Category Archives: NBA

Inglewood legislators say forcing Clippers arena to go through clean-air review is racist

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The Los Angeles Clippers arena squabble has already gotten plenty ridiculous, what with Madison Square Garden’s owners suing because they don’t want a new arena to compete with his arena nearby, and the mayor of Inglewood canceling a public meeting and running away to avoid being served papers in another lawsuit. But this really ups the ante for ridiculousness:

Two legislators have accused the California Air Resources Board of racism over delays in approving a proposed Clippers arena, alleging the agency has put the Inglewood project at risk while expediting approval for other sports complexes in more affluent communities….

In the Oct. 1 letter, [Sen. Steven] Bradford and [Assemblymember Sydney] Kamlager-Dove wrote that CARB’s “inaction poses an imminent threat to the viability of the project” and could jeopardize several community benefits offered by the Clippers, including a proposal to pay $75 million toward affordable housing.

“Why put more roadblocks in front of them than any other community?” Bradford asked in an interview. “I think its an implicit bias related to race. This is a minority-majority city and, again, they’re being treated differently.”

The theory here goes, as I understand it, that while California is generally fairly tough on new-sports-venue requests, thanks to laws allowing voters to have a say and stringent environmental review requirements, the state has also been very lenient about fast-tracking sports projects through the environmental review. Which the Clippers project has received as well, but the review has dragged on for longer than the usual nine-month limit, which is what has Bradford crying racial discrimination: If you really wanted to be fair, you’d just glance briefly at our environmental impact materials like you do for majority-white cities!

Even aside from the weirdness of claiming equal civil rights to evade environmental laws, there’s a way easier explanation for why the state agency might be doing more due diligence in the Clippers case, which is that MSG’s owners are making a big public stink about how the arena will encourage more people to drive to events and thereby increase emissions of greenhouse gases. Which may or may not be true — I don’t envy the CARB having to try to project how many Clippers fans will simply be driving to the new arena instead of the old one — but it’s almost always the case that objections to a big development project get more attention when you have a giant corporation and its lobbyists making them. So while racism could conceivably play a role here — this is America, after all — there are probably several simpler explanations for why the state is trying to actually do its job for once.

Friday roundup: Team owners rework tax bills and leases, Twins CEO claims team is winning (?) thanks to new stadium, and other privileges of the very rich

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Tons more stadium and arena news to get to this week, so let’s dive right in without preamble:

Friday roundup: Lotsa soccer news, and oh yeah, saving the world

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Happy global climate strike day! As kids (and their adults) take to the streets today, it’s important to keep in mind two not-contradictory-though-they-may-seem-so things: We are seriously screwed even if we act now, but there’s still a lot we can do to keep ourselves from being even more seriously screwed. (And by “we” here I mostly mean governments, because it’s almost impossible for individuals alone to significantly impact carbon emissions just by shutting off lights and avoiding air travel, not that those aren’t important things to do, too.)

Anyway, enough about the fate of humanity, let’s talk about sports venues (and not even about the carbon footprints of building new ones and flying teams from city to city, which would be a whole other article):

Clippers owner offers $100m in loans for housing and libraries as sweetener for arena deal

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The Los Angeles Clippers arena battle is a weird one: Team owner Steve Ballmer says he’ll pay for the arena himself (yay) but wants the right to put up more ad signage than would normally be legally allowed, might want to use eminent domain to seize some property, negotiated with the Inglewood city council without telling anyone it was about a Clippers arena in apparent violation of open meetings laws, and is getting sued by both Madison Square Garden and some local citizens over the project (all boo, to varying degrees). All of which sort of explains why Ballmer is looking to sweeten the pot by offering to loan $100 million toward public benefits for Inglewood residents as part of the deal:

Such benefits, presented Tuesday at a meeting of Inglewood’s council by city manager Artie Fields, would include “up to $75 million in low-interest loans for the acquisition, preservation, or development of affordable and mixed-income housing in Inglewood,” according to the team. Other proposals include more than $12 million for youth and education programs, up to $6 million toward improvements of its public library and financial assistance for renters and first-time homeowners in the city.

This is all a yay, though it’s worth noting that the Los Angeles Times story on it didn’t bother to answer (or even ask) the question of whether this money would come out of Ballmer’s pocket or from some cut of arena revenues or taxes, or who would repay the loans or how. (Hey, L.A. Times! If you’re going to put up one of the strictest paywalls in all of journalism, at least use some of the resulting cash to give your reporters room to report!)

Still, it’s at least something more than most team owners do as part of arena deals, so it’s better than a kick in the head. Yet again, we’re seeing how the ease of getting voter initiatives on the ballot in West Coast states forces sports franchises to actually offer reasonable deals rather than just asking elected officials for wads of cash behind voters’ backs; democracy might not solve everything, but still has its benefits.

Friday roundup: Will Royals sale spark new stadium, is Miami asbestos report a Beckham ploy, could developers influence Bills’ future?

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Happy last Friday of summer! You’re probably busy getting ready to go somewhere for the long weekend, but if you’re instead staying put (and enjoying the space left by all the people going somewhere for the long weekend), consider spending some time if you haven’t yet reading my Deadspin article on “What’s The Matter With Baseball?“, which interrogates the various theories for MLB’s attendance decline and determines which ones may not be total crap. Do I conclude that it’s all the fault of team owners who’d rather charge rich people through the nose for a lesser number of tickets than try to sell more seats to less deep-pocketed fans? No spoilers!

And now to the news, and lots of it:

  • A new rich guy is buying the Kansas City Royals, and already there’s speculation about whether John Sherman will demand a new stadium when (or before) the team’s Kauffman Stadium lease is up in 2031. The Kansas City Star editorializes that “Kansas Citians should reject any plan that significantly increases public spending for the Royals, either for a new downtown stadium or a ballpark somewhere else,” and further notes that there’s no guarantee a new stadium would even help the Royals’ bottom line (“Winning, it turns out, is more important than a new stadium”), which is all a nice first step; let’s see what happens when and if Sherman actually opens his mouth about his plans.
  • Miami has closed Melreese golf course after determining it had high levels of arsenic and reopened Melreese golf course after environmental officials determined there was nothing “earth shattering” about the pollution levels. And now there’s concern by at least one city commissioner (Manolo Reyes, if you’re scoring at home) that the release of the arsenic findings is part of a ploy by David Beckham’s Inter Miami to get a discount on the lease price of the land, which is still being hashed out. The Miami Herald reports that the team and city are at loggerheads over whether to take environmental remediation costs into account when determining the land value; this epic Beckham stadium saga may have a couple more chapters to go yet.
  • Buffalo developers Carl and William Paladino are really excited about the possibility of a new Bills stadium near land their own, because they could either sell it to the team at an inflated price or develop it themselves once people are excited to live or shop near a new football stadium. (No, I don’t know why anyone would be excited to live or shop near a football stadium only open ten days a year, just go with it.) Carl Paladino once ran for governor of New York, so it’s worth watching to see if he uses his political ties (or skeezy lobbyist friends) to try to influence the Bills’ stadium future.
  • A group trying to get an MLB team for Nashville may not have a stadium or a site or a team, but they do have a name for their vaporteam: the Nashville Stars. Guy-who-wants-to-be-an-MLB-owner John Loar tells the Tennessean he decided on the name “after reading a book on Nashville’s baseball history by author Skip Nipper,” which is presumably this one; the Seraphs, Blues, Tigers, Americans, Volunteers, and Elite Giants honestly all seem like better names than the Stars, which was last used by a franchise in the World Basketball League (the basketball league where tall players weren’t allowed, which, yes, was actually a thing), but it’s really not worth arguing over the name a team that may never exist in our lifetimes.
  • The Richmond city council’s plan to approve spending $350 million on a new downtown arena without consulting the public has hit an apparent snag, which is that four or five members of the nine-member council reportedly oppose the plan, and seven votes are needed to pass it.
  • The editor of the San Francisco Examiner has penned an opinion piece saying the Golden State Warriors‘ new arena is overly opulent and expensive — premium lounges feature wine butlers and private dining rooms, so yeah — but is resigned to this as a necessity (or at least the headline writer is) that it’s “the price we pay for a privately-funded arena.” Which, does anyone really think the Warriors owners would have passed up the chance to charge through the nose for wine butler service if they’d gotten public money? This is the price we pay for rampant income inequality, and don’t you forget it.

Friday roundup: Saints’ $300m subsidy moves ahead, St. Louis MLS announcement on tap, Richmond council votes no on democracy

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Sometimes I feel lucky to cover a topic with so many constant absurdities, and then this happens, and I realize that constant absurdities are just the new normal. Anyway, I did get to edit this this week, which is an excellent look at how this week’s absurdity is having potentially catastrophic impacts on people’s lives, so go read it!

But not before you read these:

  • The Louisiana State Bond Commission has approved selling $450 million worth of state bonds to fund renovations to the Superdome, in exchange for the New Orleans Saints signing a 15-year lease extension. As covered back in May, Saints owner Gayle Benson would cover one-third of the bond cost, leaving Louisiana to pay off $300 million, bringing the Saints’ five-decide subsidy total to a cool $1.442 billion. In exchange, the Saints will sign a 15-year lease extension — with another 15-year option, but there’s no way they’re going to extend their lease again without more subsidies the way this gravy train is rolling — which comes to state taxpayers ponying up $20 million a year for the presence of an NFL team, which is a hell of a lot of money, though not as much as Indiana pays the Pacers, because Indiana.
  • The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported this week that St. Louis will be announced next Tuesday as the next MLS expansion city, bringing the number of teams in the league to a cool 154. (I think it’s actually 28, but honestly the number changes so fast it’s hard to keep track.) Deadspin read the announcement that there would be no public subsidies for the as-yet-unnamed team’s stadium and excitedly reported that the deal “might not completely fleece the city”; sadly, it will actually involve about $60 million in public subsidies, but since about half of that is coming from the state, not the city, that Deadspin headline is still technically correct, right?
  • The Richmond city council has voted 5-3 against allowing a referendum on the city’s proposed new $350 million city-subsidized arena on the November ballot, because voting is for elected officials, not regular folks. Though regular folks do still get to vote on electing elected officials, something that referendum sponsor Reva Trammell clearly had in mind when she said following the no-voting vote: “I hope the citizens hold their feet to the fire. Every damn one of them that voted against it.”
  • Two-plus years after the arrival of the Hartford Yard Goats in exchange for $63 million in public stadium cash — plus a couple million dollars every year in operating losses — the Hartford Courant has noticed that stadium jobs are usually part-time and poorly paid. Not included in the article: any analysis of how many full-time jobs could have been created by spending $63 million on just about anything else.
  • New Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo said he intends to keep the NHL team in Arizona, but that keeping it in Glendale is a “difficult situation,” at which point a Glendale spokesperson said that city officials would meet with Meruelo “to see how we can help him achieve his goals of success.” Which is all fine and due diligence and all, but given that helping Meruelo “achieve his goals” is likely to mean paying him money to play in Glendale like the city used to do, it’s not exactly promising; if nothing else, Glendale officials would do well to remember that Meruelo currently has exactly zero better arena options elsewhere in the state, so he’s not exactly negotiating from a position of strength.
  • Joe Tsai, who was already set to buy the Brooklyn Nets from Mikhail Prokhorov, has officially exercised his option to purchase the team, plus the Barclays Center arena to boot, for a reported $3.5 billion. Given that the arena is currently losing about $21 million a year, this seems like an awful lot of money even if the team does employ whatever’s left of Kevin Durant. Since Tsai already owns the New York Liberty, though, maybe it at least means that WNBA franchise will finally return to the city from its exile in the suburbs.

Friday roundup: Titans want Miami-style renovation to 20-year-old stadium, Orlando throwing more cash at World Cup hopes, and urban myths about small stadiums

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I’m back from vacation, and thanks for sticking with my slightly unpredictable posting schedule for the last couple of weeks. (As opposed to my usual slightly unpredictable posting schedule.) It was an eye-opening trip to, among other places, a city that built a stadium with public money and now suffers from a legendarily bad public transit system, though it just might be unfair to blame the one on the other.

Anyway, stadium news kept coming at us fast this week, so let’s get to it:

Thunder owner seeks $135m in sales-tax money to upgrade arena that already got $195m in sales-tax money in the last 20 years

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Way back in the early days of this website, there was a man named Rick Horrow who used to go around to small-to-mid-size cities selling them on the idea of a 1% sales tax hike to pay for big construction projects, usually involving sports venues of some kind. As I recall, Birmingham told him to take a hike, as did Norfolk, but Oklahoma City thought he was the bee’s knees, and signed up for his MAPS plan to use sales-tax money to build, among other things, the new arena that eventually became home to the Thunder.

OKC is now in its 4th iteration of MAPS — one was called, hilariously enough, “MAPS for kids,” which always makes me think of this — and don’t you know it, the Thunder owners think it’s high time for them to get another cut of the boodle:

In the third day of proposals for MAPS 4, officials made a pitch for up to $135 million in improvements to Chesapeake Arena and the Thunder practice facility…

The proposed budget includes $55 to $60 million for fan amenities, $30 to $33 million for other arena improvements, $12 to $15 million for practice facility enhancements and arena maintenance at $23 to $27 million.

I would normally make a quip here, but, guys, I’m so tired. Some days writing these posts feels like shooting fish in a barrel; other days it feels like shooting fish that are continually replenished from some unseen reservoir, and that will continue to appear no matter how many I shoot. Hell, I’ve even already written about teams that keep going back to the well for more cash year after year once they get a new stadium — what more is there to add here, other than, “Yeah, the Thunder owners are doing it too”?

Instead, how about I just link to a page that lists Thunder owner Clay Bennett’s net worth, and describes how as a minority owner of the San Antonio Spurs, he maneuvered for the New Orleans Hornets to be temporarily relocated to Oklahoma City, helping pave the way for him to buy the Seattle Sonics and move them there permanently? Yeah, that feels better. Here’s some vaportecture of people at a bar for your trouble:

Friday roundup: Lotsa new vaportecture renderings, lotsa new crazy expensive bridges

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I’m traveling this week and next, so there will likely be some weird scheduling changes for posts, such as this Friday roundup appearing close to noon Eastern time. (I think. I’m not entirely sure what time it is here or anywhere, just that it’s hot, which doesn’t narrow it down much because it’s hot everywhere.) The news watch never stops, though, so here’s a somewhat abridged week of highlights:

  • New Los Angeles Clippers arena renderings! This vaportecture is honestly all starting to look more or less alike to me, though what appears to be a transparent roof on an arena is novel — the article refers to “indoor/outdoor ‘sky gardens,'” though, so maybe this is those, whatever those are. (Gardens open to the sky? Wouldn’t that be … “gardens”?) Anyway, constantly releasing renderings is a great way to show people that you absolutely are going to be able to build an arena, despite any lawsuits trying to block it, because everyone knows cartoons always come true.
  • And on the other side of the pond, Everton has released its own stadium renderings, with more lens flare and balloons and promises that 1.4 million more people will visit Liverpool just by Everton moving into a new stadium. (The balloons are probably the least fanciful of these predictions.)
  • Norman Oder has a long analysis of the New York Islanders Belmont Park arena plan laying out all the remaining questions about the project, from the value of land and tax breaks to how exactly the state expects a Belmont arena to host sports and concerts without cannibalizing shows from the nearby Nassau Coliseum. (Not that it should matter to the state if the Coliseum loses business, but if shows are just relocated, they’re not new economic activity. For that matter, if Long Islanders just go to more shows and fewer restaurants, say, that’s also not new economic activity. So very many questions.)
  • Dodger Stadium is getting a $100 million facelift this offseason, including a new centerfield plaza, new elevators and bridges for fan circulation, and a statue of Sandy Koufax. A hundred million dollars seems like a lot for that, but it’s Magic Johnson‘s stadium and his money, so whatever floats his boat.
  • And finally, the cost of the Atlanta Falcons‘ pedestrian bridge has now surpassed $33 million. up $6 million from the last accounting. On second thought, maybe $100 million for some bridges and a statue isn’t that crazy at all.

Friday roundup: Indiana and Missouri rack up another $390m in team subsidies, and other dog-bites-man news

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Sadly, there’s another loss to report this week: Rob McQuown, who for the past decade has been one of the core tech and admin guys at Baseball Prospectus, passed away on Tuesday. I never met Rob personally, but in my days writing and editing for BP we exchanged emails a ton, and he was always a sharp and good-humored presence keeping the site running behind the scenes. (He wrote some excellent fantasy baseball coverage for a while, too.) I haven’t heard the details of his death, but I do know it was way too soon, and my sympathies go out to all his friends and family and colleagues who are mourning him this week. Here’s a lovely podcast tribute by Ben Lindbergh to Rob’s multifarious and too-often underappreciated gifts.

And now, to the news:

  • The Indianapolis City-County Council gave final signoff to $290 million in subsidies for the Indiana Pacers, which along with new and past operating subsidies brings team owner Herb Simon’s total haul to more than a billion dollars. The team’s new lease lasts until 2044, but I’d wager that Simon won’t wait that long before going back to what’s been an insanely lucrative taxpayer well.
  • The state of Missouri has reportedly approved $3 million a year for 20 years, coming to a total of $70 million, for upgrades for the St. Louis Blues, Kansas City Royals, and Kansas City Chiefs stadiums — yeah, I don’t get how that math works either, especially when this was previously reported as $70 million for the Blues plus $30 million for the K.C. teams, and has elsewhere been reported as $70 million for the Blues and $60 million for the K.C. teams, but I’m sure it was copied from a press release somewhere, and that’s what passes for fact-checking these days, right? This brings the teams’ total haul to … let’s see, the K.C. teams got $250 million previously, and the Blues owners got $67 million in city money, so let’s go with “around $400 million,” about which you can say that it’s at least cheaper than what Indiana taxpayers are on the hook for, and that is pretty much all you can say.
  • The city of Anaheim is still waiting on its now-overdue appraisal of the Los Angeles Angels‘ stadium land so it can open talks with team owner Arte Moreno on how much he should pay for development rights on the stadium parking lots. Mayor Harry Sidhu has appointed a negotiating team, though, which includes Sidhu himself, something that has drawn criticism since Angels execs donated to his election campaign. Sidhu also stated that “our theme parks, sports venues and convention center are a matter of pride, but their real purpose is to serve residents by generating revenue for public safety, parks, libraries and community centers and by helping us keep taxes and fees low,” which is not likely to help convince anyone that he understands sports economics like his predecessor did and isn’t just repeating what his funders tell him.
  • Oak View Group’s Tim Leiweke is trying to build a 10,000-seat arena in Palm Springs, and economists point out that this won’t help the local economy much because “you’re crazy if you think I’m flying to Palm Springs to see your minor league hockey team,” and Leiweke says Palm Springs is just different, okay, because so many attendees will be people who are already coming to town to play golf, gamble, or stay at local resorts. How this makes it a major economic plus when those people also see a concert when they’re in town Leiweke didn’t say, but who’re you going to believe, a bunch of people who study economics for a living or a guy who was once the youngest GM in indoor soccer?
  • A Cincinnati nonprofit is trying to raise $2 million to preserve affordable housing around F.C. Cincinnati‘s new stadium, and the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority says that maybe building more market-rate housing will allow low-income residents of existing buildings to stay put. Yeah, that’s really not going to work.
  • Nobody in Miami-Dade County has studied the impact of building a new Inter Miami stadium right next to the city’s airport, and some county commissioners think that maybe that might be a thing they’d want to study.
  • Here’s a good, long R.J. Anderson article on three cities vying for MLB expansion teams (Portland, Montreal, and Raleigh) that should provide reading material for the inevitable endless wait for MLB to actually expand. (I’m also quoted in it, right before Jim Bouton.)
  • And here’s another long article that quotes me, this one by Bill Shea of The Athletic on how stadium subsidies have changed since the Great Recession (some sports economists say it’s tougher to get public money now, I say “Bah!”).