December 08, 2006

Weekend update: Bicoastal edition

Apologies for the sporadicity - sporadiciousness? - of news items here of late, but I've been busy wrapping up work on the new edition of Field of Schemes. (That's University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books, due out in early 2008 - look for it in your grocer's freezer.) To make up for it, here's a heaping helping of mini-news for you to cozy up with over the weekend:

• NBA commissioner David Stern traveled to California this week, where he talked up a plan for a state authority to fund sports projects - though not with the Governator because, he said, "nothing was formed enough to even suggest it." Stern added that the solution to the arena question will "come from the people who will benefit from having a multipurpose arena, and that's really, I'd say, the city, the county and the counties around Sacramento County." This is taking the lead?
• A California state senator, in an attempt to block the San Francisco 49ers' move to Santa Clara, is introducing a bill to block cities or counties from providing subsidies to induce an NFL team to move from within a 100-mile radius. (Similar legislation already applies to car dealerships and big-box stores in the state.) "This will prohibit municipalities from raiding sports teams from neighboring communities," said a spokesperson for Sen. Carole Migden - though given that the bill doesn't apply to baseball, basketball, or hockey, it wouldn't affect, for example, the Oakland A's of Fremont.
• A spokesperson for the San Diego Chargers said that the team plans to "politely decline" any offers to relocate outside of San Diego County. Then he said that if the team doesn't have a ballot measure to fund a stadium in place by next June, it will start looking elsewhere. They sure don't make commitment the way they used to.
• New York's state-run Empire State Development Corporation gave its official approval to the Atlantic Yards project that includes a Brooklyn arena for the New Jersey Nets; because neither the city council nor the state legislature will get to vote on the $4 billion project, this leaves only the New York Jets' old nemesis, the Public Authorities Control Board, plus several lawsuits, standing between the plan and reality. Among the latest additions to the plan: Two 15-story-high billboards that would be illegal under city law, if not for the fact that the ESDC, as a state agency, doesn't have to obey it.
• Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, according to the New York Observer's Matthew Schuerman, "walked out of an interview on Wednesday with News12 when asked hard questions about whether the Parks Department was living up to its promises for the Yankee Stadium project."
• Finally, in news from neither California nor New York, the Orlando Magic signed a four-year deal to rename their arena after their owner's officially legal pyramid scheme. The city of Orlando will get a small cut of the proceeds, but will have to promise to buy a case of Liquid Organic Cleaner every month.