August 20, 2008
Red Bulls stadium may actually get built someday
In case you've been wondering how things have been going with the New York Red Bulls stadium in Harrison, New Jersey since the groundbreaking was announced two years ago, they've finally gotten around to erecting the first beam. "It's been a long time coming," Red Bulls managing director Erik Stover told the Newark Star-Ledger. "We've taken that step that people said we'd never be able to take." He added that the facility should be complete by next October, assuming a mild winter, and that the beam-erecting workers pick up their pace a little bit.
In related news, the stadium will now be known as Red Bull Arena, which will only further throw the whole arena/stadium nomenclature into disarray...
August 18, 2008
Lucas Oil boom likely a fantasy
The Indianapolis Colts' new Lucas Oil Stadium is about to open for business - fans have already been allowed in to kick the tires - and along with opening day come promises of an economic windfall to come:
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Taxpayers are footing most of the bill for the new stadium, but city and state leaders promise financial blessings will rain down on expectant Hoosiers.
"Folks are saying Lucas Oil Stadium is going to be a special place. So I think the cache of Lucas Oil Stadium is going to attract a lot of events that otherwise perhaps would not have looked at Indianapolis," said Gerry Dick of Inside Indiana Business.
The Indiana Convention and Visitor's Association expects the stadium and the expanded convention center to bring an additional 18 to 23 major conventions and trade shows and 4 to 5 large consumer shows.
So, are those expectations reasonable, or does the TV station reporting this have exceptionally appropriate call letters? I asked Heywood Sanders of the University of Texas, one of the foremost experts on the convention center industry; he replied that the PriceWaterhouseCoopers report that the convention association's numbers are based on projects a 50% increase in convention business. "But PWC has a history of 'over-predicting' convention center performance," he continued. "For the new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, the firm forecast an annual total 612,000 to 697,000 annual hotel room nights. The actual total for 2007 came to 364,577 - just a bit short. And there's no reason to think that somehow, in a market overbuilt with convention center space, that Indianapolis is going to somehow be the great exception."
But hey, at least there'll be pork poppers.
August 14, 2008
Lemieux: We fibbed about moving to get arena
Remember how the Pittsburgh Penguins were going to move to Kansas City, or maybe Las Vegas, if they didn't get a new arena? Apparently that was a load of horse hockey:
"It wasn't a possibility," [Penguins owner Mario] Lemieux said during a groundbreaking ceremony today for Pittsburgh's new $290 million hockey arena.
"We had to do a few things to put pressure on the city and the state, but our goal was to remain here in Pittsburgh all the way. Those trips to Kansas City and Vegas and other cities was just to go, and have a nice dinner and come back." ...
"(Pressure) was felt, and that was the important thing. A lot of things happened throughout the negotiations. Ups and downs. That was just a way for us to put more pressure, and we knew it would work at the end of the day," Lemieux said.
So what exactly did Penguins and NHL officials say to put "pressure" on the city of Pittsburgh?
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, Feb. 2006: "The team's lease expires in a year and if there's no new building, there's no way this club can have any future in Pittsburgh."
NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly, Feb. 2006: "It needs to resolve itself in the next couple of months, otherwise they're going to have to look at options."
Lemieux, on the eve of a vote to approve the use of casino funds for a new Pittsburgh arena, Dec. 2006: "Wednesday will be a turning point in the franchise's future. We decide the fate of the franchise. After Wednesday, we will sit down and evaluate all of our options."
Lemieux's careful words certainly left him room to say it was all just a legitimate negotiating tactic - especially since Bettman was put in the role of dropping the outright move threat, a common position for sports commissioners. But still, seems like there should be a better word for it.
August 08, 2008
Tiger Stadium vote put off till September
Or not: The Detroit city council today delayed its vote on the latest plan to save part of Tiger Stadium until September, saying they wanted to give preservationists and the city more time to work out a deal - this despite the fact the two sides said they'd reached a deal two days ago. Maybe they just had other things on their mind, what with the mayor getting jailed for skipping out on a court bond, then getting charged with assaulting a sheriff's deputy, and the mayor's unelected chief of staff running the city for the time being.
August 07, 2008
More, less of Tiger Stadium could be saved
The new plan for saving part of Tiger Stadium just got newer, with an agreement between the Detroit Economic Development Corp. and the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy to come up with a "solid financial plan" by November 1, with fundraising still due to be completed by March 1. (No clue who gets to determine what qualifies as "solid.") The Conservancy will now be considering two options, one a plan to save a section of the ballpark stretching beyond both dugouts - that'd be 4,000 to 5,000 seats, as opposed to 3,000 seats in the previous plan - the other a fallback option to save just the field and build a baseball museum around it. "We're certainly not concentrating on Plan B," said Consortium member S. Gary Spicer, attorney for Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell. "We want a section of the stadium to be saved and are working extremely hard to do that. Nov. 1 is a very tough deadline but we feel we have much new momentum."
The city council is scheduled to vote on approving the new deal tomorrow. Meanwhile, demolition of the outfield section of Tiger Stadium continues, with construction cranes most recently dropping bits of stadium onto passing traffic.
Nets arena opening put off until sun goes nova
Representatives of New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner have admitted what everyone else already assumed: The team's new Brooklyn arena likely won't be ready until 2011, at the earliest. "We plan to break ground this fall," Forest City Vice President Bruce Bender told the Brooklyn Paper earlier this week. "While that's the goal, if it is not met, then [the team's first game in Brooklyn] would end up being calendar year 2011."
Atlantic Yards Report blogger Norman Oder had reported that Ratner told a shareholders meeting in June that the company would he complete its loans by the end of the this year, then take two and a half years to build an arena - which would mean a summer 2011 opening. That would mean a delay of two years from the 2009 opening projected last fall, and five years from the 2006 opening date originally put forward by Ratner in 2003. If, that is, it happens at all.
July 30, 2008
Tiger Stadium gets tenth life
The proposal to save part of Tiger Stadium from demolition got renewed life yesterday after Detroit city council president Kenneth Cockrel Jr. sent presevationists and city officials into a room yesterday and ordered them to work something out. The result: a plan in which the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy will put $369,000 in escrow (the group says it's already raised $430,000) to pay for the city's costs in saving the home-plate corner of the nearly century-old ballpark. The conservancy will then have until next March - rather than the 60 days the mayor had demanded - to raise the $15.6 million it needs to convert what's left of the stadium for a baseball museum and other uses.
The council acted after a morning in which many supporters of the preservation plan testified and called to urge that part of what's left of Tiger Stadium be saved. "I have yet to hear a constituent in the Corktown neighborhood say 'let's demolish it,'" said State Rep. Steve Tobocman. Added Bill Dow of the Tiger Stadium Fan Club: "The momentum's going to continue because as more people see the stadium being torn down, the more people are going to want to say, 'we've got to save a part of this history here.'"
The deal won't be official until Monday, when the parties will again meet and the council will vote on final approval of the plan.
July 29, 2008
Democracy Now tomorrow with Kucinich
Just got word that myself, Bettina Damiani of Good Jobs New York, and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich will be on the TV/radio show Democracy Now tomorrow morning at 8 am Eastern time, to discuss the latest New York Yankees stadium shenanigans. Given that co-host Juan Gonzalez has written extensively on the topic as well, it should be an informative half-hour or so. Check the station map for when it will air in your area, or just visit the show archives starting later in the day tomorrow.
UPDATE: The video and audio streams of the show are now online here. And yes, they picked a nice show title.
Tiger Stadium gets reprieve, new threat
Good news and bad news for Tiger Stadium, or what's left of it after demolition crews finished tearing down the left-field grandstand this week.
The good: The city council's planning and economic development committee rescinded its earlier approval for demolition of the entire park, after Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell testified that his Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy had succeeded in raising the $400,000 demanded by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick by August 1 to stop the wrecking ball from taking down the home-plate section of the ballpark, which the conservancy hopes to save.
The bad: A spokesperson for Mayor Kilpatrick responded that he was setting a new deadline of October 1 for the Conservancy to come up with "$15 million cash money," or the entire ballpark will be razed. "Federal earmarks won't work. Foundation promises won't work," said mayoral spokesperson James Canning. "They need $15 million cash money, on hand, in the bank."
The conservancy's financial plan relies on promises of $9.5 million in federal earmarks and tax credits, so it's unclear how they'll respond to this latest mayoral demand. (Or whether the council will go along with Kilpatrick moving the goalposts.) And if they do come up with the "cash money," you have to wonder what the mayor will ask for next.
More questions over Yanks' land value claims
New York state assemblymember Richard Brodsky has joined U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich in questioning whether the Yankees inflated the value of their new stadium site in order to be eligible for tax-exempt bonds. As my Metro NY colleague Pat Arden reported yesterday, the city reported the value of the land under the stadium as $200 million to the IRS - which needed a high number to justify the team's pretend-our-bond-payments-are-property-taxes deal - but just $21 million to the state, which needed to determine that the replacement parkland being proposed was worth at least as much.
"The PILOTs that repay the stadium bonds are actually a tax payment which normally would go into the city's coffers to pay for schools, police and health care," Brodsky wrote to team president Randy Levine. (Well, sort of. Either that, or they're really private bonds payments, and a way to cheat the federal government out of $200 million in taxes.) "No citizen of our state can call the local assessor and have his or her property tax payments sent to pay off the mortgage on their new house on the ground that otherwise they will leave the state."
Brodsky is also questioning whether there will be affordable tickets at the new stadium, and whether the city officials that approved the project will get their own luxury suite, as is indicated in the team's lease. Mayor Michael Bloomberg first insisted yesterday that the city wasn't getting a suite, only to have his spokesperson later backtrack and admit it was, but that the mayor hadn't decided what to do with it.
UPDATE: Bloomberg's verbatim remarks, according to Arden: "In the new stadiums, the city will not have any boxes, 'cause they're not going to be city-owned stadiums. They'll be built with private money - that was the whole deal. But I don't know whether anybody has any boxes. You talk to them." In fact, the stadiums will be owned by the city - by the city-run Industrial Development Authority, to be specific, and leased to the teams, much as the existing stadiums are owned by the city Parks Department and leased to the teams.
July 26, 2008
Kucinich probes Yanks bonds
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, whose Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has already held a couple of hearings into stadium financing (the first of which I testified at), has sent letters to the New York Yankees and several local government agencies demanding details of how the assessment of the Yanks' new stadium's value was arrived at. This, you'll recall, is key to whether the team's plan to get subsidized tax-exempt bonds by pretending its rent payments are really property taxes; the city Independent Budget Office has previously questioned whether the new stadium is really worth as much as the city says it is, which would make the whole deal illegal.
The New York City Department of Finance, New York City Economic Development Corporation, National Park Service, Internal Revenue Service, and the Yankees have been given until August 5 to respond with the requested information. Mark your calendars.
Cardinals revive "Ballpark Village" plan
The St. Louis Cardinals announced yet another plan for their long-delayed "Ballpark Village" project on the site of old Busch Stadium, which fell apart earlier this year when the planned anchor tenant, the Centene Corp., backed out. (The site is currently a muddy pit known locally as "Lake DeWitt," after team president Bill DeWitt.) The new plan calls for phased construction - i.e., they'll build a few buildings now, then more later, maybe, if there's money for it - with the first phase costing $320 million, the second about $280 million. The first phase is planned to include a mix of office, retail, and entertainment (or maybe hotel - reports vary) uses; the second, if it happens, could include some residential units. Neither has a specific timetable for completion.
The city and state previously approved about $116 million in subsidies for the project (mostly in tax-increment financing, where developers get their property and sales taxes kicked back to them); the Cards and their development partner will still get that, plus another $7.9 million if they include a hotel. The St. Louis Business Journal reports that "the project must still receive approval from the Board of Estimate & Apportionment, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, and the State of Missouri." Before voting, they might want to consider the experience of other cities that have okayed subsidies for "phased construction" projects.
July 23, 2008
Marlins stadium suit nears conclusion - maybe
If you haven't been following the Florida Marlins stadium lawsuit, have you been missing some fine summer entertainment. The story so far, in brief:
- Judge Jeri Beth Cohen repeatedly tried to get the two sides to settle via mediation, but to no avail.
- Marlins president David Samson testified, but didn't live up to his reputation for outrageous quotes, unless you count the argument that "I believe the public is supportive of using tourist development taxes, from the hundreds and hundreds of e-mails we've got from fans." He further told reporters that the chance of opening a new stadium in 2011 "is starting to worry me."
- Tony Villamil, CEO of the Washington Economic Group - described as an "economist" by the South Florida Business Journal, but actually a paid consultant for the Marlins - testified that a new stadium "serves the public purpose of economic development" because of "the portfolio of amenities of the state or a region, what economists call externality benefits," such as media exposure. Villamil later admitted under cross-examination that his study projecting $208 million in economic impact (and $14 million in new state and local tax money, against a public cost of $360 million), was based on 2001 data supplied by the Marlins, which he didn't attempt to independently verify.
- Judge Cohen announced she'd wait several weeks to rule on plaintiff Norman Braman's key charge that community redevelopment money can't be redirected to free up other funds for the Marlins' stadium without a public vote. The reason: She wants to wait until the state supreme court has ruled on several similar cases involving use of public funds without a referendum. "I am not going to rule. I'm surprised you would pressure me," Cohen told attorneys for team, city, and county. "That's not what trial courts do. This is about me doing what is intellectually honest. ... I have an obligation to wait."
- During closing arguments, the judge asked county attorney David Hope why a new stadium represents a "paramount public purpose," as required by state law to get public money. "I know you guys think this is a slam dunk, but I'm struggling with this."
It certainly sounds like Braman has a shot at winning what initially looked like an uphill battle. (Caveat: I haven't watched any of the court proceedings directly, and I'm anything but a legal analyst.) We should know more when Cohen issues her ruling ... or when she issues the other part of her ruling after the supreme court decisions ... or after the appeals process begins ... or ...
July 22, 2008
The daily carnage
For fans of watching historic sports stadiums get reduced to rubble, we today present photos of the Orange Bowl three-quarters gone (possibly not up-to-the-minute - mlb.com doesn't say), and Tiger Stadium after the entire left-field grandstand crashed to the ground.
If that's not enough to cheer your day, you can also read Detroit Free Press writer Dan Austin's description of seeing a large swath of his childhood ballpark reduced to rubble: "For me, Monday night was the single most jarring moment of the demolition since the destruction began in earnest. I didn't cry, but I didn't breathe either. It felt like Cecil Fielder had taken a bat to my gut."
