July 30, 2009
Great America getting uppity with Niners again
Cedar Fair, owners of the Great America amusement park in Santa Clara, yesterday renewed their on-again, off-again protests against the planned San Francisco 49ers stadium that would sit in one of their parking lots, sending a letter to the city manager stating that it hopes to "resolve the difficulties presented by the stadium proposal in an attempt to avoid the need for a more formal defense of our legal rights." Their main concern, as always, is traffic on game days: Cedar Fair claims that they're not even mentioned in the traffic study portion of the stadium's environmental impact report; the city says they are too. We should know more today, when the draft EIR is scheduled to be released.
UPDATE: The EIR is now out, with the San Jose Mercury News summing it up: "Environmental report: Santa Clara 49er stadium would increase air pollution, traffic. But on the bright side: "The effect on the burrowing owl? None is expected."
Beaverton mayor: We're gonna build us a stadium somehow!
Minor-league baseball is normally outside the scope of this site, but I just can't pass up a Beaverton Beavers story. Especially since it's really part of the Portland Timbers story. And the mayor of Beaverton is named Denny Doyle — though sadly, not that one.
So anyway: Mayor Doyle now says he hopes to have an MOU for a new Triple-A stadium by the end of August, and a financing plan in September. He doesn't know how much it would cost or who would pay for it, though he does helpfully note, "We would go out and put together a package that both sides would contribute."
Doyle also ruled out using property taxes or urban renewal money to pay for a stadium, which, in the words of Oregonian reporter Brad Schmidt, "would leave city-issued bonds." Of course, bonds don't actually pay for anything — they're just a means of financing, meaning this makes as much sense as saying Beaverton plans to pay for a stadium "by putting it on its credit card." But presumably Schmidt was just repeating what Doyle told him, and that's journalism, right?
July 28, 2009
When budget crisis hits, cut supermarkets, not stadiums
With the Pennsylvania state budget headed into the crapper, the impoverished Philadelphia suburb of Chester is still getting its $115 million soccer stadium, it looks like &mdash just not the supermarket that was supposed to come with it:
Up to $4 million was earmarked for the store last year, at the insistence of state Rep. Thaddeus Kirkland.
"That was part of the deal," said Johnna Pro, spokeswoman for state House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dwight Evans. "The supermarket [funding] was part of the whole soccer-stadium deal."
But Gov. Rendell decides what money is dispersed from the capital budget, and his office has been noncommittal.
"There are more projects listed in the capital budget than can possibly be funded," Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo said yesterday, as legislators remained locked in a budget stalemate.
Not that giving public money to retail outlets is usually that good an idea, either — it typically just shuffles spending around from one store to another — but you could make a case that Delaware County could really use some better ones than they have currently.
California tax-kickback bill gets disappeared
Looks like that stadium-friendly TIF bill in California may not be happening after all:
The governor and legislative leaders originally included it in their compromise budget plan. But the Assembly killed it Friday during the Legislature's marathon session to close California's $26.3 billion deficit.
Some lawmakers who supported the bill weren't sure why it was pulled off the table at the last minute. Some local officials cited billionaire Ed Roski Jr.'s proposed National Football League stadium in Industry as a sticking point for legislators in the eleventh hour.
Critics, including Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, had argued the redevelopment extensions would keep millions from counties and could benefit private interests, such as Roski, owner of Majestic Realty.
"To be honest, we're trying to figure out what happened," said Industry Mayor Dave Perez.
You just can't buy good legislators these days.
Stadium tax breaks cost Cleveland $18.6m a year
Judith Grant Long has long pointed out that property tax exemptions represent a hidden public cost of sports stadium construction, and now indefatigable Cleveland journalist Roldo Bartimole has estimated the exact costs in his hometown: About $8 million a year for the Browns, $3.8 million a year for the Cavs, and $4.8 million a year for the Indians. All three teams received new homes mostly built with public funds — and made sure that the public would own the buildings as well (though not the profit-making revenue streams they generate), since that absolves them of owing property tax.
Bartimole notes that 55% of property taxes in Cleveland go to the local school district, so that's roughly $9 million a year in education money that isn't flowing in because of the tax abatement. Let's see how the Cleveland schools are doing in the absence of those funds ... oh, dear.
July 27, 2009
Portland soccer deal: Team gets profits, public gets the risk
The Portland Timbers stadium plan took another step forward last week, as the Portland city council voted 4-1 to approve the preliminary finance plan for a $31 million rebuild of PGE Park as a soccer-only facility. (This would force the minor-league Portland Beavers baseball team — also owned by Timbers owner Merritt Paulson, son of Henry — to relocate elsewhere.)
The Oregonian notes, as I alluded to earlier, that much of the $31 million consists of hidden subsidies that could come back to bite Portland in the general fund. For example, the $11.1 million in "prepaid rent," notes the paper, is actually public money, and expensive money at that:
The prepaid rent, which the city refers to as capitalized rent, is akin to Paulson providing the city with a construction loan.
In exchange for $11.1 million today, Paulson will avoid rent and ticket tax payments totaling at least $38.4 million over 18 years. That translates to some $27 million in interest payments by the city over the life of the loan -- the equivalent of paying an interest rate of 8 percent.
And while another $11.2 million would come from future ticket taxes, it's actually mostly taxes on basketball, not soccer: "The Blazers are effectively locked into their Rose Garden lease until 2025. If they left at that point, the Spectator Fund would become insolvent, unable to repay the final 10 years of soccer debt." And, of course, even without that dire scenario, it would be $11.2 million that the Spectator Fund wouldn't be able to use for other public projects.
For further analysis of the Timbers plan, see Bojack's report, which calls it "the most preposterous deal you've ever seen" and concludes: "Bottom line on the remodel: The Paulsons and their friends get all the upside, and Blazer fans and the taxpayers take a major share of the downside risk, which is substantial."
Latest Nets arena forum: The recaps
Playing catchup a bit here, but if you're interested in how last Wednesday night's public meeting on the New Jersey Nets' proposed Brooklyn Atlantic Yards project went, there's a long recap on the New York Times' Fort Greene blog, and an even longer recap at Atlantic Yards report (includes verbatim heckling transcripts!). Among the highlights, from the Times:
Many audience members wanted to know: Could this mean Atlantic Yards might join the ghostly construction graveyard in Brooklyn of partly completed residential buildings that lost financing when the market's bottom dropped out?
"What guarantees Phase II will be built at all?" read Mr. Hammerman on behalf of a questioner.
"There's one plan," said Mr. Matlin, the development corporation's senior counsel. "For Forest City to receive a return on its investment, the only way they can do that is to build out the project plan. They've made a huge investment on this project and the only way they can get a return on that investment is to build."
It was the start of the firestorm. "So profit is the only guarantee?" shouted an audience member. A yelling match erupted in the seats.
And from AYR:
Representatives of Forest City Ratner (FCR) and the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) got thrown some hard questions—about the total amount of subsidies, the details of a cost-benefit analysis, and the absence of any site plan or arena renderings--and managed to evade or deflect many of them. In essence, they said the project--now $4.9 billion, previously $4 billion--could be approved by the ESDC board in September without such information being made subject to public scrutiny or comment.
There are more public hearings set for this Wednesday and Thursday, so expect lots more heckling.
Yankee Stadium slam book, mid-season edition
Just in time for the pennant race, we have yet another review of the new New York Yankees and Mets stadiums, courtesy of Metropolis magazine's Mark Lamster, who'd previously critiqued New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ourossouff's review of the new places as being too focused on abstract aesthetics and not enough on actual ballpark experience. Lamster's principal conclusion this time around: New Yankee Stadium and Citi Field are mostly about making money, and aren't shy about it.
When I first started attending games on my own, some 20 years ago, a ticket to the Yankee bleachers cost $1.50, pocket change even for a kid on a tight allowance. That same ticket now costs $14: not an unreasonable sum, but more than a movie and enough to keep a student on a limited budget from making it too much of a habit. The new stadium, for that matter, doesn't beg that kind of relationship. It's a special-occasion place, somewhere to visit a couple of times a season. Why empty your wallet for an entertainment event that might not be entertaining? (Even the best teams lose roughly 40 percent of their games.) When you're stuck in the nosebleed seats, and a beer, a dog, and a bag of peanuts cost upward of 20 bucks, thoughts of exploitation inevitably percolate through the mind. It is in those moments that the fan-team compact seems hopelessly broken, and one begins to wonder about the difference between being a fan and being a chump. Sometimes it seems like there's no difference at all.
I'm pretty sure Yankees bleachers prices went up to $3 in 1986, but otherwise, hard to argue with that — and yes, I'd be saying that even if Lamster didn't quote me in his piece.
July 24, 2009
Tampa paper speculates on Rays move to Tampa
The Tampa Bay Rays owners haven't breathed a word about moving out of St. Petersburg, but that hasn't stopped the Tampa Tribune from speculating on whether they could break their lease and hightail it out of town, or at least across the bay to Tampa. Reports the Tribune:
Experts the Tribune interviewed hadn't studied the Rays' agreement and wouldn't give an opinion about whether a court would let the team out of it.
Okay, so that wasn't actually so dramatic. But, notes Trib reporter Michael Sasso, other teams have broken leases before, so it's at least conceivable, right?
Well, that depends on what's in the lease: With 18 years to go, if it has a strict penalty clause for what the Rays must pay if they skip town, then it would be prohibitively difficult to get out of it without St. Pete's permission. Though at least a move to Tampa would presumably forestall the threat of an antitrust lawsuit by the state of Florida, which is what kept the Rays off MLB's contraction list when contraction was being considered.
In any case, St. Pete officials promised to keep the team in town at all costs, with St. Petersburg City Attorney John Wolfe asserting, "We expect the Rays will honor their contract," and adding, "We expect that if the city and the Rays agree to a new stadium, it would be in St. Petersburg." Though he might actually want to reconsider: Having to drive across a bridge to see Evan Longoria could be a reasonable tradeoff for not having to help pay for the new place. Not to mention the city would get the benefits of reclaiming the Tropicana Field site, which was the whole point of the last Rays stadium plan — though perhaps it's too much to expect city officials to remember all the way back to 2007...
July 23, 2009
California budget to boost stadium TIFs?
The California budget deal — otherwise known as the great experiment in whether conservatives are right that we don't really need Medicare or public schools — could have an unexpected effect on stadium deals, with a provision being voted on as soon as today that would extend the life of redevelopment areas for up to 40 years. "It prevents the cuts to local government from occurring," Senate Republican leader Dennis Hollingsworth boasted of his measure.
Um, no. Redevelopment areas use tax-increment financing, or TIFs: They don't actually generate new revenue, but rather redirect new property taxes to local governments (or, more commonly, to developers promising to build projects that will hike local property tax receipts). Needless to say, this revenue shuffle has proven popular with stadium boosters, despite a compelling pile of evidence that TIFs only end up making Swiss cheese of your local tax base.
The reason the state is pushing this plan, in any case, is because as part of the deal, the state would get to siphon off 10% of future TIF revenues, and borrow against that revenue now, helping close the state's current budget hole at the expense of future state budgets. It's a common theme to the budget deal: As our old friend Stanford economist Roger Noll told U.S. News and World Report: "In the short run it gets us through this year, and in the long run the same problem comes back even worse next year because $10 billion worth of gimmicks has been used that cannot be replicated."
But enough about budgets; what does this mean for stadiums? According to the L.A. Times, it would allow the City of Industry to siphon off "hundreds of millions" of dollars in coming years for infrastructure to support Ed Roski's planned NFL stadium; it would also presumably aid teams like the San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Athletics in their stadium plans, as both teams have previously mulled TIF funding as a revenue source. Roski and his company, notes the Times, have contributed more than $1.2 million in the last six years to state politicians; when the vote comes up, we'll see if his money was well spent.
The Portland Beavers are considering moving to Beaverton.
Do you really need to know more than that? If so, you'll have to wait a bit in any case: The Oregonian notes that the suburban city has "no list of locations, no project team, no financing plan — or even the discussion about whether to invest public money." Just the potential of an awesome name.
The province of Saskatchewan has launched a $1 million study to consider whether to build a $350 million domed stadium (all figures Canadian) in Regina for the Roughriders CFL team (not to confused with the Rough Riders CFL team). And as they say in Canada, "sceptics" are critiquing the plan just because it will be conducted by Global Spectrum International, a stadium management company.
Lee Harding, Saskatchewan director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, told the CBC: "We have people writing a report who would have a financial incentive to go back to the people who commissioned it and say: 'Yes, a dome is a great idea.' And after you build it could you let us run it? So really it's a foregone conclusion that this thing is going to recommend a new domed stadium."
Meanwhile, Regina Leader Post columnist Will Chabun points out some other pitfalls of a stadium plan, including land costs, overruns, and whether it would draw off events from the Brandt Centre, the city's hockey arena: "Will we end up having two half-empty barns?"
Also an unknown: Would a new stadium still honor "Piffles" Taylor?
July 20, 2009
Marlins stadium construction clock begins ticking
And they're off! The Florida Marlins broke ground on their $634 million stadium this weekend, with a projected completion date of March 31, 2012 — which the Miami Herald notes doesn't leave much wiggle room before that season's opening day. Most experts the Herald contacted, though, were of the opinion that that left plenty of time for completion of construction, especially in a good-weather climate like Florida where construction can continue year-round: "It sounds like 33 months is doable, unless they run into some bizarre technical difficulty," said some guy named Bob Trumpbour.
The bigger question isn't whether the Marlins will have to open the 2012 season in the Everglades, but rather whether the tight timetable could lead to rush charges and cost overruns. Team president David Samson promised that the Fish would pick up any emergency costs, or take out an insurance policy that would cover overruns caused by, say, a hurricane: "It would be exactly what people do when they get into a car accident. Whether you go through insurance or not, it depends if the car gets totaled or it's a scratch." Of course, we don't know what would be the case if a hurricane caused unanticipated capital costs instead.
L.A. developer unveils NFL team hit list
Southern California developer John Semcken told Fanhouse.com last week which NFL teams the company is considering for its planned football stadium in Industry, California:
"Jacksonville, Buffalo, Minnesota, New Orleans, St. Louis and the three California teams. Now New Orleans just signed a lease for 25 more years, so they're out. But the other seven are still in," says John Semcken, Roski's vice president at Majestic Reality....
"You know what I think? I think the Raiders and the 49ers are eventually going to share a building in Northern California,'' Semcken says, "and two other teams are going to share a building in Southern California.
"Two teams. Then we'll have 25 weeks of NFL here. Ten preseason and regular season per team -- that's 20. Both teams will be so rich that they'll make the playoffs, that's 22. Then they'll win the second round, that's 24. Then we'll have the Super Bowl, that's 25!"
Uh, okay. You certainly can't say that Semcken isn't ambitious (Roski retained plausible deniability by declining to say which teams he'd target), but projecting two teams doesn't help his leverage any — his best shot at getting an NFL owner to cough up the rent money Majestic would need to build its stadium seems to be to get a land rush going, with the first team inking a deal getting dibs on the L.A. market. (Not that market size matters that much in the NFL, where national TV revenue is the name of the game.)
If nothing else, though, Semcken's public statement has to be stirring up headlines in the cities of teams he mentioned ... come on, anyone? Nobody?
July 16, 2009
NBA Commissioner David Stern on saving the Seattle Sonics, November 8, 2007:
"I'd love to find a way to keep the team there. Because if the team moves, there's not going to be another team there, not in any conceivable future plan that I could envision, and that would be too bad."
NBA Commissioner David Stern on replacing the Seattle Sonics, July 13, 2009:
"I hope someday, whether on my watch or a successor's watch, that we again have a team in Seattle. ... I think ultimately there will be. I really do."
The lesson here: Don't take threats by sports league commissioners seriously. If you really needed any more reminding.
Can't tell the Rays stadium studies without a scorecard
Tampa Bay's A Baseball Committee — I swear, there is just no way to write that name without it looking doofy — is apparently set on making as many headlines as possible by releasing its Rays stadium proposals in dribs and drabs. And so far, it's working. Today the ABC Data Research and Realities subcommittee issued a study saying that a new stadium should be built with the largest population within a 30-minute drive, with the top-ranked site being near the Buccaneers' Raymond James Stadium in Tampa.
Meanwhile, the ABC Design and Development subcommittee issued its own report, saying that any new stadium should have a retractable roof — "we need to have a fully air-conditioned interior," said subcommittee chair Alan Bomstein, who as head of a construction firm certainly has no personal incentive to see a new stadium built — and seat 37,000 people. Unlike their current stadium, which is air conditioned and holds 36,973 people. Um, okay, but a new stadium would probably have a cool modern design by some hot firm like HOK/Populous, not like — eeeagh!
49ers stadium plan: Soldier Field with plants on top?
The San Francisco 49ers have released some design details of their proposed $937 million Santa Clara stadium, and the news they want everyone to focus on is that it will sport solar panels and plants on the roof, making it the "greenest" NFL stadium ever, according to architects HNTB. Of course, we'll see if those plans survive the inevitable budget pressures: Recall that the New York Jets once planned to put wind turbines atop their planned Manhattan stadium, before ditching them for cost reasons (and ultimately having that stadium plan collapse altogether).
When I see the renderings, meanwhile, my eye goes to the wall of luxury suites that would make up one side of the stadium — they'd be the ones with the roof garden, in fact. I thought that this had gone out of fashion with the nightmare that is the new Soldier Field — and before that, the bad dream that is Philips Arena in Atlanta — both of which showed that people don't really like to watch a sporting event while staring at a giant glassed-in wall. Presumably the lure of jamming in lots of suites while still allowing for lots of high-priced field-level club seats trumped aesthetic concerns — there's a more traditional "green" that stadium designers are concerned about, after all.
Running down your own stadium in the cause of getting a new one has a long, inglorious history, but Portland Beavers and Timbers owner Merritt Paulson still deserves some sort of award for telling Willamette Week that PGE Park is a "crap stadium," just in time for his team to host the AAA All-Star Game there last night. That's the All-Star Game, WWeek notes, that Paulson announced he'd landed two years ago with the statement that "we are thrilled at the opportunity to showcase Portland and our wonderful ballpark." But that's when he was more interested in selling tickets than stadium financing packages.
July 15, 2009
Rays study: Stadiums are expensive, let's build one!
The coalition of business and political leaders put together to explore options for a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium has issued its preliminary report, and concluded that... the Tampa Bay Rays need a new stadium! The report by the Tropicana Options Committee of A Baseball Committee — available here and here, though they apparently put the same attention to detail into orienting the PDFs as they did to naming their committee — compares Tropicana Field to newer baseball stadiums and determines that it would cost too much to make it look like a new one, almost as much as building a new building entirely.
What the study doesn't examine, of course, is whether either renovation or a new stadium makes sense at this price: The committee says that "Tropicana Field will require renovations if it is to continue to serve as a viable and marketable baseball facility," but is it really worth half a billion dollars just to have more legroom and allow fans to watch the game while on line for hot dogs? (At least one other team has decided not so much.) Bud Selig thinks so, but presumably he doesn't expect to be (or have the Rays be) the one paying for it.
The St. Petersburg Times' Aaron Sharockman, meanwhile, sums up the committee's findings as: "Renovating Tropicana Field is impractical, selling it now doesn't make financial sense and paying for a new stadium will be difficult when there's millions of dollars in debt on the old one." Though RaysIndex.com has the pithier headline.
July 14, 2009
While the new [49ers] field [in Santa Clara] promises intangibles such as a national profile and civic pride, observers say it includes hidden costs, lost opportunities and unanswered questions, making it unclear how good a bargain it truly is.
"This is a very low price tag for the city, but it is not a good deal because they are passing up other things they could do there and vastly overplaying the value of non-football events [at the stadium], most of which are highly speculative," said Roger Noll, a Stanford economist who has conducted exhaustive research on professional sports stadiums.
And from the Indianapolis Star:
"In this economy, to be honest, I think [the Indianapolis Colts'] Lucas [Oil Stadium] is doing an amazing job," said the University of Michigan's Mark Rosentraub, an expert in the economics of sports. He recently wrote a book on how cities have used sports facilities as economic tools. "But that does not mean it's not going to lose money."...
Rosentraub said people need to keep in mind the big-picture reason behind the stadium and the deal to keep the Colts in Indianapolis.
"This was an investment in human capital," he said, "to use the downtown as a linchpin to attract highly skilled workers for Eli Lilly, banks, insurance companies, the kinds of workers we will need in the 21st century."
Guess which one has worked as a paid consultant to sports leagues, and is touting a new book repenting his stadium critic past?
July 13, 2009
SF Chron: 49ers are leaving! We're doomed, dooooomed!
Either it was a really slow news weekend or somebody at Mayor Gavin Newsom's office has been lobbying the San Francisco Chronicle hard, because the paper has been packed the last 24 hours with stories bemoaning the possibility that the San Francisco 49ers will relocate to a new stadium 40 miles south in Santa Clara. This would be, according to the Chron: a shame when Jack Davis is still around to run a stadium campaign, "the end of a 63-year tradition" that helped provide "a rallying point for a city racked by the Jonestown massacre, the assassinations of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone and later the AIDS epidemic" and bad for disabled fans who only watch the games on TV anyway. For good measure, the Chronicle gave space to two elected officials who think football stadiums are just keen, one 49ers exec, and one 49ers exec turned pro-stadium pol.
I'd call this a sad sign of the state of modern journalism, but it's not like it was ever really all that much better.
Minor-league soccer team eyes Queens stadium
New York City can gear itself up for another stadium controversy: Officials for FC New York, an expansion team in the minor-league United Soccer League that's set to begin play in 2010 at Hofstra University on Long Island, say they're looking at several sites in Queens for a proposed 9,000-seat soccer-specific stadium. From the Daily News:
"Our goal is to build a home in Queens," said Doug Petersen, president of FC New York. "We think it can happen relatively soon."
The team has discussed a potential site in Jamaica and is meeting with city Parks Department officials to explore other possibilities, Petersen said, noting he couldn't give more details about the location.
The ideal site would be near several train lines with ample parking, he said.
If Petersen can't give details, that doesn't mean we can't play guess-the-stadium-site. Looking near the Jamaica commuter rail station and subway stops, no large parcels immediately leap to mind — there's Rufus King Park, but it's a landmark, so couldn't get the Macombs treatment. They could try to squeeze something in on the York College campus, maybe, but space looks pretty tight there as well.
Of course, "has discussed a potential site in Jamaica" could just mean they said, "Hey, Jamaica's near trains and is relatively cheap — how about around there somewhere?" Or even, "How are we going to get the city newspapers to cover our minor-league soccer team out on Long Island?" "I know! Let's say we want to move to Queens!" That said, stranger things have come true.
July 11, 2009
Paulson, Portland push new Timbers plan
The $15 million hole in Merritt Paulson's $31 million soccer stadium plan has been filled, the Portland Timbers owner and city officials announced yesterday. Under the new plan, Paulson would pay $8 million in cash, and prepay $11.1 million in rent and ticket taxes; the city, meanwhile, would kick in $11.2 million in future tax revenue, plus a $700,000 development tax break.
So who would actually end up paying the $31 mil to convert PGE Park to soccer-only? It's hard to say — if the previous plan was confusing, the new one is if anything more so: The $11.1 million in prepayments by Paulson, in particular, looks more like a loan than a private expense. The key point here, though, seems to be that this plan avoids using urban renewal money, which was a no-go with some city commissioners; since Paulson has already ditched the more-controversial minor-league baseball stadium plan for the time being, he seems to have given himself a leg up on getting the soccer deal done. We'll know more in two weeks, when the council has to vote on the new financing package.
July 09, 2009
Calculating the true cost of the Marlins stadium
From yesterday's Miami Herald:
As Miami-Dade County commissioners worked late into the night to finalize financing for the Florida Marlins stadium last week, Commissioner Katy Sorenson posed a simple question: What's the total cost of financing going to be?
If you're a regular reader of this site (or the book Field of Schemes), you already know: That is not a simple question. When you're talking about future payments, there are about a million ways to dice the numbers: You can just add them all up (the nominal cost), which is misleading because much of the cost won't be paid for decades — it's like saying you own a $2 million house because that's the total of all your mortgage payments. Or you can discount the future payments by some percentage — but what discount rate to use is more art than science.
The Herald, though, punts all this and goes with the nominal cost:
With bonds issued last week in New York, the total cost is finally in black and white: $2.4 billion, spread over 40 years, to repay $409 million in bonds that will primarily, though not exclusively, cover stadium construction.
Even if the cost isn't really $2.4 billion, though, it's likely a good bit higher than $409 million, because as the Herald reports, the county had to resort to some pretty dubious bond terms to finance a stadium in this economic climate. The bulk of the stadium debt carries a hefty 6.4% interest rate; the remaining $91 million carries an even heftier 8.17% rate, and will be paid off entirely with balloon payments between 2038 and 2046. "This is the sort of financing you do when you cannot afford it," financier Leo Guzman told the Herald. Sounds like somebody should have listened to the stick figures.
July 08, 2009
Oakland taxes county, A's tax fans
The new budget passed by the city of Oakland includes an 18.5% city tax on parking at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, something that's allowed by law, but Oakland is only just now getting around to doing because of the fiscal crisis infecting every corner of California. (Have I mentioned the IOUs?) Under the A's and Raiders lease agreements with the Coliseum, however, the teams are allowed to deduct any parking taxes from their rent payments — meaning the city is effectively siphoning off money from the county, which promptly responded by suing the city.
None of which stopped the A's from immediately announcing that they'd be raising parking fees by $2 per car effective immediately in order to pay for the tax — which, in case you were napping during that last paragraph, the A's won't actually have to pay. "In an effort to reduce the impact to our fans, the A's are only passing along a portion of the new tax," A's president Mike Crowley told the Oakland Tribune. Voila!
No-bid contract bill was at 49ers' behest
More on that California state senate bill that would allow the San Francisco 49ers to duck competitive bidding for their planned Santa Clara stadium without a public referendum. Reports Mike Swift of the San Jose Mercury News:
Alquist's press secretary, Russell Lopez, described the original bill as an "economic stimulus" initiative, but a review of the original text shows that its various versions have dealt with everything from the cultural and linguistic competency of dentists to details of the state's unemployment insurance code.
The reason for the subterfuge, explains Lopez: His boss adapted the bill at the request of team and city officials — city officials say it wasn't their idea — inserting new language into an old bill because there was no time to introduce new legislation. (This is an old legislative trick, though I can't for the life of me remember the term for it. I want to say "zombie bill," but that's probably because I have zombies on the brain.)
Swift further notes that the 49ers owners gave $1,000 in campaign donations to Alquist last October. Though to be fair, I'm sure they give that to all the legislators.
July 07, 2009
NYC pays $10k to fan for "God Bless America" ejection
Yet another long national nightmare is over:
New York City will pay $10,001 to settle a federal lawsuit on behalf of a Queens man who was ejected from the old Yankee Stadium last August after trying to use the bathroom during the playing of "God Bless America." In addition, the team has publicly declared that it has no policy prohibiting fans from moving about during the playing of the patriotic song, which the team began playing during games after 9/11.
The New York Times, which reported this, doesn't say why the city will be paying the settlement (plus $12,000 in legal fees), given that it's the Yankees who were being sued. (The plaintiff was ejected by a New York City police officer, but they typically work off-duty for the team as security.) The Times also didn't indicate whether as part of the settlement the Yanks have promised not to go to back to their old method of barricading fans in their seats with chains.
49ers attempting to bypass Santa Clara vote?
Chris Koltermann from Santa Clara emails that California state senator Elaine Alquist has introduced a bill that would allow the San Francisco 49ers to evade competitive bidding rules for their proposed Santa Clara stadium submitting to a public referendum, as would be otherwise required. (A public vote on the overall project would still be required.) Writes Koltermann: "This bill was supposed to be related to 'health professions', but as you can see, it has been marked up to deal only with the 49ers."
Alquist's website, interestingly, mentions this bill (SB 43) only as "Creating the Healthcare Jobs of Tomorrow." If you'd like to ask Sen. Alquist what she has in mind — more jobs in foot rehab, maybe?) — you can drop her a line at senator.alquist@sen.ca.gov.
Cubs being sold to somebody or other; Wrigley reno back on?
The Chicago Tribune is reporting that the Chicago Tribune Co. has reached a preliminary agreement to sell the Cubs to Ameritrade billionaires the Ricketts family for around $900 million. Reuters, meanwhile, says that the Trib has also agreed to terms with a group led by private equity investor Marc Utay; given that the Trib is currently in bankruptcy, this could mean that a court could ultimately determine the team's owner, or just that the current owners are hoping to show they've done due diligence. (MLB would still need to sign off on either sale, and as we've seen, judges don't like to mess with sports leagues' control of franchises.)
Whoever ends up with the Cubs, one big question here is: What will this mean for Wrigley Field, which the previous ownership had suggested selling to the state as part of a tax dodge scheme? Chicago Sun-Times city hall reporter Fran Spielman writes that the latest plan was for a "$250 million makeover" to be completed by 2014, with "new concourses, washrooms, concessions, skyboxes and a club seating lounge." The team would also build a five-story building in what's currently a parking lot between Wrigley and Clark St., allowing it to add restaurants, retail space, and player workout space a la what the Boston Red Sox did by buying buildings adjacent to Fenway Park.
Adds Spielman: "Sources said Tom Ricketts, the family's point man on the Cubs sale, has seen all of the renderings, but has not yet signed off on a specific renovation plan." And no word at all on whether the plan to sell it to the state to generate tax savings is still on the table — if so, they'd better hurry, as the IRS provision that would allow them to save $50 million or so via the PILOT dodge expires at the end of December.
Spielman concludes by quoting "a source familiar with the issue" as saying that Ricketts is intent on staying put at Wrigley — albeit a Wrigley with added skyboxes — for the foreseeable future: "The ballpark is safe and structurally sound. Substantial resources have been put into maintaining it." We'll see if Ricketts changes his tune once he finds himself needing to convince Illinois legislators to help foot the renovation bill.
July 06, 2009
Yankee Stadium slam book, Tiger Woods edition
We're almost at the All-Star break, and people still can't seem to get enough of hating on New Yankee Stadium, or at least the ticket prices therein. The latest tally:
- Tiger Woods promoted free admission for kids at a Bethesda golf tournament by saying: "We don't want to have what happened at Yankee Stadium. Tickets are so overpriced that you can't bring the family. We want to have everyone come out and enjoy being in a family atmosphere, walk around, have a good time and not have it cost an arm and a leg."
- PoliticsDaily's Walter Shapiro writes after his first visit to the new Yankees home that "it reminded me of the oversized buildings in Islamabad that were designed to give an aura of authority to a shaky government." That said, he said he had a great time at the game (the Yanks won in extra innings), but won't likely be repeating it anytime soon, given that he had to shell out $266.35 for a field-level seat: "There are things in life, like visiting the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids, that you just have to do. Too bad that a day at Yankee Stadium has become a bucket-list extravaganza — something you do once and savor the memory."
- ESPN's Ultimate Franchise Rankings, which cobble together a poll of 1,000 fans nationwide with things like fan cost data, dropped the Yankees to 107th out of 122 major sports franchises, which the New York Post couldn't help noting was the result of their new stadium: "The Yankees took the biggest hit in affordability (121 of 122) and bang for the buck (119 of 122) thanks to their flashy new digs. And it would be one thing if fans were enjoying games more at the new Yankee Stadium, but in the stadium experience category the team dropped from 47 to 84."
On the bright side, Derek Jeter is finally starting to feel at home there. And who can put a price on that?
Headline of the week on vacation
I admit I've been giving a bit of short shrift to the Dallas Cowboys' new gajillion-dollar stadium that opened amid much hoopla last month, but Saturday's Dallas Morning News had a report that I couldn't overlook:
Cowboys Stadium site in Arlington isn't expected to be used for gas drilling
Just in case you were wondering.
Mayor Daley does the Olympic funding flip-flop
I'm back from Chicago, where I was met at the airport by the disembodied voices of minor Olympians (I think we got a synchronized swimmer) welcoming us to one of the contenders for the 2016 Summer Games.
I was also met by this article in the Chicago Reader, detailing how Mayor Richard Daley first promised that despite the International Olympic Committee's requirement that host cities guarantee to pay for any cost overruns, Chicago wouldn't be on the hook for extra cash; then caved and admitted he'd have to sign the IOC contract "as it is"; then insisted that even though he'd promised to pay any cost overruns, the city wouldn't have to pay any cost overruns. It was nice of them to make me feel like I was back at home.
For more on Chicago's Olympic bid mess, it's worth checking out the Reader's archives, which include a story about how the city is about to tear down a swimming pool it just built in order to build a velodrome that will have a new swimming pool trucked in from across town after the Olympics are over.
July 02, 2009
On the eve of the 4th: The Nationals, the ballpark, and development
It appears that the stadium building lobby is taking time off for now, but there is always time for introspection. As talk radio hosts rail against stimulus funding and government waste, the Washington Nationals, a beneficiary of a pre-stimulus package in the form of almost $700 million of taxpayer money to build a new ballpark, sit in last place in their division. What are taxpayers getting for their money? Well, stimulus hasn't occurred, though it was presumed to be a product of construction as plans were being drawn up and pushed through the political process.
Nationals president Stan Kasten was on C-SPAN recently, telling a National Press Club audience to be patient because a bright future lies ahead, despite a dismal on-field performance this season.
For a less upbeat overview of the Nationals' progress, including some focus on the stadium issue and pathetic development that has unfolded around the new stadium, Jeff Blair at the Toronto Globe and Mail put together an article which explains that the new ballpark is so nondescript that it could have been plopped into Minneapolis, Cincinnati, or Cleveland. To be fair, the departure of the team from Montreal to Washington may have some Canadians agitated, but the team has struggled with attendance, and Blair reports that the neighborhood surrounding the new ballpark features little more than a seedy liquor store and a temporary tent that serves as a faux-tailgate area. So much for the brisk economic development the new ballpark was supposed to bring...
I'll be on break this weekend, and look forward to seeing Neil return with his insights and humor. If I see anything break in the next 24 hours, I'll do my best to have it posted, but I suspect things may be slow as we move into a holiday weekend. I hope all of you have an enjoyable and safe Fourth of July weekend.
July 01, 2009
Marlins agree to kick in $6.2 million shortfall in bonds
The shovels are in the ground as site preparation is underway for the long-lobbied-for 37,000-seat ballpark to be constructed for the Florida Marlins.
The project almost got hung up after a bit of confusion and muddling through the project finances, but Marlins president David Samson said the team would make up an approximately $6 million shortfall. Miami-Dade county manager George Burgess reported that the bond sale fell $6.2 million short of the needed $306 million, causing questions and concerns, and leading county commissioner Dorrin Rolle to say as things were being hammered out yesterday: "I love baseball, but I don't love it so much that I'll be here all night." Samson said the team would pick up the $6.2 million difference, but some skeptics suggested the team would pull back from full construction plans, trimming back the total cost of the project. Samson denies that will happen.
The project is scheduled for completion at the start of the 2012 season. Since the Marlins lease expires in 2010, some Marlins fans may be concerned that the entire 2011 season may have to be played in a nearby parking lot. My guess is that something will be worked out.
Ratner and Brooklyn: Eminent domain and tax-exempt status
New Jersey Nets owner Bruce Ratner's quest to build a vanilla, big-box style arena in Brooklyn just got a bit more complicated, with New York's top court allowing a challenge of his desired use of eminent domain for this project to move forward.
For those in the Brooklyn neighborhood, The Empire State Development Corporation plans public hearings at the New York City College of Technology on July 29 and July 30.
The clock is ticking on Ratner, as he needs to get all his financial ducks in a row and get a ceremonial shovel in the ground by December 31 to be eligible for tax-exempt status.
With estimated arena costs at $772 million and capital tough to come by as the economy lurches along, not achieving tax-exempt status could torpedo the project. To hold opponents at bay, perhaps he could threaten local opponents with a decision to bring back the quirky architecture of Frank Gehry if they refuse to back down.
An anniversary few noticed: 100 years & Forbes Field
Few noticed a historic anniversary in stadium building yesterday, in part because almost two decades of mediocrity by the Pittsburgh Pirates has kept anything related to Pittsburgh baseball off the radar screen unless it involved a trade of their players to a big market team.
Yesterday marked the 100th anniversary of the opening of Forbes Field, arguably a moment that changed the stadium-building landscape forever. It was the first ballpark to cost at least a million dollars to construct. Forbes Field used more than three times the structural steel and concrete as Philadelphia's Shibe Park which opened a couple months earlier in 1909. Now remembered as a small intimate ballpark that has long since been demolished, at the time Forbes Field was the most massive monument to professional sports ever built.
It was built entirely with private funds, and it ushered in a sort of competition among team owners to build similar ballparks, places like Fenway, Wrigley, Comiskey, Ebbets, and Navin in Detroit. The Pittsburgh area papers did some coverage of this anniversary on Sunday and Monday, and the Pirates did a ceremony yesterday at PNC Park, but enthusiasm for the Pirates is low, so very few noticed.
Though few visiting the Field of Schemes site will want to visit this issue further, for those who do, you might hit the library and check out a book entitled Forbes Field by David Cicotello and Angelo Louisa (a 2007 publication of McFarland Press).
To put things in a current context, MLB had the inhabitants of the two remaining ballparks of the Forbes Field era (Red Sox and Cubs) open up exhibition games in New York's shiny new monuments to modern retro ballparks. The Red Sox played the first major league exhibition game in the Mets new place, and the Cubs played a preseason game in the Yankees new palace. My theory: Now that the real ballparks of a bygone era have inspired construction of numerous "retro ballparks," MLB is not wedded to keeping the old dinosaurs around. In short, Fenway and Wrigley have served their usefulness in prompting the kind of new construction that has made team owners around the country lots of money. If dumping them for shiny new models is in the cards, MLB would not have a problem with that.
The irony is that if that ever occurs, the powers involved will propose tearing down an authentic ballpark of the past and propose building what would likely be yet another replica of the past, but with much more retailing space and nice new cupholders.
It is entirely speculation on my part, but consider that MLB officials also had the Pirates/Cubs game scheduled in Pittsburgh on the 100th anniversary of Forbes Field's opening, with a brief ceremony as part of the action. I don't think the three scheduling decisions were entirely random or done without some thought. The game on the 100th anniversary was scheduled against the same team that opened that new ballpark in Pittsburgh in 1909, but in 1909, the Cubs were defending World Series champions. Many regard PNC Park as a place that emulated some of the features of Forbes Field.
Unless you want to see the ballparks of this era gone forever, support the friendly folks at Save Fenway Park! or your local Wrigley activist should calls for a brand new ballpark in Boston or Chicago emerge any time in the next decade or so.
