May 11, 2008
Weekend update: Spurs win more arena cash, OKC threatens Sonics suit
A few items of note from the last couple of days:
- Voters in San Antonio approved by a 57%-43% margin Saturday an extension of hotel and car-rental taxes that will provide the Spurs with an estimated $75 million for upgrades to their six-year-old, publicly built arena. Guess that half a million bucks in campaign spending was worth it.
- So former Seattle Sonics owner (and Starbucks baron) Howard Schultz is suing to get the team back, eh? Well, now Oklahoma City officials say they'll sue him right back if he buys the team and doesn't move it to their city. In a letter to Schultz's attorney on Thursday, the city's attorney wrote that he expects any owner of the Sonics to honor the "contractual obligation to relocate to Oklahoma City and to play home games at the Ford Center for the duration of the term of the lease." Or maybe they could just have the lawyers meet at midcourt and make closing arguments - it'd be more entertaining than watching the Sonics.
- The NBA and Sacramento's Cal Expo announced Friday that they're officially reopening negotiations for a Kings basketball arena to be built on the state fairgrounds as part of a $650 million development. Writes Sacramento Bee columnist Marcos Breton in an otherwise upbeat article: :Even if passed, the document will not be legally binding. And it does not address the biggest obstacle: How do you pay for an arena without a new tax?" Excellent question.
- The city of Santa Clara now says it doesn't need Great America's approval to build a 49ers football stadium on the amusement park's parking lot, so long as it replaces the parking elsewhere, according to the terms of the lease for the city-owned land. (Great America's owners didn't immediately challenge this interpretation; read into that what you may.) That would require a new parking garage, though, adding to the project's existing $51 million budget hole.
- Buried in a long New York Times article on the coming demolition of Tiger Stadium (which, incidentally, misrepresents the Tiger Stadium Fan Club's 1990s "hugs" of the structure to protest plans for a new park as being by "a booster club") is news that U.S. Senator Carl Levin says he'll seek federal funding to help preserve a section of the 96-year-old ballpark if the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy is able to raise $369,000 toward that goal by its June 1 deadline. I'd direct you where to send donations if you have $369,000 under your sofa cushions, but the Conservancy still hasn't managed to get its website up and running. (Hint: You can get them for free these days.)
May 05, 2008
Brooklyn arena fate still up in air
In the wake of last week's rumor that the New Jersey Nets could be headed to Newark instead of Brooklyn, plus Saturday's neighborhood rally to demand that the state call a halt to the faltering Brooklyn project, Nets owner Bruce Ratner fired back with an op-ed in the Daily News insisting that he's moving ahead with construction. Headlined "Atlantic Yards dead? Dream on," Ratner's essay insisted:
We're still building all 6,400 units of housing - including 2,250 affordable units. We're still building the iconic Miss Brooklyn tower and the state-of-the-art Barclays Center, the future home of the Nets.
Twenty-four hour later, though, Ratner revealed that the Miss Brooklyn tower had been dumped, in exchange for a smaller office-only building creatively titled "B1." (The Brownstoner blog notes that the size reduction has actually been in the works for over a year, but this still represents a significantly new design, which the Gothamist blog dubs "Miss Jenga.")
The real question remains whether to believe Ratner's assurances that the $950 million arena will break ground later this year, or whether this is just a last-ditch effort to attract investors to a project that was designed for better economic times. If the latter, and Ratner falls short and the arena never gets built, I argue iin an op-ed in today's Metro New York, that might end up being the best thing for Brooklyn.
Spurs seek another $75M in tax money
The owners of the San Antonio Spurs have spent $500,000 on the campaign for a May 10 referendum that would extend the Bexar County venue tax on hotels and car rentals. That may sound like a lot of money, but the potential payoff is far greater: The San Antonio Express-News reports that the Spurs' AT&T Center - built in 2002 with $175 million in venue tax money - could rake in an additional $75 million from an extended tax.
Continues the Express-News:
Spurs management and county officials have said upgrades to the arena will be necessary to increase revenue streams to pay for the player salaries that have brought the team four championships.
According to Forbes, the Spurs are currently the NBA's 10th most valuable franchise out of 30, and 11th in annual profits, thanks in large part to those four championships, not to mention the last infusion of venue tax money. A more honest accounting, then, would be that the upgrades are "necessary to increase revenue streams so that player salaries are paid by public taxes, not out of our profits" - but that doesn't sound as good in a referendum campaign.
May 01, 2008
Nets-to-Newark move in the works?
It's been rumored before, but today's Newark Star-Ledger has the first published reports of talks to move to New Jersey Nets to Newark's Prudential Arena instead of to Brooklyn's troubled Atlantic Yards project. The Star-Ledger reports that New Jersey Devils owner Jeffrey Vanderbeek and Newark mayor Cory Booker are working on putting together an investment group to buy the Nets, and have held preliminary meetings with Nets owner Bruce Ratner and his development company about such a plan.
Being second fiddle to an NHL team usually isn't as enticing a prospect as having your own arena, but there are some special circumstances here: The Nets are currently losing an estimated $40 million a year playing in the Meadowlands, and are stuck there at least another two seasons before a Brooklyn arena could be ready. And they're facing an increasingly tougher financial road there as well, despite heavy public subsidies. As George Zoffinger, former head of Jersey's sports authority, told the Star-Ledger: "When you start to spend north of $500 million for an arena, you can't generate the cash flow necessary to generate a decent return on the investment. If the number is $900 million, it's absolutely, positively not viable from an economic standpoint."
Ratner, meanwhile, insists the team isn't for sale, which could be read either way: It could be meant as a sign of reassurance to Brooklyn legislators who might be wondering if they should pull the plug on Atlantic Yards; or, you might wonder whether, if Ratner's really serious about getting more money out of Brooklyn, he wouldn't want to raise the specter of a Newark move to up the ante. I wouldn't hazard a guess, but it's worth noting the Nets wouldn't be the first team to stay in New Jersey after initially insisting it was not an option.
Bills to rake in loonies in TO
So much for jokes about Canadians using Monopoly money: The Buffalo Bills estimate they're going to earn almost $10 million in revenues for each of eight games they'll play in Toronto over the next five years, about double what they bring in from games in Buffalo. Given this, suggests Globe and Mail columnist Stephen Brunt, it's extremely likely that even the Bills will be playing at least some games in Toronto for the foreseeable future, if they don't move there entirely:
Permanent franchise relocation is a whole other issue, which has already been much discussed. (Wilson, who is 89, has said he won't sell the club before his death, and his estate would be bound to sell it to the highest bidder, which, given the economics, is less likely to be someone committed to keeping the Bills in Buffalo than someone intent on moving them to wealthier climes.) ...
Since the Bills will already be here, in part, and since the Toronto money would be helping them stay alive, no one is going to force them to end their Canadian enterprise. When the time comes not too far down the road for a new stadium to be built, U.S. politicians would be forced into a very expensive game of put up or shut up.
B.C. Place to get new roof?
The province of British Columbia is reportedly considering building a retractable roof for the B.C. Place stadium, to replace the inflatable roof that collapsed in a storm early last year. (It's since been patched.) A new roof is estimated to cost as much as $250 million, and would risk rush charges as it would need to be completed for the 2010 Winter Olympics, but never worry - as CTV reports:
PavCo chairman David Podmore has said any costs linked to the upgrades will be recovered through the sale of property around the facility to condominium developers.
And if they didn't build the roof, you couldn't develop that land and using the condo money for other purposes, because ... um, that part must have been left out of the web version of the story. An inadvertant omission, I'm sure.
