Happy new year! The arrival of 2013 means a fresh start, and a time to put the troubles of the past behind — unless, of course, you’re Bridgeview, Illinois:
One of the Chicago area’s most debt-saddled suburbs is borrowing even more money as it tries to put off the worst of its financial pain over the struggling Toyota Park stadium.
The latest borrowing binge — $27 million — will put Bridgeview taxpayers at greater risk of funding an even bigger bailout of the village-owned stadium if it continues to flounder. Municipal finance experts say it is another worrisome sign for a small suburb that took a huge gamble to build the 20,000-seat professional soccer stadium.
As you may recall from past reports here, Bridgeview borrowed $100 million in 2006 to build a new stadium for the Chicago Fire, with the expectation that it would pay it off from stadium revenues. Except that the lease said that all soccer revenues would go to the team, leaving the city with only money from concerts and the like, which haven’t been enough to pay off $100 million in debt. So now Bridgeview keeps borrowing more money to pay off the existing loans, and as the Chicago Tribune reports, “The move comes as Bridgeview officials try to reassure residents in newsletters that do not detail how the downward spiral will be reversed.”
Okay, but it’s a happy new year for everyone else … okay, except maybe Glendale, Arizona:
Glendale, Arizona’s bet on becoming the Phoenix area’s sports and entertainment hub is resulting in higher taxes, fired workers and rising penalties on its debt.
The city confronts new budget cuts after agreeing last month to pay $308 million over the next 20 years to keep the National Hockey League’s Phoenix Coyotes, which had the worst attendance in the NHL last season. After downgrades by both Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service that cited the hockey payments, investors demanded a 7.5 percent higher penalty on city debt compared with 11 months ago.
Glendale, of course, just put itself on the hook to pay the Coyotes’ new owner upwards of $12 million a year just to keep his team there, on top of the $12 million a year they’re spending to pay off the arena bonds. Plus the city put in money for infrastructure for the state-built Arizona Cardinals stadium, plus $200 million for a spring training baseball facility. Which all worked out great, if by “great” you mean having to fire large chunks of your city staff while being unable to borrow any more money at less than usurious rates.
Not every stadium and arena deal works out this badly, obviously, and the economic downturn hasn’t helped. (And isn’t going to be helping for a while yet, it looks like.) But if there are any suburbs and small cities out there reading this who had been thinking, “Yeah, a new stadium would totally be a way for us to get noticed!”, it’s worth noting: You might end up getting noticed for reasons you’d prefer not to.
