February 09, 2012
Browns: We built selves restaurant, we deserve public money
Mark Naymik has a column in today's Cleveland Plain Dealer detailing the claims the Cleveland Browns owners used about how much money they've put into renovating their stadium in order to talk the city council into giving them $5.8 million in public cash. And the list is pretty impressive, though probably not in the way the Browns owners hoped:
The team said it spent $50 million on stadium repairs and improvements it wasn't required to spend.
That's a good chunk of money, for sure. The figure, however, is a bit misleading. It includes escalators that were installed when the stadium was built. This amenity was an upgrade the team's late owner believed was necessary to attract fans. The figure also includes a restaurant at the stadium, which generates profits for the Browns.
The Browns also counted sales and tickets taxes paid by fans ($35 million since 1999), team income taxes ($6.2 million) and its elecric bill ($24 million), leading city councilmember Mike Polensek to snort, "I'm glad you pay utilities and taxes like most other businesses." (It's also worth noting that these are agressively feeble numbers for a team paying only $250,000 a year in rent on a stadium it got for free, and casts even more doubt on some of the wilder claims of the tax benefits of having a team in your city.)
The real news here, as Naymik notes, is that the Browns are looking to get the city's sin tax extended beyond 2015, and "there's growing chatter that the Browns will join forces with the Indians and Cavaliers -- whose facilities are 20 years old and in need of upgrades -- to mount a campaign" to extend it. Which should answer anyone wondering what the shelf life is of modern stadiums: until the teams can gather the chutzpah to ask for new (or improved) ones.
November 05, 2009
Late election returns: SF and Cleveland
If you were too busy following the news of New York's city council electing its first Neopagan, you may have missed reports on a couple of stadium-related votes on Tuesday:
- Voters in San Francisco lifted a ban on selling naming rights to Candlestick Park, one that had been in place all the way back to last year. (Voters had actually passed the ban in 2004, but had to wait until 2008 for a naming-rights deal with Monster Cable to expire. Funds raised would be split between the city and the 49ers — though given the state of the naming-rights market, this may require resorting to some unusual coinage.
- Ohio voters approved legalized casinos in the state's four largest cities, thus proving that if you want an exclusive license to build gambling halls, it helps to have a captive audience of NBA fans to make your pitch to. Or proving that America is dissatisfied with the progress of health reform. One or the other.
October 28, 2009
Cavs owner uses home opener to stump for casinos
If you ever wonder why rich people continue to buy sports teams even as they complain that they lose money — aside from the Beeston Dictum — how's this for an ancillary benefit: Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert got to appear on video screens during his team's home opener to urge fans to vote in favor of legalized casinos in Ohio. "Keep the jobs here. Keep the tax dollars here," Gilbert told the sellout crowd, who'd already received handouts urging the same thing.
Not mentioned by Gilbert, so far as I can tell: That the referendum would give his company exclusive rights to build casinos in Cleveland and Cincinnati. It's nice to have your own captive audience.
July 28, 2009
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.