May 20, 2006

Plastic roofs and other news

Once again, it's time to catch up on other recent stadium and arena developments:

• A Cleveland developer is trying to sell the city council on adding a roof onto Cleveland Browns Stadium (scary, slow-to-load images here) so that it can host the Super Bowl, or at least more than the 10 football games a year that are currently its only use. And how much good money would the city have to throw after bad for this idea? "I'm not going to say it's $90 million," said the developer, Robert Corna. "What it is right now is an engineered guess. The real number is how much you can finance, and you work to that number." For some reason, "I don't know, how much do you got?" isn't the most reassuring answer...
• The Seattle group Citizens for More Important Things has introduced a voter initiative requiring that the city get a "fair market" return on any publicly funded arena renovation for the Seattle Sonics; for a $220 million renovation, said the group's co-chair, Chris Van Dyk, this would require the team to pay about $11 million a year in rent. The campaign's backers have 60 days to collect 25,000 signatures to get the measure on the November ballot.
• The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved yesterday a plan to renovate the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum if the NFL brings a franchise to town. The proposal includes $25 million in tax-increment subsidies; the remainder of the $800 million would come from unidentified sources. Also unclear is what rent, if any, the NFL would be expected to pay on the facility.
• Now that the three cents on $20 gambit has been apparently successful, more cities may be looking for ways to spin stadium subsidies so they sound less onerous to those who'd be footing the bill. Instead of $145 million for a Real Salt Lake stadium, for example, doesn't $5 per person per year sound a lot better? You know it's only a matter of time before this idea catches on for other pricey projects.
• Sacramento Kings boosters are stepping up their push for a sales-tax hike to fund a new arena, with the VP of the River Cats minor-league baseball team taking local electeds to dinner to buttonhole them about the plan. "This is much bigger than an arena," Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce director Matt Mahood said afterwards, implying that money may be included for legislators' other pet projects, as an inducement to signing on to the arena project.