January 30, 2008
MLB recasts role of Yankee Stadium for 2009 season
MLB.com, the web arm of Major League Baseball, may like to tout that its stories are "not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs," but they do hew suspiciously close to baseball's official rhetoric. For the latest example, see yesterday's story on a tour guide at the soon-to-be-demolished Yankee Stadium:
Tony Morante proudly wears his Yankees jacket every day as he patrols the grounds of the place where he grew up and will probably spend the rest of his life.
Morante doesn't have a terminal illness, nor does he plan to go down with the ship, clinging to a girder as the wrecking ball knocks down the grandstand. Rather, in MLB terminology, the new Yankees stadium will still be Yankee Stadium, even though it will be across the street and very different in design from the historic ballpark. Just like New Comiskey Park was still Comiskey Park, at least until the Chicago White Sox gave up the pretense and renamed it after a phone company.
Later in the article it gets even weirder, as it describes how Yankee Stadium "will give way to the new Yankee Stadium in 2009 after the current model is closed down." You know, the kind of "closed down" that involves high explosives.
January 28, 2008
Court papers hint at Nets arena finance woes
The New York Post reports today that New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner has admitted in court documents that his $4 billion Atlantic Yards project is facing financing problems:
The papers, filed Friday by Ratner's firm in an attempt to speed up the appeal process in a lawsuit by project opponents, reveal for a first time that the biggest development in Brooklyn's history is in jeopardy because of dragging litigation and a slumping fiscal market.
"The credit markets are in turmoil at this time ... There is a serious question as to whether, given the current state of the debt market, the underwriters will be able to proceed with the financing for the arena while the appeal is pending," one affidavit says.
Take this with a big grain of salt, given that Ratner is claiming it in an attempt to get a lawsuit dismissed - the New York Yankees, don't forget, threatened to move out of the city if a similar legal challenge against their stadium wasn't dismissed. Still, there have been questions about how the softening housing market will affect the project for a while now, real estate experts have questioned both its cost and revenue projections, and Ratner's own finances aren't looking too great right now either. The big question then becomes, if Ratner clears away the lawsuits but can't come up with the cash, does he back out of the whole project, or just the housing component, leaving Brooklyn with just a basketball arena and a really ugly skyscraper?
Opposition mounts to Marlins stadium plan
South Florida Sun-Sentinel sports business writer Sarah Talalay blogs today about the outlook for the proposed Florida Marlins stadium in the wake of car dealer (and former Philadelphia Eagles owner) Norman Braman's lawsuit against the deal. Braman's suit, writes Talalay, challenges three separate aspects of the complex funding plan:
- Taking $50 million in funding that voters approved for renovating the Orange Bowl and shifting it towards construction of a new stadium, it says, is unconstitutional.
- Changing the funding source for repaying bonds on the existing performing arts center (Community Redevelopment Agency funds would be used for the arts center bonds, freeing up tourist tax money to go towards the stadium) is a breach of contract with bondholders, says Braman, who is one himself.
- Having County Manager George Burgess negotiate the deal with the Marlins in secret was a violation of the state's public records law.
The most damaging of these, sports law professor Bob Jarvis tells Talalay, is the public-records argument: "If the court accepts that, everything they've negotiated goes out the window. Even if they do everything again, but this time in public, that would set them back months and months. Every time you get these setbacks, the cost of the building goes up."
In related news, Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen yesterday called the redevelopment plan a "megascam," a "shell game," an "orgy of waste, corruption, mismanagement and false promises," and a "$3 billion streetcar named Deceit." He also cited a recent letter from county commissioner Javier Souto predicting it would become "just another scandal" in which the county "becomes an active participant and accomplice in defrauding the ... community out of dollars meant to tackle poverty and create opportunities." But tell us, what do you really think?
January 25, 2008
Fenty floats Redskins stadium in D.C.
Remember when Adrian Fenty was a Washington, D.C. city councilmember railing against a Nationals baseball stadium as a waste of city funds? And as a mayor who deep-sixed plans for a D.C. United soccer stadium because he thought it was too pricey?
Well, Fenty has apparently found a sport he likes, telling reporters yesterday he's directed his staff to prepare a proposal to bring the Redskins back to D.C. with a new stadium. "I actually think it makes a ton of sense," said the mayor, "but I think it would be great for the District to put it down on paper for them to have something to respond to." Given that the team's current stadium in suburban Maryland has made them the NFL's second-most-valuable franchise despite unimpressive performance on the field, Fenty would presumably need to break the bank to lure owner Daniel Snyder back to the city, but who knows? Maybe he can come up with a really persuasive slogan.
"No support" for UW stadium
Never mind for now about that University of Washington demand for a new state-funded football stadium: House speaker Frank Chopp declared yesterday that there's no support in the state legislature for such a measure, saying, "No House member, and nobody else for that matter in terms of the Legislature, has come to me and asked to support the project. That's sends a pretty strong message. I just said to Governor [Dan] Evans that I'd consider it, so I asked people to consider it. Nobody's come to me ask for support for it."
Even the governor seemingly admitted that the stadium plan was ultimately a waste of money, responding to a question as to whether he feels forced to buy flashy digs for UW to compete with other states for recruits, "We're in nuclear warfare in sports. I don't like it, but how do you get off the train?" Do we have to go over this again?
January 22, 2008
Hartford mayor begins arena push
Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez is pushing for a new arena to replace the Hartford Civic Center, and you can just hear the excitement:
"It's the first step in a long process," said Mark McGovern, the city's acting director of development services. "In making that first step, we've had experts tell us that it's not out of the question that we would be able to site, fund and operate an arena."
Why the city would want to build a new arena, which is estimated would cost between $300 million and $400 million, when it doesn't have a team to play in it was left unstated - but then, the mandate of the mayor's study wasn't whether a new arena was a good idea, but rather whether it was doable. A panel of experts from the Urban Land Institute recently recommended against building a new arena as a waste of city resources - but Mayor Perez isn't about to let a bunch of experts stand between him and his dream.
January 21, 2008
Cubs execs: Take our park, please
Chicago Cubs execs revealed yesterday that the sale of the team isn't expected to be completed until late this year, and blamed the proposed sale of Wrigley Field to the state of Illinois as one main reason. Team chairman Crane Kenney told participants at this weekend's Cubs Convention:
"We worry about a new owner coming in and deciding, 'Do you go the way of the Yankees and destroy [the ballpark] and rebuild somewhere else?' or 'Do you go the way of Fenway and rehabilitate it?' " Kenney said.
"We'd like to bind the new owner to play at Clark and Addison for the foreseeable future."
Isn't that sweet? The current Cubs owners are looking out for their fans, and for the future of their historic ballpark, by settling Wrigley's fate before selling off the team.
Except, of course, that there's nothing stopping the current Cubs (and Chicago Tribune) owner Sam Zell from signing a long-term lease binding the Cubs to Wrigley right now. (It'd be a bit tricky given that Zell presently owns both the team and the park, but he could always make it a requirement of the team sale.) That, though, would likely reduce the sale price he could get for the team, since the new owner would be locked into Wrigley with no way to extract public subsidies in the future.
Kenney's comments, then, are probably best understood not as a promise but a threat: Take our deal for a state-owned Wrigley, or else face the possibility of the Cubs going elsewhere. If the state takes the bait, the team would be guaranteed tens of millions of dollars in low-cost bond benefits and tax savings, all of which would boost the team's possible sale price. With that in mind, little wonder Cubs management wants to secure the stadium sale before selling off the team.
In fact, those tens of millions in subsidies could easily turn into hundreds of millions, if one comment dropped by Kenney comes true. Asked about who would pay for a Fenway Park-style restoration of Wrigley field, Kenney replied, "The Tribune will contribute a portion, as will the public through taxes generated within the building." If this means the Cubs are really looking to have stadium sales and income taxes diverted to help pay for stadium upgrades - a STIF, in other words - it could be Katy, bar the door. Stay tuned.
Sonics: We don't help the economy after all
Remember when I warned about "the ironic possibility of the [Seattle] Sonics' own inflated economic impact figures being used against them in lease settlement negotiations" as they try to escape their KeyArena lease? Now that the lease is the subject of a lawsuit by the city of Seattle, the Sonics owners have unleashed a can of preemptive chutzpah, filing a court brief in which they state:
"The financial issue is simple, and the city's analysts agree, there will be no net economic loss if the Sonics leave Seattle. Entertainment dollars not spent on the Sonics will be spent on Seattle's many other sports and entertainment options. Seattleites will not reduce their entertainment budget simply because the Sonics leave."
This is undeniably true - it's the substitution effect in a nutshell - but it is a pretty amusing thing to hear a pro sports team admit in court. At least one sports economist thinks so too:
Rodney Fort, a professor of sports management at the University of Michigan, who has criticized the economic-impact claims made by pro-sports teams, called the Sonics' latest argument "the best chuckle" he's had in a long time.
"It would seem that the value of the Sonics is a 'contingent' value - contingent on the purposes of the Sonics ownership," Fort said in an e-mail. "On the one hand, when the Sonics are trying to get the public to pitch in on a new arena, they are worth tens of millions to the Seattle area. On the other hand, when they are trying to beat their KeyArena lease, they are worth nothing to the Seattle area."
Whatever its impact on the court case, the real test will be to see what effect this has on news coverage: Now that the Sonics have all but admitted that economic-impact claims are a load of hooey, will newspaper reporters start noting that in their coverage? We'll see, but past evidence isn't real encouraging.
January 18, 2008
It's C-Town, Jake
For anyone who missed the news that the Cleveland Indians had sold the naming rights to Jacobs Field - like, say, me - the parties involved got another news cycle out of it when today they began removing the sign bearing the stadium name. Local officials seem mostly annoyed that the new logo won't feature the word "Cleveland" (it didn't "fit the sign's aesthetics," explained the signmakers), though some locals might equally be wondering why, when the stadium was paid for mostly with public dollars, the team is getting all the naming-rights cash.
In any case, the newly redubbed Progressive Field seems likely to go down in history with Monster Park as a name likely to inspire few connections either to what town it's in or what product it's promoting. Though I'm sure somebody won't mind the free advertising.
Seattle gets another stadium demand
I don't usually cover college sports stadiums, in part because there's only so much time in the day, but this one seems worthy of note if only for the piling-on factor: The University of Washington is planning a $300 million renovation of Husky Stadium, and wants state taxpayers to pay for half of it. Ways in which this is unlike the Mariners, Seahawks, and proposed Sonics deals that went before it: UW is a public institution, so the subsidies wouldn't be going to a private for-profit enterprise. Ways in which it's very much like it:
UW lobbying efforts in Olympia are emphasizing that Husky sports bring in about $211 million in sales for state businesses, $83 million in labor income and almost $13 million in tax revenue every year.
Even if you buy these numbers (and they seem inflated, given that it's likely the vast majority of football-goers come from within the state and just divert spending from elsewhere), they don't say anything about whether Husky fans would generate any more economic activity if they were sitting in a state-renovated stadium. What, is UW implying it'll move to Oklahoma City if it doesn't get its way?
"The biggest challenge we face, of course, is that we can't threaten to move to Oklahoma City," UW President Mark Emmert said Thursday.
I can't stand it...
Santa Clara starts stadium talks with 49ers
As expected, the Santa Clara city council voted this week to enter into negotiations with the San Francisco 49ers to build a $916 million stadium, $136 million of which (or $171 million, depending on who's counting) would come from city coffers. "It's not about football; it's not about the 49ers, it's not about being a fan," Mayor Patricia Mahan told the council. "It's really about the fulfillment of a dream, a vision of past city councils of a future Santa Clara." Do we really want to go there?
The negotiations should be interesting, to say the least: The proposal has a $51 million budget hole; the city wants the 49ers to pay rent for the land and the team says it won't; and the leaseholders of the land, Great America amusement park, have been dead set against a stadium landing in their parking lot unless they're reimbursed for lost revenue. And even if all those issues are resolved, there's still the Santa Clara voting populace, who will get to approve or reject whatever plan the council comes up with, likely in November. In other words, to turn to the sort of painful football terminology that newspapers like to employ, this is just the kickoff, not the two-minute warning.
January 12, 2008
Santa Clara to open talks with 49ers?
A report delivered by Santa Clara city manager Jennifer Sparacino to the city council yesterday endorsed pursuing a $914 million stadium for the San Francisco 49ers ... kinda. "We think there could be an opportunity," said assistant city manager Ron Garratt, "but we need to know and learn a lot more. ... We're not saying there is a clear path through to a stadium project."
The report recommends that the city enter into six months of negotiations to craft a stadium deal with the 49ers; the deal would then be subject to a public vote, likely in either June or November. It would also contain what Garratt called an "exit ramp" to allow the city to back out if insurmountable obstacles emerged, and would cap the city's contribution at the $136 million that has already been proposed - meaning the 49ers would presumably need to find a way to fill the $51 million funding gap plus any cost overruns, unless it can find a way for the city to "contribute" under the table via lease breaks or diverting revenue streams to the team or somesuch thing. We should know more on Tuesday, when the city council is likely to vote on a formal proposal to authorize stadium talks.
Nets arena wins again in court
A New York state judge yesterday dismissed a lawsuit charging that the environmental impact statement for a planned Nets arena development in Brooklyn was insufficient. It was the second court loss for community groups opposing the Atlantic Yards project, following the rejection of a suit against the seizure of private buildings by eminent domain last June; the plaintiffs have already appealed in that case, and plan to do so as well in the latest one.
So far, there's been little activity at the site aside from the demolition of a handful of buildings, though construction was initially supposed to begin in late 2006. Whether the latest court ruling will change that isn't entirely clear; Nets owner Bruce Ratner issued a statement that the ruling "further clears the way for Atlantic Yards" and that "we are continuing to move full speed ahead on the project" - which raises the question of whether if they were moving at half speed, they'd be going backwards.
As for local opponents, with legal options dwindling, they may be left to hope for a last-ditch reprieve from someone in state government. Develop Don't Destroy attorney Candace Carponter told the New York Times yesterday, "Our elected leaders, who understand those concerns, must gird themselves to bring more pressure to bear on Gov. Eliot Spitzer, now that we’ve had this legal decision." Last week, in the wake of the Madison Square Garden tax break kerfuffle, Brooklyn city councilmembers David Yassky and Letitia James said they'd introduce a resolution to reexamine city subsidies for the Nets as well. All-powerful council chair Christine Quinn replied through a spokesperson: "Once the councilmembers introduce a resolution, it will be referred to committee, where it will receive thorough and proper review." If that sounds like an endorsement to you, you have better rose-colored headphones than I do.
January 09, 2008
MSG owners: Our tax break is no worse than the next guy's
It doesn't get a whole lot weirder than this: At a New York city council hearing on Monday on their accidental perpetual property tax exemption, representatives of Cablevision (the owners of Madison Square Garden, the Knicks, and Rangers) asserted that they deserve the $11-million-a-year-and-counting tax break because, well, all the other kids are getting one:
"The value of Madison Square Garden's property tax exemption is substantially less than the level of government support for the other three recent deals in New York," testified Garden consultant Thomas Hazinski, managing director of HVS Convention, Sports & Entertainment Facilities Consulting.
Hazinski said with their new facilities, the Yankees will receive more than $600 million in public support, including $144 million in foregone property taxes; the Mets will get more than $440 million, including a $72 million tax break; and the Nets will get $340 million in breaks, with $14 million in property tax savings.
For a sports team owner to argue that it deserves a subsidy just because other teams get them isn't exactly unprecedented. But it is pretty ironic (or at least ironic) for a corporation that just spent nearly $40 million on ads and lobbyists to denounce a proposed Jets football stadium as a waste of money is now holding up sports subsidies as standard business practice. And the absurdities just piled up from there:
- According to sources who were at the hearing, council chair Christine Quinn - a former ally of Cablevision's in the Jets fight - responded to Cablevision's charge that other teams don't pay property taxes by saying that the Yankees and Mets will pay PILOTs (payments in lieu of taxes) at their new stadiums. What Quinn either didn't understand or just failed to mention: They won't be paying PILOTs into the city treasury, but rather using them to pay off their own stadium construction costs, racking up a $359 million tax break in the process.
- The Daily News editorial page likewise defended the Yanks and Mets deals, writing yesterday: "Yankee and Shea stadiums are publicly owned and the teams pay modest rent. The public was on the hook for very large repair bills. Instead, the teams are using private money to build new ballparks - a huge plus - and the city is using its bonds' tax-exempt status to make the financing cheaper. The treasury loses little." Actually, it loses about $637 million (download the detailed breakdown here), but maybe that's "little" in Manhattan prices.
- One councilmember told the New York Times that one reason elected officials might be finally taking on the Garden tax break after 26 years - aside from that the mayor hates them for blocking his Jets plan - is because their teams suck: "I'm not going to be so flippant as to say that the fact the Knicks have absolutely stunk up the basketball court is a reason to get rid of their tax exemption," councilmember Lewis Fidler, told the New York Times, and if you think you hear a "but" coming, here it is: "But I think certainly the manner in which they've conducted their business otherwise has certainly left people feeling less than warm and fuzzy for them. It has perhaps created an environment in which people are willing to pile on."
Will Quinn betray her former allies to side with the mayor? Will Isiah Thomas' management skills end up costing the Knicks even more than the $11 million they did last year? The full council still has to vote on the measure, and then it must ask the state legislature to actually repeal the tax break - and as we've seen, anything can happen there.
OKC mayor: Feel the intangibles!
With the Oklahoma City council having voted last week to set a March 4 referendum on spending $122 million to upgrade the five-year-old Ford Center to lure the Seattle Sonics to town, OKC Mayor Mick Cornett started his campaign for yes votes yesterday:
"People don't have much of an image of Oklahoma City in other parts of the country, and that plays into our ability to create jobs and create economic development. An NBA franchise can do wonders for your image nationwide. Now that's hard to put a dollar figure on, and I don't gravitate toward it much because it's just not that tangible. But I believe it's very real."
Actually, numerous studies have shown that when corporations decide on where to locate, the presence of a pro sports team is way, way at the bottom of the list. (Good schools and infrastructure are usually at the top.) And studies by Robert Baade, among others, of cities with and without pro sports teams have found no evidence of any measurable economic boost from a team's presence. But if the mayor believes there's an effect, I guess that's half the battle.
Marlins stadium vote delayed again
The Miami-Dade County commission again delayed a vote on a proposed Florida Marlins stadium deal, putting it off from this Thursday until possibly January 2 - guess those funding holes haven't magically closed yet. County manager George Burgess promised to give commissioners an update on negotiations at tomorrow's meeting; if anything interesting is revealed, I'll report back then.
January 08, 2008
Rays say they won't ask for state tax rebate
Tampa Rays execs, noting that Florida is facing a $2 billion budget deficit and being able to read the handwriting on the wall better than certain other Florida sports franchises, have said they won't be looking for $30 million in state sales-tax rebates to help fund their proposed $450 million stadium. That leaves the team with a likely $100 million funding gap, though that figure could go down (or up) depending on what private developers are willing to pay for the team's current stadium site, and whether the city needs any of it to pay off its existing stadium debt.
Rays VP Michael Kalt told the Tampa Trib: "Obviously it's another $30 million we'll have to find somewhere or reduce in the program, but we're not going to change what we're looking at. We're not going to start making radical changes in our program based on a funding source that was never projected to be more than 5-7 percent of the funding." Or to put it another way: If they don't come up with another big pot of money they're hosed anyway, so it's easy to wave off a mere $30 million as a drop in the bucket.
January 07, 2008
Yanks community fund still MIA
The New York Times chimes in today with an update on that New York Yankees-funded "community benefits fund" that was more than a year overdue: It's now a year and a half overdue, a non-profit corporation to administer the fund still hasn't been set up, and the fund's oversight panel has yet to even meet. A spokesperson for Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion told the Times that his boss has been "too busy" for the last three weeks to answer questions about the fund. Maybe he's not ready to take on more responsibility after all.
January 04, 2008
Wrigley sale would involve fake "PILOT" subsidies
Remember way back last month when Chicago Mayor Richard Daley decried a proposed state purchase of Wrigley Field as a "bailout" of the Cubs? This week, Mayor Daley the Younger did an about face, saying of the deal, "I have an open mind. . . . I always have an open mind on an issue. And why not? You should have it."
Whatever the reason for Daley's flip-flop (flying monkeys?), more details are starting to emerge about the finances of a proposed Wrigley sale - and, surprise, surprise, they involve pushing off costs onto taxpayers. The Chicago Reader reports:
The old Tribune Company planned an ambitious expansion including a parking garage and a mall. Under the new proposal the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority - a state agency formed to subsidize the replacement for Comiskey Park, U.S. Cellular Field - would pick up the tab for those renovations. The Cubs would sell the park to the agency for the nominal sum of $1, and the new owners would sign on to rent the park from the state for at least 30 years. In exchange the Sports Facilities Authority would issue bonds to cover reconstruction costs.
Another source indicates that those bonds would be tax-exempt, making them far cheaper than private bonds. (Tax-exempt bonds can shave as much as 20% off the cost of a project.) But the federal government prohibits using private rent money to pay off public tax-exempt bonds. So how could the Cubs pull this off?
The answer: Use the same "payments in lieu of taxes" dodge that the New York Yankees and Mets are using the finance their new stadiums. Since a state-owned Wrigley Field would be exempt from property tax, the new Cubs owners (whoever they may be - the team is currently up for sale by Tribune Corp.) can claim that their bond payments are really "in lieu of" property taxes that they don't owe - and as far as the IRS is concerned, that's officially just peachy.
So who gets hurt? As the Reader notes, the city of Chicago would lose out on property-tax money it currently gets:
In 2007 the Tribune Company paid $1,151,487 in property taxes on Wrigley. This year the bill will go up to around $1.43 million. At the rate property taxes are soaring, the new owners are looking to save more than $50 million in property taxes over the course of the 30-year lease.
Even if the Cubs agree to pay enough rent to cover both bond payments and lost property taxes, though - a big if - that 20% discount still has to be covered by somebody. And that somebody is U.S. taxpayers: Tax-exempt bonds are subsidized by the federal government, which forgoes collecting tax on bondholders' income. In effect, then, a public takeover of Wrigley would be a complicated tax dodge to funnel money from the federal treasury into the Cubs' bank account.
There are plenty of remaining questions about the proposed Wrigley deal - who would cover operations and maintenance work on the stadium once it's in state hands, for one thing. But even without seeing the lease, it's looking increasingly like Daley was right the first time: The Wrigley sale is first and foremost a way for the Cubs' owners to find a way to get their hand in the public till.
January 02, 2008
Yanks garages hit $340 million, include 600 free spots for team
New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez has a long piece today detailing new revelations about the three new parking garages taxpayers are helping build for the Yankees, focusing primarily on how team players and officials will get an estimated $2 million a year worth of free valet parking at the team-only garage attached to their new stadium.
Possibly even bigger news, though, is that the price tag on the project is now at an estimated $340 million, up from $288 million at last report. The extra cost is supposed to be picked up by the private non-profit shell corporation that's financing the bulk of the deal (the state is kicking in $70 million). However, since the city only gets its $3.2 million in annual rent payments on the new garages if there's "excess cash flow" from garage revenues after the construction bonds are paid off, higher bond payments mean an increased likelihood that the garage builders won't have anything left to pay rent with - effectively leaving the city holding the bag. (The city told Gonzalez that unpaid rent "will accrue interest at a compound annual rate ... until paid in full," but if the garages never turn a profit, interest will just accrue forever.)
So far, most other news outlets have focused solely on how the documents Gonzalez uncovered show that fan parking could cost double at the new stadium what it did at the old, though that cat's been out of the bag for two years now. WNYC-FM did ask Mayor Mike Bloomberg what he thought of the Yankees getting 600 free parking spaces as part of their stadium deal, to which the mayor replied helpfully, "I suppose some argument for handful of free parking spaces. That does sound like a large number, but I'm not familiar with actual details."
In related news, the Yankees fan site River Avenue Blues, meanwhile, includes a slideshow of photos of the stadium construction site, including one of the former ballfields and basketball courts immediately adjacent to Yankee Stadium, currently a muddy pit in preparation for becoming ... you guessed it, a parking garage.
January 01, 2008
Marlins funding hole: It's back!
So remember that new funding plan for a Florida Marlins stadium that wouldn't require state money (though plenty of city and county money), eliminating the $30 million funding hole that had kept the project on the drawing boards for half a decade? Turns out that wasn't exactly true:
[Miami-Dade County] Commission Chairman Bruno A. Barreiro is asking the state for "a sales tax rebate or similar benefit related to the construction of a publicly-owned stadium for a Major League Baseball franchise in Miami-Dade County," the agenda memo says.
That's the same sales tax rebate that the state of Florida has refused to give a Marlins project in the past - in part because it already gave one to a previous Marlins owner, who absconded with it. The budget hole remains, in other words, and the state legislature would still be needed to fill it - meaning the only real difference in the new plan is that the city and county would be putting in $87 million more than in the old deal, and the Marlins owners $55 million less.
Miami Today editor Michael Lewis (no, not that one) provides some additional detail on why the county commission put off a stadium vote last month: Apparently the deal with the Marlins includes a $10 million penalty for the county if it votes for a stadium and then can't work out a lease deal with the team. Writes Lewis:
Never put yourself in a $10 million hole before you nail down an entire deal, because that gives the other side leverage to back you into corner after corner, step after step of the way. ... Commissioners must not be hurried because the Marlins say they're running out of time before their lease at Dolphin Stadium runs out in 2011. That's a great negotiating ploy for them - sign now and decide details later. It can, however, also be a great negotiating tool for the county if it doesn't vote now, encouraging the Marlins to take what we offer. The county loses all leverage the minute it votes to proceed.
Lewis also identifies other potential pitfalls for taxpayers in the deal, including that the initial public subsidy estimates didn't include the $28 million in free land the city would be kicking in, and that the Marlins' commitment to pay cost overruns would be capped at a laughably low $20 million. "After the first $20 million, dear reader, it's on your back," writes Lewis. With details like this, no wonder Marlins execs wanted to push it through in a week, before anyone read the fine print.
