February 10, 2011
Sacramento council: Never mind, we can wait for arena details
So it looks like when the Sacramento city council declared two weeks ago that it wanted answers within two weeks on which Kings arena plans were actually viable, it was only joshing: On Tuesday night, the council reversed course and re-anointed ICON-Taylor as the preferred developer, giving that team an additional 90 days to figure out how to pay for its plan. Spake Sacramento councilmember Steve Cohn:
"While I appreciate dreams and visions that people have for whatever sites they want to promote, I have to say, for me, it comes down to financing. I want straight answers, and I want the best possible team to get straight answers. Based on what I've seen, I think those answers can best come from the ICON-Taylor group."
According to the Sacramento Press, council staffers will read over whatever ICON-Taylor comes up with in May and report back to the council in July. Which is a nice exercise in kicking the can down the road, anyway; the test will be to see whether the Kings owners up the ante in the meantime by asking the NBA for permission to move to greener pastures.
Kicking the can down the road is a good thing because the longer this pans out, it reduces the chance of our Mayor, Former NBA star, and fiancee of school "reformer" Michelle Rhee the embarrassment of losing an NBA team. Maybe Mayor Johnson loses re-election in 2012 and we find out after the election that an arena here is really dead a little afterword. Also, in a "miserable" (according to Forbes) government town in which government salaries are declining, public subsidies will be a hard sell and my progressive and libertarian friends will be fighting these.
Posted by Art Vandelay on February 10, 2011 02:17 PM
The biggest problem with having the developer do the feasibility study is that the developer is almost guaranteed to say the project is very feasible. I expect him to point out that the arena can be first-class, for $290M, and that it will create 20,000 jobs, turn the blighted area into an international tourist draw, produce $50M in tax revenues, and drop the kids off at school, while it's doing stuff.
What good is a feasibility study when it's written by the developer?
I've already asked my council member to please make sure Taylor-ICON pick up all cost overruns. They cannot build an arena in that railyard for $290M. Constructing anything in California is hard enough.
The owner of that property recently said that no groundbreaking of any kind can occur at that location for another 18-24 months. Would the Maloofs wait that long? Would you?
Posted by MikeM on February 11, 2011 12:51 PM