Field of Schemes
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July 20, 2004

Too rich for Sacramento's blood

Looks like Sacramento won't be building the world's most expensive arena after all. A report by city downtown manager Wendy Saunders says that demolishing part of the K Street Mall to make way for a new Kings arena "does not appear to be feasible," because of "extraordinary" costs; moreover, the mall couldn't be designated as blighted (necessary under California law in order to use eminent domain and to get possible tax-increment financing), and the city would lose too much sales tax revenue from stores that would be displaced.

The Sacramento city council is set to vote Thursday night on placing an advisory question on the November ballot as to "whether the public supports raising fees, taxes and/or contributing otherwise" to a new arena, but without a site in place, several councilmembers told the Sacramento Bee they were uncertain about how to proceed. "I've said that if we go on the ballot we have to do the wording ourselves and it cannot be vague," said councilmember Robbie Waters. "Thursday night is going to be very interesting."

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