August 27, 2008
Baltimore seeks developers for tenantless arena
The city of Baltimore has issued an RFP for a developer to build a new downtown arena on the site of the 46-year-old Baltimore Arena, with the goal of luring more concerts, and possibly an NBA or NHL team. Construction is projected to cost $300 million, with city officials saying they hope for "maximum private financial support" for the project - which is presumably a nice way of saying, "We don't really know if anyone will be foolish enough to put private money into this, but it doesn't hurt to ask."
The more worrying thing, of course, is that Baltimore is talking about build an arena "on spec" before landing a sports tenant, which means they're positioning themselves to be either the next city to be used as a blackmail threat and then abandoned by an existing team, or have to pay through the nose to get a team to relocate, once owners realize they have the city over a barrel. Apparently, David Hannum was right.
New New York stadium tix will cost a bundle
The New York Jets made news yesterday by announcing that they won't force season ticket holders in the upper deck of their new stadium to pay for the right to buy tickets. While all Giants season ticket holders will have to pony up between $1,000 and $20,000 for "personal seat licenses" if they want to buy seats at the new building when it opens in 2010, as will Jets fans in the lower level, the cheap seats for Jets games will still be on a pay-as-you-go basis - if seats that cost between $95 and $125 apiece can still be called "cheap."
The New York Times' Richard Sandomir polled fans of the Jets and Giants - as well as the Yankees and Mets, who aren't using PSLs but are hiking ticket prices at their new digs next year - and found that, no surprise, many of them are hopping mad. A selection of fan comments:
- "You're asking me for money and giving me nothing in return. I won't be sharing in the revenues or get any perks.”
- "Here I am, buying a stadium for [Giants owner] John Mara. I'd love to see him issue a registration statement like a stock offering that would disclose information we don’t know. This is a greedy ploy with the only benefits going to them.”
- "The Jets and Giants want me to be an equity partner without any upside."
- "If the tickets were still in my name, I'd tear them up. If they couldn’t afford to finance that stadium on their own, they shouldn’t be leaving Giants Stadium.”
To be fair, PSL buyers will get something of value: They can resell the PSL to another sucker - sorry, I meant fan - if they ever decide they don't want tickets anymore. The overall fan interpretation is correct, though: The Giants and Jets owners are effectively taking out an interest-free loan from fans that never has to be paid back - and since the PSLs are only good so long as the teams remain in the new stadium, hey can be expected to turn into worthless paper should the team relocate again several decades down the road.
In any case, it's yet another indication of how the "Big Four" pro sports are increasingly positioning themselves to be unaffordable to anyone below the wealthiest classes. The teams will blame the "free market," but as we've seen before, the market for luxury goods like high-priced sports tickets is largely a creation of public policy - would the Giants still be able to find 80,000 people able to cough up money for PSLs if the rich were still paying pre-Bush taxes?
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.
