ownership group for the stadium will cover most of the cost of the more than $200 million facility, but is asking for some city incentives to cover the cost of some infrastructure improvements.

That’s some pretty bad reporting! The Post-Dispatch wins by default for at least attempting to give some numbers, though it might have at least attempted a guesstimate on the cost of the construction sales tax break: The St. Louis city sales tax rate is 4.23%, so if costs are split anything like roughly evenly between labor and materials on a $200 million stadium, we’re looking at a few million dollars’ worth of cost here. Also that $34.5 million in property tax savings over 25 years is more like $19 million in present value, and nobody is mentioning the $57.4 million over 30 years in ticket-tax rebates that were already approved by the city (present value around $29 million), making for a total public subsidy of around $60 million.

But then, the reporting can’t even agree on the total cost of the stadium: KMOV says it’s “more than $200 million,” KSDK says $461 million, while the Post-Dispatch says $350 million to $400 million. The highest number appears to be from a December report by the city’s Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority, which may be higher because it includes the cost of not just the stadium but an entire mixed-use district, or because it includes things like interest costs over time and not the present value of the cost (you don’t calculate the price of a house you just bought by adding up all your future mortgage payments over time), or something else entirely — nothing appears to have been reported in detail or to be available online, though I did find a helpful page on how to apply for your own tax breaks from the city of St. Louis.

If your eyes are starting to glaze over from all these numbers, that’s kind of the point: $34.5 million in tax breaks on a $461 million project sounds like a lot less than $60 million in subsidies for a $200 million one, so it’s in the team’s (and the city’s interest) not to be too specific about who’s paying how much for what. It’s why Judith Grant Long had to spend ten years compiling data on actual stadium costs (see it in animated GIF form here), because reporting on it is so all over the place.

Anyway, we can say for sure that St. Louis taxpayers are going to kick in something for a private soccer stadium, and that it’s less than most of the cost, but more than nothing. If that’s unsatisfying to you, try calling up Long and seeing if she’s up for updating her study — it just may take a decade for you to get an answer.

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Friday roundup: More Carolina Panthers stadium demands, D-Backs explain Vancouver move threat, and giant soccer robots

February 28, 2020 Neil deMause

Good morning, and thank you for taking a break from your coronavirus panic reading to patronize Field of Schemes. Please wash your hands for 20 seconds with soap and water, and we can begin:

Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper hasn’t just talked about wanting a new stadium, he’s met with stadium architects, so you know he’s serious, or something. But first, as Tepper said recently, “People here have to agree to do things or want to do things,” which is code for I neeeeeed public moneeeeeey, but that’s okay because Tepper also said the economic impact of added Super Bowls and Final Fours would be “Forget about it. Knock their socks off economically.” Or not much at all, as actual economic studies have found — who’s to say who’s right, really, the guy who would stand to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars or the people using math?
Arizona Diamondbacks CEO Derrick Hall now says that whole moving-to-Vancouver thing was just a contingency plan in case their roof got stuck open and it was too hot to play. (No, I don’t know how you move an entire baseball game to a different country on a moment’s notice if the retractable roof gets stuck, but Hall’s statement that “We left it open in case we wanted to or needed to and we certainly hope we don’t, because we anticipate this is where we’re playing forever, in Arizona” is certainly an excellent specimen of the non-threat threat.) Team owner Ken Kendrick also compared Chase Field to a “classic automobile [where] when you pull the engine back on a classic automobile, you find things sometimes you wouldn’t wish you would find.” The stadium is all of 22 years old, so I guess Kendrick thinks these are classic cars?
NYC F.C. made it to the CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinals with a 1-0 win over Costa Rica’s San Carlos before a “home” crowd of less than 3,000 people after most of the NYC F.C. fan groups boycotted playing a home game at rivals Red Bull New York‘s stadium when both Yankee Stadium and backup option Citi Field were unavailable thanks to the grass there needing time to regrow before baseball season. The team could face the same problem for its upcoming home match in the next round, which is sure to increase the drumbeat for a new soccer-only stadium, which likely would be a thing already if NYC F.C.’s owners would just agree to step up and pay for it instead of dickering about tax breaks.
Sports Illustrated writer John Wall Street (it’s a play on words, see?) writes that if Florida passes a bill to stop sports teams from using state hotel-tax or sales-tax surcharge money to build or renovate stadiums, sports teams will all move out of Florida. His only source for this: an NYU sports management professor who was formerly an investment banker and has worked as an NFL consultant. I am none of those things, but I would humbly submit that both California and Seattle have cracked way down on sports subsidies without any teams leaving (the Sonics did leave Seattle, but that was before the city passed its requirement that the public get a positive return on any sports venue spending), so maybe this is not so much cause for panic?
The city of St. Louis could use eminent domain to force a holdout landowner to sell his property that sits on the proposed site of an MLS stadium. Eminent domain needs to be implemented for “public use,” and MLS teams are private enterprises, but the Supreme Court has pretty much said that anything that provides jobs is a public use, so this probably won’t be an issue except in St. Louis city officials’ souls.
The city of Worcester has approved an extra $29.5 million in spending on the Worcester Red Sox‘ new stadium to cover cost overruns. (It was previously reported that $9.5 million will be covered by the team and the other $20 million by the city, which is presumably still the case, but the Associated Press can’t be bothered to tell us that.) If you’re wondering how this affects the already long odds against city taxpayers ever getting their money back on the now $120 million expense, the answer is: it’s not looking great.
Erie County is looking to hire a lawyer to conduct stadium negotiations with the Buffalo Bills, which means we get more headlines about whether a new Bills stadium is imminent despite the team’s owners insisting that one is not. Trolling for clicks or trying not to bite the hand that feeds them, it’s so hard to tell the difference these days.
Urban Milwaukee’s Bruce Murphy has another go at that laughable Milwaukee Brewers stadium economic impact report by the laughable Convention, Sports & Leisure, and comes up with some more hilarity, including that CSL attributed $38 million in state benefits to mentions of Milwaukee on TV. Does this mean that Wisconsin taxpayers also should have subsidized Laverne & Shirley?
Here’s a long Nashville Scene article on how the Nashville S.C. stadium deal became 100% financed, which no it really is not. Maybe having your local alt-weekly bought by real estate developers isn’t the best thing for accurate news coverage? Just a thought.
This has nothing to do with stadiums or arenas per se, but this article on how Philadelphia Phillies execs redesigned their Phillie Phanatic mascot to try to skip out on paying its original designers for the rights is a pretty fascinating look into the team owner mindset, and that’s before you even get to the part where one of the Phanatic designers also designed Miss Piggy.
And finally, some fresh vaportecture, courtesy of New Mexico United, which released potential stadium designs that, well:
I don’t get why there’s a giant robot Muffler Man holding a team shield and kicking a giant soccer ball, nor what’s up with the tiny balcony that fans can stand on to watch other fans entering the stadium far below, nor how the lighting system seems to be supported solely by a fabric roof. But a team spokesperson says that they envision it being “used 365 days a year, something that’s mixed with art galleries, local coffee shops, and breweries,” so maybe the giant robot is really art? Or an enormous robot-shaped cappuccino machine? Cast your votes in comments!

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St. Louis prepares to increase MLS stadium tax kickbacks to $60m

February 13, 2020March 2, 2020 Neil deMause

Ever since the state of Missouri informed the owners of the as-yet-unnamed St. Louis MLS expansion team that it couldn’t give them the $30 million in tax credits they wanted, there’s been a scramble to figure out how to fill that hole. And now the city of St. Louis appears to be stepping up to the, uh, penalty spot, with a package of tax breaks and dedicated tax streams that could be worth $55 million over 25 years:

The two measures, providing partial property tax abatement for the project and outlining other tax incentives, were endorsed, 7-0, by the Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee…

The bills, which now move to the full Board of Aldermen, call for 25 years of property tax abatement on the value of new construction. That’s expected to save the ownership about $34.5 million.

Also planned is a sales tax exemption for building materials used for the project; an estimate has yet to be released for that.

The legislation, sponsored by Aldermanic President Lewis Reed, also calls for two separate one-cent sales taxes on food, drinks, tickets and other items sold at the stadium. They would be levied by new community improvement and transportation development districts.

In addition, ownership attorney Bill Kuehling told the committee that “we are counting on” revenues from a third one-cent sales tax that would be authorized by the city’s Port Authority.

Okay, let’s run through these. The full property tax abatement had been previously announced, but without a price tag; $34.5 million over 25 years is a decent chunk of change, and worth maybe $19 million in present value (a bit less if it’s backloaded as property value rises over time, a bit more if the stadium is expected to fall in value as it ages). A sales tax exemption on building materials is a common subsidy to hand out, and typically isn’t a huge value, but it could be a few million dollars. A sales tax surcharge on in-stadium purchases was previously announced, too, and probably mostly ends up coming out of team owners’ pockets (since they have to lower prices slightly to account for the increased end price); if some of these additional taxes cover the area surrounding the stadium, though, it would effectively be taxing the team’s neighbors to finance the stadium project.

Put it all together, and we’re probably looking at around $30 million in city tax subsidies, which added to the $29 million worth of ticket tax kickbacks the team owners would be getting gets us to around $60 million of public cost, before even accounting for whatever the state manages to scrounge up in tax credits. (They’ve suggested $5.7 million as a more doable figure.) That’s not an insane amount of money compared to some stadium subsidies, but $60 million is still $60 million, and about the same as what some other cities have been throwing at stadiums to lure MLS expansion franchises. Except that St. Louis has already been awarded an MLS team to start play in 2022, and it would be really messy for the league to try to undo that, so is this really the time for the city of St. Louis to start bailing out the team owners for their shortfall in state subsidies? (Answer: It’s always time for that, apparently.)

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Friday roundup: Panthers owner donated to Charlotte officials during stadium lobbying, St. Louis MLS didn’t need $30m in state money after all, and what time the Super Bowl economic impact rationalizations start

January 24, 2020 Neil deMause

Happy Friday, and try not to think about how much you’re contributing to climate change by reading this on whatever electronic device you’re using. Though at least reading this in text doesn’t require a giant server farm like watching a video about stadiums would — “Streaming one hour of Netflix a week requires more electricity, annually, than the yearly output of two new refrigerators” is one of the more alarming sentences I’ve read ever — so maybe it counts as harm reduction? I almost linked to an amusing video clip to deliver my punchline, wouldn’t that have been ironic!

And now, the news:

Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper and other team execs made campaign contributions to Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles and members of the Charlotte city council right before asking the city for $110 million to upgrade his stadium in anticipation of hosting an MLS expansion team. It wasn’t a ton of money — $6,450 total — but remember when elected officials and rich guys hoping to win their support at least made a pretense of political power not coming from the barrel of a checkbook? No? I could have sworn there was a minute or two there…
The still-unnamed St. Louis MLS team owners (the owners have names, just not the team) say they’re moving ahead with stadium plans regardless of whether they receive $30 million in state tax credits, which raises the question of why the state should give them $30 million if they’re going to build the stadium either way? It looks like the state is negotiating for a lower contribution, but really $0 seems appropriate if the amount of additional development it will buy is also $0.
The Florida state house is again considering a bill to eliminate the state’s sports-stadium-subsidy slush fund, which would be bigger news if not for that fact that 1) the house proposes this every year, and the state senate then lets it die, 2) nobody has been applying for money from the state fund anyway, and 3) the state already provided plenty of money for stadiums before the fund existed, just on a piecemeal basis, and no doubt will do so again if this program is eliminated.
Hosting the Super Bowl is costing the city of Miami about $20 million in bonuses to Dolphins owner Stephen Ross and additional security charges, but it’s okay because somebody has already placed an order for 300 chicken wings.
The Oakland city council approved a bill to move forward plans for an A’s stadium at Howard Terminal, and KCBS reports that “there could be just one more vote by the city council before construction begins.” That seems ambitious given that nobody quite knows such teensy matters as whether the city would really need to spend $200 million on “infrastructure” and how that would be paid for, but hey, clearly not having any idea how a project will work is no reason to hold more than one hearing.
I’ve seen a lot of softball headlines about non-news just to goose talk about possible stadium plans in my day, but Global News’s “Saskatoon architect tweets 6 places he thinks would suit new arena for the city” is right up there with the classics.
Washington NFL team owner Daniel Snyder lobbied the state of Maryland to legalize sports gambling at a possible new stadium, and now everybody is talking about how Snyder is going to build a new stadium in Maryland. See how easy it is to get headlines? Nobody even had to tweet anything!
New evidence has emerged that the state of New York negotiated with the New York Islanders development team about a hockey arena before issuing a request for proposals for the Belmont Park site, which the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the project say is evidence that the bidding was rigged from the start. This seems to me like the sort of thing that goes on all the time in local government — you wanna build something, okay but first we have to conduct due diligence, whatta pain — but I am not a lawyer, so we’ll see what a judge thinks of it all.
The Beloit Snappers released new renderings of their planned stadium, and they’re subdued enough that I don’t have much to make fun of … though come to think of it, those one-way-facing traffic signals on a two-way street are likely to get that woman in the crosswalk killed by drivers who don’t see the red light, so that’s a concern.
I read this headline and briefly thought there was a new minor-league team in Alabama called the Mobile X-Ray Scanners, which wouldn’t even be the worst team name in the state.
The Milwaukee Brewers‘ stadium is getting a new corporate name, and I’ve already forgotten it!

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Missouri gov pulls brakes on St. Louis MLS team’s $30m tax credit request, now what?

December 18, 2019 Neil deMause

[record scratch noise]:

State officials still want a private ownership group to build a Major League Soccer stadium in downtown St. Louis, but they aren’t going to funnel $30 million in tax credits to help pay for it…

Rather than the $30 million, the administration is expected to support a $5.7 million infusion of state money if the ownership group asks.

This is unexpected, but maybe shouldn’t be: As KMOV reports, while the as-yet-unnamed MLS team has long been expecting $30 million in state tax credits as part of a roughly $60 million stadium subsidy from the city and state combined, the Missouri Development Finance Board has an annual cap of $10 million in credits that it can hand out, which makes giving out $30 million to the soccer team owners over two years kind of problematic. Approval of three state cabinet officials would have been needed to lift the cap, and that didn’t happen, so in effect the MDFB said, “We only have $5.7 million left, it’s yours if you want it.”

This is kind of a surprise, as Gov. Mike Parson’s office had previously expressed interest in working out a tax credit deal, and so far as I can tell no one had indicated that the tax credit cap would be an issue before now. There’s been no response from the team owners to this new roadblock, but given that the new stadium is supposed to be open by March 2022, there’ll need to be some resolution to this funding gap sooner than later.

Meanwhile, St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson’s office released this statement:

The City of St. Louis and Mayor Krewson remain incredibly excited about having an MLS team. We don’t believe the state’s decision will interfere with our support of the #MLS4TheLou ownership group and their commitment to this project. It’s a more than $460 million private investment in Downtown West that will anchor a revitalized mixed-use district, create hundreds of construction and permanent jobs, and unite the City around this global sport. Bring on 2022!

So does that mean that Krewson thinks the state will eventually find $30 million in tax credit money, even if it takes a few more years? Or that the city will cover the state’s share? (It was technically the city that was asking for the credits on the team’s behalf.) Or that the team owners will move ahead with the project even without the full $30 million, in which case why was everybody saying the $30 million in state money was necessary in the first place? So very many important questions — hopefully we’ll have some answers soon, so watch this space.

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Friday roundup: Helicopter rides for rich fans, pricey bridge prices, and why Deadspin mattered

November 1, 2019 Neil deMause

In case anyone hasn’t been following this week’s Deadspin drama, pretty much the entire staff has resigned over the past two days, following Tuesday’s decision by CEO Jim Spanfeller to fire acting editor-in-chief Barry Petchesky because the staff had responded to Spanfeller’s edict to “stick to sports” by posting a ton of excellent non-sports content. A few last posts have gone up the last couple of days, some to burn off features that were already scheduled to run and some to take classically Deadspinesque digs at management for burning down a popular website seemingly out of spite for continuing to do exactly what it had been doing for years before they bought it.

This is very bad news for journalism and America and humanity, and not only if you, like me, will miss the site’s potshots at our Big Wet President. There’s a popular notion that sports is just a fun diversion where the “outside world” of politics has no place — and that, as I hope the entire 21-year history of this site has made abundantly clear, is an extremely dangerous notion, because it means that concerns over what taxpayers are being charged for places to play sports or what athletes are being paid to play sports or who is allowed to speak out on what issues involving sports are dismissed with a Can’t we just watch the game? But games are serious — and lucrative — business, and can’t be divorced from the greater culture, any more than we should be just watching movies as pure entertainment without attention to the bigger issues involved. Deadspin was dedicated to erasing those lines and allowing its writers to address whatever they felt needed addressing at the moment, whether it was the meaning of who you’re seen sitting with at a football game or what we’re getting stuck in our rectums each year, and until and unless a successor emerges to pick up the torch, the world will be a sadder, dumber place.

(Already yesterday I read about Josh Hamilton’s arrest after his daughter said he threw a chair at her — a phrasing I owe to this excellent Deadspin non-sports article, incidentally — and wished I could read Deadspin’s analysis of it. Then I read about John Wetteland’s arrest for reportedly sexually assaulting a four-year-old child, and thought I wonder if maybe men’s sports should just be banned altogether at this point given the kind of behavior it encourages and realized Deadspin was probably my best bet for reading that take, too. It’s going to be a long however many weeks or months until something arises from Deadspin’s ashes, if that ever happens.)

Anyway, on to the weekly muddling of sports and politics:

The Indiana Pacers‘ arena will still be named after the bank that stopping paying for naming rights in June until the team has found a new naming-rights sponsor, which seems weird at first but actually makes total sense: It costs money to change the signage so why do it twice, and also the value of naming rights goes down with each new iteration of a corporate moniker that dilutes the name’s image for the public — quick, tell me what the Oakland Coliseum’s official name is these days — so calling it “Pacers Arena” or whatever for a few months might get fans to start calling it that permanently, and we can’t have that. And if you’re wondering why the Pacers get to sell naming rights to a building that was built entirely with public dollars and is owned by the public: It’s Indianapolis, Jake.
St. Louis’s new MLS stadium finally has a site picked out — Market Street near Union Station, if you’re scoring at home — and new renderings as well, though they look pretty much like the old renderings except for the one that is just a closeup of a kid riding on his parent’s (?) shoulders. The state of Missouri has received approval to sell 22 acres of land for the stadium to the city’s Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority, which will then lease it to the MLS team for … oh, that doesn’t seem to have been reported. Just look at the pretty pictures and don’t worry your head about that nasty money business.
A public city database in Atlanta is indicating that the city’s $23 million pedestrian bridge for the Falcons actually cost $41.7 million, but the city insists it’s really just that they entered the same checks multiple times. I’m not sure “spent $23 million on a pedestrian bridge for a football team and also can’t do basic bookkeeping” looks much better, honestly.
The San Antonio Spurs — whose mascot is for some reason a kangaroo, is that a kangaroo? — have installed four new helipads so that fans can buy helicopter rides to games, which really tells you everything you need to know about 1) who sports teams are interested in marketing to these days and 2) just how ridiculously much money rich people in America have to burn these days.
Fresno FC owner Ray Beshoff has declared he “will almost certainly be relocating the team” because he hasn’t been provided with a new soccer-only stadium, unless “in the next two or three weeks if people come to the table with ideas or suggestions that we think are tenable.” This will come as a huge shock to fans who’ve been dedicated followers of the USL team since (looks up team on Wikipedia) March of 2018.
The San Francisco 49ers are raising ticket prices by 13% but giving season ticket holders free food and soda, which I guess means 49ers fans will be spending most of games from now on pigging out on all-you-can-eat nachos instead of watching the action on the field. Also, you can’t get the free food if you buy tickets on the secondary market, only if you’re the original season ticket holder. Or, I guess, borrow the season ticket holder’s free-food card? Or have a season ticket holder go up to the counter for you and get your nachos? I don’t live anywhere near Santa Clara and hate football, but I am very excited at seeing how fans figure out how to game this system.
Still nobody is sure which minor-league teams MLB will threaten to eliminate as part of its plan to restrict minor-league affiliates, or what criteria MLB will use for deciding who shall live and who shall die or whether MLB is even serious or just trying to scare minor-league players into not demanding they be paid minimum wage. I really should write about this for Deadsp — crap.
It rained at the Buffalo Bills game last weekend, so a local country music station ran a poll asking listeners: “Would you be in favor of a roof stadium or no?” Not included: any mention of what a roof would cost, or what WYRK has against the word “roofed.”
The corporate newspaper that helped gut a free daily by selling it to people who immediately laid off most of the editorial staff ran an article this week asking if the new New York Islanders arena will make it harder for the nearby Nassau Coliseum to draw events, but I’m not going to link to a union-busting-enabling outlet that put the article behind a paywall anyway, so let me just answer the question here: Duh, yes!
A former assistant to Inglewood Mayor James Butts has changed her testimony in the lawsuit against the Los Angeles Clippers‘ proposed arena, and Inglewood officials are asking that her revised testimony be rejected because they say she’s in “cahoots” with Madison Square Garden, which opposes the arena because it doesn’t want competition for its own arena nearby. Elephants, man.
The DreamHouse New Mexico Bowl has been canceled, because alleged film production company and title sponsor DreamHouse turns out not to exist, but rather to be a scam perpetrated by “a relentless self promoter who lies about nearly everything he says he does.”
A giant water droplet named Wendy has made a video suggesting that Washington’s NFL team should move back within city limits. Sorry, Sean Doolittle, this is actually the most 2019 Washington thing ever.
The Sunshine Coast Pickleball Association is seeking funding from the city of Sechelt for a new pickleball stadium. I don’t actually know where Sechelt is and am only dimly aware of what pickleball is, and I’m not going to ruin the perfect sentence above by looking either thing up.

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