Field of Schemes
sports stadium news and analysis

  

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June 06, 2006

When trees go dead

Things have been slow of late in the stadium biz, so I thought I'd take advantage of the lull to note a couple of interesting stadium-related articles that have popped up, each of which exhibits an all-too-common fatal flaw.

Sunday's New York Times has an informative, if at times fawning, article on the Boston Red Sox' decision to remain at Fenway Park and market the bejeezus out of it rather than build a new stadium. Along with leaving out some key parts of the story - like the diehard community opposition to razing Fenway, or the fact that local bankers had thrown cold water on the team's plans to borrow more than $300 million toward a new park - the article by business columnist Joseph Nocera includes this puzzling aside:

The owners floated possible new sites and made the case for abandoning Fenway before the notoriously tough Boston press corps.

Would that be the "notoriously tough" Boston Globe, which in May 1999, immediately after the Sox announced plans for a new stadium, ran a special "Thanks for the memories" Sunday section eulogy featuring staffers' reminiscences of Fenway? Or perhaps Globe baseball columnist Dan Shaughnessy, who wrote at the time that a new stadium would be the Sox' "best move since they brought Babe Ruth to the old ballpark when the old ballpark was the new ballpark in 1914"? It wasn't until years later that the Globe did an about-face on the new-stadium plans, when new owner (and current Fenway renovator) John Henry bought the Sox, bringing on board as a co-owner the Globe's corporate parent ... the New York Times. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

Our other contender for a journalistic wrist-slap is the Puget Sound Business Journal, which has taken advantage of the Seattle Mariners' current years-long on-field malaise to wander around the ballpark and see how local vendors are doing. The answer, as you will not be surprised to learn: terrible.

Many businesses in close proximity to Safeco Field are feeling the pain as the team heads into what could be its third losing season in a row. The Mariners' on-field lapses are having a dramatic effect on the business ecosystem that grew up around them when their All-Star-laden lineups were pennant contenders.

Regular readers of this website will already know where I'm heading here: What about the substitution effect? In other words, it's to be expected that baseball-related businesses will suffer when people aren't going to baseball games, but what about businesses in the rest of the city? Is it possible that, with all that erstwhile kettle-corn cash burning a hole in their pockets, Seattleites are instead upping their purchases of, I dunno, mushrooms?

That's what the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation set out to discover during the 1994 baseball strike, asking Toronto-area theaters and video-rental stores how they were doing since baseball had shut down. Their conclusion: The baseball hiatus had been "a grand slam for some businesses," with one comedy club manager quipping: "We really feel it would be in the best interest of entertainment in Toronto if the hockey players sat out the whole season too."

Whether the same is true in Seattle we don't know, because the Puget Sound Business Journal chose not to talk to anyone more than a block from Safeco Field. Seattle-area journalists, you have your next article pitch. Don't disappoint me.

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