August 28, 2003
Maple Leaf Gardens to be gutted?
The Toronto Maple Leafs, who moved from historic Maple Leaf Gardens to the new Air Canada Centre in 1999, have rejected an offer from a minor-league hockey owner to buy the old building and restore it, saying they didn't want the competition. Needless to say, we've heard this before. And, for that matter, before that.
August 27, 2003
Davis awarded $34 mil in stadium suit
Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis won his suit against the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum yesterday, but was awarded only a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars he said he was due, after moving his team back to Oakland from L.A. A jury agreed that Davis had lost money as a result of mismanagement by the coliseum that resulted in poor ticket sales, awarding him $34 million in damages. If it's ever paid - both sides are appealing, and the coliseum is a nonprofit corporation with no assets - the verdict will bring the total public cost of bringing back the Raiders to $201 million, plus the mutilation of a once-attractive baseball stadium.
August 24, 2003
Hang on, Youppi
One day after it voted down a stadium-financing bill to lure the Montreal Expos, the Oregon state senate reversed itself and approved the plan, 16-11, on Saturday. The main difference: an amendment that would require that a private entity (as yet unnamed) would be on the hook for the $150 million in stadium payments if revenues from the tax-on-players-and-team-execs plan fell short.
Now all that stands in the way of the Portland Expos is finding a private guarantor, finding another $150 million in public funds from Portland-area taxes, and convincing MLB that Portland could successfully host a big-league ballclub. It all could happen in time for the Expos to move in 2004, but we're not holding our breath.
August 22, 2003
Youppi lives!
What if they held a bidding war and nobody came? The year-long MLB auction of the Montreal Expos may have ground to a close today, as the Oregon State Senate voted down a $150 million stadium-financing bill, by an 18-12 margin. To recap: first Washington, D.C. announced it wouldn't pass a stadium bill unless it was awarded a team first, then Arlington, Virginia declared it had better things to do with its land. Adding insult to injury, Oregon state senator Lenn Hannon denounced MLB for "trying to dump a poor asset to the highest bidder. Anyone who has the money to pay a player $10 million a year has the money to build their own stadium." Add it all up, and it's probably safe for Montrealers to pick up those tickets to next year's Henry Mateo Bobblehead Day.
No stampede to fund Calgary stadium
Those unreconstructed communists who run Canada may throw money at things like health care, but they have a lot to learn from the U.S. about handing out government cash to sports franchises. The Calgary Stampeders football team is looking to build a new facility to get out of its lease at McMahon Stadium, but local officials say they won't be getting public money to do it: "This government just does not give grants to private companies," provincial spokesman Gordon Turtle told the Calgary Herald. "It's not going to happen." Why that's positively ... un-American!
August 21, 2003
Astrodome and dumber
What do you do with an obsolete Eighth Wonder of the World? Why, fill it with a theme park, of course. Or maybe a mall. Why do we suspect this is going to end with the world's largest Wal-Mart?
Chargers redux
The San Diego Chargers have offered to eliminate their ticket guarantee - surely you remember the ticket guarantee - if the city lets them build a new stadium and pay for it with tax money. Under the latest proposal, the city would give the team the land under Qualcomm Stadium and its surrounding parking lots, which would be used for both a new stadium and an "urban village" of shops and hotels, with the Chargers keeping tax revenues from the project to pay off the construction tab. (With stadium subsidies a non-starter for most cash-strapped local governments, this sort of broader development with tax kickbacks is becoming a more and more common tactic in the sports biz.) "In this plan, the Chargers are paying for 100 percent of the cost of the stadium," insisted Chargers attorney Mark Fabiani. Replied Chargers task-force member Bruce Henderson: "The taxes are our money. The taxes that the Chargers talk about as paying for all of that, [that] would otherwise go in our general fund."
August 13, 2003
Oregon stadium bill rises from dead
The sputtering bidding war for the Montreal Expos got another lease on life yesterday, as Oregon legislators used a move called a "gut and stuff" to insert stadium funding language into an unrelated bill that had already passed the state senate. Oregon is facing a massive budget deficit, but state construction unions say a $350 million stadium would create 1,500 construction jobs, and another 1,500 permanent jobs. "For too long weíve had the highest jobless rate in the country," Oregon AFL-CIO president Tim Nesbitt told the Statesman Journal. "This is an opportunity we shouldnít ignore." Fifteen hundred new jobs at a cost of $350 million would be just under a quarter-million dollars per job created - a worse ratio than some of the most notorious corporate welfare deals of our time. Where's our helicopter?
August 09, 2003
NJ gov offers arena help to Nets, Devils
Well, that didn't take long. One day after it was reported that the New Jersey Nets might be sold and moved to New York, New Jersey Governor James McGreevey offered to renovate the teams' current home, Continental Airlines Arena, if the team stays put. (Both the Nets and Devils had been looking to move to a new $355 million home in Newark, but that ain't happening.) A plan to spend $100 million on improvements to the Meadowlands arena, paid for by a mix of public and private sources, is to be developed this weekend by arena chief George Zoffinger, who you'll remember from his earlier statements about subsidizing billionaires.
(Today's Newark Star-Ledger report also states that "Bruce Ratner, a top New York developer, would move the Nets to a proposed arena in downtown Brooklyn atop the Long Island Rail Road terminal," which should puzzle fans of Euclidean geometry.
August 07, 2003
Nets sale rumors heat up
The unsourced news watch never stops, as the Newark Star-Ledger reports today (based on those ever-popular unnamed executives and state officials) that the New Jersey Nets are for sale, with two of the four suitors looking to move the team across the Hudson: New York Islanders owner Charles Wang to Long Island, Bruce Ratner to his imaginary arena in Brooklyn. Admittedly, with both team execs and elected officials cited, it's less likely to be a rumor floated to scare Newark into coughing up arena dough - but, hey, it's happened before.
Chargers deadline extended
On the brink of triggering a lease clause that would allow the team to explore moving to other cities, the San Diego Chargers have instead agreed to a nine-month extension of negotiations with the city of San Diego for a new stadium. No real news here, except the usual.
Detroit to Tiger Stadium: Drop dead
Since Tiger Stadium was shuttered in 1999, upon the Detroit Tigers' move to publicly subsidized Comerica Park, various locals have proposed new uses for the facility, ranging from filling part of the ballpark with retail space to placing a minor-league ballclub there. The city has silently stonewalled all such efforts, and speculation is that Tigers owner Mike Ilitch - who doesn't own Tiger Stadium, yet rakes in $400,000 a year to "maintain" it - just wants the old ballpark torn down. Detroit's Metro Times tells the full story.
August 06, 2003
Minnesota gov backs stadium (sorta)
In the latest installment of a stadium battle that's been going on so long we wrote about it in the first edition of our book, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has expressed his support for public funding for a new Minnesota Vikings stadium - if the public can find the money. "It has to be in the context of our time," Pawlenty told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "We have a mammoth budget deficit, and we're cutting budgets and critical programs. ... But as the economy stabilizes and begins to improve, we have to recognize that if we want professional sports to stay in Minnesota, we have to start addressing some of their economic challenges, and that involves the stadium discussion. How much the state would be involved and in what form, that remains to be seen."
Sky Sox Stadium nears voting age
We don't usually report on every minor-league stadium battle, since there are so many of them, but this report out of Colorado Springs seems worthy of note: Colorado Rockies GM Dan O'Dowd has criticized Sky Sox Stadium, built in 1988 for the AAA team now affiliated with the Rockies, as outdated and in need of replacement. A local real estate developer is in negotiations to buy the team and build a new stadium, but says it won't be within Colorado Springs city limits, where the city council has opposed public financing for a new facility.
August 05, 2003
Giants to sue for stadium renovations
The New York Giants (who actually play in New Jersey) are preparing to sue the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority to get $290 million in renovations to Giants Stadium, says team co-owner Robert Tisch. "Our [lease] agreement says that our stadium should be state of the art," Tisch told the New York Times. "We're ready to fund it, but we can't get the governor to move on it." The Giants want to "fund it," however, by gaining full management control of the stadium and using naming-rights money and other revenue streams that would now go to the state. "If he wants to sue, I don't care," replied sports authority president George Zoffinger, who says Tisch's proposed deal would leave the state holding the bag for $160 million in existing stadium debt. "We're not in the business of subsidizing billionaires."
August 03, 2003
Houston arena to evict homeless
As the new home of the Houston Rockets prepares to open, arena officials are making plans to relocate the homeless encampment in Root Memorial Square across the street from the new facility. "We're hesitant to say that, because it sounds so callous," Rockets marketing VP Tim McDougall tells the Houston Chronicle. "It's a family venue. Nobody in the organization wants to see [homeless people] put out with no place to go." But with Root undergoing a $2.3 million reconstruction into a street-basketball park, they will go somewhere, and nearby residents fear the "revitalization" of the arena area will only end up shifting problems elsewhere. Says Pat Whitten-Lege, who lives across from Baldwin Park, one likely homeless destination: "We don't think they should take an inner-city park that has become the center of a neighborhood and turn it into another Root park."
August 01, 2003
Fair is foul
The Kentucky State Fair Board has issued a request that the state build a new $150 million arena in Louisville, primarily for University of Louisville basketball but to be used for other events as well. "Getting it on the radar screen, that's what we are doing," said fair board President Harold Workman, who failed to threaten to move the state fair to Ohio if he didn't get his way.
