April 23, 2012

Angry 49ers fans hope seagulls poop on the York family

Things we learn from today's Scott Ostler column in the San Francisco Chronicle:

• Ostler is rooting for a new 49ers stadium in Santa Clara, because "if the 49ers move out of the Bay Area, my job becomes less fun."
• Many 49ers fans are really angry at the team for 1) charging so much for seat licenses to even get the right to buy tickets, 2) shifting season-ticket holders around so they're not with the fans they've sat with for years, and 3) putting all the non-luxury seats on one side of the field, looking into the sun. As one longtime ticket holder memorably wrote to Ostler: "They'll have a beautiful new stadium, but without the legacy of a 49ers faithful fan base. They've killed our joy and dissed our loyalty. I hope the seagulls take revenge on the Yorks and [ticket sales company Legends VP Al] Guido's outfit!"

A bunch of fans wrote to Ostler that they'd be declining the chance to renew their tickets at the new stadium, but we'll see whether there will be other fans lining up to take their place. At the least, though, the 49ers owners have to be a smidge worried about having to institute New York Jets-style last-minute seat discounts if it turns out they priced tickets too high.

March 15, 2012

Santa Clara 49ers stadium hits $1.2B, but who pays?

The cost of a stadium for the San Francisco 49ers is now up to $1.2 billion, according to financing agreements approved by the Santa Clara city council approved Tuesday night, but the team insists that costs to the public will actually go down. The reason: Tickets are selling more briskly than expected, which would pay back the city's costs sooner than planned in the original deal.

This is probably a good time to revisit the Santa Clara financing plan, which is very possibly the most convoluted deal in sports history, leading to much confusion about who exactly is paying for what — and perhaps more important, who's taking on what risk. There are two main pieces to the deal that involve public funds, or at least public borrowing:

• The 49ers (actually a separate corporation called StadCo owned by the 49ers owners) will borrow $400 million from banks and then re-lend it to the Santa Clara stadium authority, at a likely interest rate of 6.5-7.5%. That's crazy high, but the 49ers say it doesn't matter, because the team will (watch closely now) pay enough rent to the stadium authority so that the authority can use it to pay off its loans from StadCo.
• StadCoThe stadium authority will borrow $450 million directly from the banks, which must be paid off in three years, using a combination of personal seat licenses, naming rights, and luxury suite revenue.

The first part is the one that's been subjected to the most scrutiny, mostly because the bizarre we-loan-you-money-then-pay-rent-so-you-can-pay-us-back deal wasn't part of the 2010 deal that was approved by Santa Clara voters, which is the crux of the argument over whether residents can force another vote. That's the relatively non-risky piece, though — the main fear looks to be that StadCo would go bankrupt and stop paying rent, but that'd be pretty unprecedented in the history of convoluted stadium financing deals.

Item two, though, remains dicier: If the money from PSLs, naming rights, and suites doesn't add up to $450 million (plus interest) over three years, then Santa Clara could be left holding a very large bag. That PSL sales are going well so far is certainly good news, but there's still a bunch of uncertainty — in particular, the naming-rights market has been all over the place of late — and it's Santa Clara that's taking the risk on this, not the 49ers.

In short, we're still back where we were in December: This could turn out to be one of the best stadium deals for a city ever ... or it could turn out to be a bait-and-switch in which taxpayers get stuck with a multi-million-dollar tab that they never voted for. There's really no way of saying until we see whether all those new revenue streams turn up. And even if things work out, that doesn't mean that the public gave up nothing to the 49ers in this deal — after all, risk has a monetary value, too, even if no one can agree what it is.

March 06, 2012

Judge knocks down Santa Clara 49ers referendum, appeal likely

In a major blow to opponents of Santa Clara's $1 billion stadium plan for the San Francisco 49ers, a county judge has ruled that the ballot measure approved in January forcing a new referendum on the deal is invalid, agreeing with the team and city that the changes in the financial structure of the plan are a mere "administrative" change, and thus not subject to a public vote.

The group Santa Clara Plays Fair, which led the referendum drive, says it's considering an appeal. 49ers spokesperson Steve Weakland called Judge Peter Kirwan's ruling preventing a public vote "a victory for the citizens of Santa Clara" because it will "protect their vote in June 2010 [when] they said yes to a new stadium."

With shovels already hitting the ground, it's going to be increasingly difficult for opponents to throw any more roadblocks in the way of this deal, unless they can get this ruling overturned on appeal even more quickly than Kirwan reached his decision. Beyond that, as Newballpark.org notes: "If there's a dangerous precedent, it's that any municipality [that] chooses to build a stadium in the Bay Area can choose to be purposefully vague or obfuscating when writing up stadium deal terms, get a referendum passed, then fill in the blanks later." Not that anybody would ever do that.

February 15, 2012

Santa Clara approves 49ers stadium contracts

The Snata Clara city council voted last night — yes, again — to approve the $1 billion stadium plan for the San Francisco 49ers. (Technically, the last vote approved the stadium financing agreement; this one approves the construction contracts.)

The new vote changes essentially nothing: The issue of whether construction can begin this summer is still in the hands of the courts, which will have to decide whether the whole thing has to wait for a new referendum, as voters approved last month, or whether the new plan is just an "administrative" change to the stadium plan that voters approved in 2010 and hence not subject to a new vote, as the city insists. If nothing has been resolved by the scheduled July groundbreaking, things are going to get very interesting...

February 13, 2012

Santa Clara: Damn the referendum, 49ers stadium to open in 2014

The city of Santa Clara has moved up the planned construction schedule for its $1 billion 49ers stadium: Groundbreaking has moved up from early 2013 to late spring 2012, and opening day is now slated for fall of 2014, a full year ahead of previous plans. "We're going to be playing football here in 2014," Santa Clara Mayor Jamie Matthews said Friday. "I have no doubt whatsoever."

There's still that little matter of the court battle over the referendum to be cleared up, of course. Surely Santa Clara wouldn't be trying to get shovels in the ground before an injuction can be put into place, right?

February 03, 2012

49ers get $200m in NFL stadium funds they've been expecting since December

The NFL upped the ante on its aid to the San Francisco 49ers stadium in Santa Clara yesterday, increasing its offer of G-4 loans (which are really grants, since the recipients can "repay" them with other teams' money) from $150 million to $200 million. This was immediately reported as a huge boost to the Santa Clara project, with the San Francisco Chronicle blogging: "The move from Candlestick to Santa Clara became less of a mirage. Long Sundays on 101 became more of a reality."

Except that we already knew that G-4 loans were being increased to $200 million, and that the 49ers were likely first in line to get one. And the stumbling block for the Santa Clara plan at this point isn't so much the 49ers' share of the funds — they were only slated to pay for $150 million of the $1 billion stadium cost up front — but rather the $850 million in loans that the city stadium authority would be taking out for the rest of the construction tab, though I suppose the 49ers owners can use part of this NFL windfall to pay those back, as they've promised they'll do (though there's still much dispute about whether they're contractually bound to do so or not).

So, nothing to see here, move along. The only real news here is going to come not from NFL offices, but from the courts.

January 31, 2012

Santa Clara files lawsuit against 49ers stadium referendum

It looks like the San Francisco 49ers court battle has begun: Santa Clara Plays Fair is reporting (still not on their website, but they sent out a press release [UPDATE: now it's online]) that the city of Santa Clara has filed suit against the group's petition filing for a referendum on the revised stadium plan. The city had previously indicated that it felt the referendum was illegal, since a 49ers stadium plan (albeit not this one) was previously approved by voters in 2010; now the matter will be up to a judge — or in all likelihood, several, as it works its way through the inevitable appeals.

In other 49ers news, plenty of fans are still hopping mad about the sky-high prices for season tickets plus personal seat licenses that were unveiled last month. We'll see how many of them actually carry through with their threat to cancel their season plans once they're offered the chance to downgrade to cheaper, crappier seats — that helped alleviate some of the sticker shock faced by the New York Yankees, among others — but it can't be a good sign that one longtime season ticket holder is actually threatening to become an Oakland Raiders fan.

January 25, 2012

Santa Clara council rejects 49ers referendum, setting up court battle

As expected, the Santa Clara city council last night rejected petitions calling for a new referendum on a proposed $1.2 billion San Francisco 49ers stadium, ruling that while enough signatures were collected, the issue is not "referendable" because the project was already approved in a public vote in 2010.

Several people who spoke at what sounds like a raucous council hearing, however, raised questions about whether what the council passed in December is what voters approved two years ago:

But dozens of opponents showed up in force to complain they were "ripped off." They brought glossy 2010 campaign materials funded by the 49ers that showed the team, NFL and stadium revenues would be responsible for 88 percent of the project's cost.

"That is what this community bought, but that is not what you agreed to last month," stadium opponent Kate Grant said, holding up the campaign flier. "The terms of this agreement have changed dramatically."

The dispute is now almost certainly headed for court, which if history is any guide could take a while. With the 49ers hoping to break ground this spring, whether the referendum drive can stop the stadium from going ahead could depend on whether a judge is willing to grant an injunction against the project continuing — though it'll also be interesting to see how the bond market responds to a bond issue whose legality is being challenged in court. If nothing else, that planned 2014 opening date now seems even more optimistic than it did last month.

January 24, 2012

Santa Clara referendum petitions validated, vote still a ways off

The Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters has confirmed that Santa Clara Plays Fair has collected the 4,500 signatures required to force a vote on the $1.2 billion San Francisco 49ers stadium plan, which would require the city to put out $850 million in cash and get somewhere between all of it and not very much of it back.

Of course, Santa Clara has insisted that the stadium project isn't subject to referendum, so next stop will be, as promised, court. Stadium opponents have enlisted the ACLU to seek an injunction against starting stadium construction until the referendum issue can be settled.

Exactly how much the 49ers are committing to backstop the city's stadium bonds remains murky — I'm still puzzling my way through the rat's nest of the city's development agreement, and you're welcome to do the same if you want to play along at home. Though it's worth noting that Stanford sports economist Roger Noll did tell the Wall Street Journal last week that the city's return on its stadium investment could range "from pretty close to break-even to a catastrophe," which I'll take as validation of my own analysis.

January 18, 2012

49ers repeal petition claims more than enough signatures to force vote

And we're off: Santa Clara Plays Fair says it has compiled enough petition signatures to force a new referendum on the $1.2 billion San Francisco 49ers stadium proposal. With today the deadline for collecting 4,500 signatures, a just-released press release from SCPF (not on their site yet that I can tell) reports that the group has collected "nearly 11,000 signatures from Santa Clara voters asking the City Council to either repeal the development agreement and the financing plan for the planned 49ers stadium or submit them to the voters."

Next up is almost certainly the courts, given the city of Santa Clara's insistence that its stadium deal isn't subject to referendum, despite it being significantly different from the plan that voters approved in 2010. Tune in again next week for Preliminary Injunction Theater!

January 17, 2012

Santa Clara attorney: 49ers petition drive illegal (or at least that's what city should say)

For those who missed it, on Friday Santa Clara city attorney Ren Nosky issued an opinion that the petition drive to force a re-vote on the San Francisco 49ers stadium project is illegal, since referenda can only be used to repeal "legislative" acts, not "administrative" acts. Since the city council is just carrying out implementation of a previously approved stadium plan, argues Nosky, no second vote is possible.

Of course, given that that implementation included going from $444 million in public grants and loans to $850 million, one might reasonably argue that this isn't actually the same plan that voters approved back in June 2010. Where's Plutarch when you need him for a ruling?

In any event, Nosky noted that his position doesn't hold any more sway than that of any long-dead Greek philosopher, saying: "I'm just advising the stadium authority on what position to take. My opinion doesn't matter. The courts would ultimately decide this." He did, though, manage to throw a wrench into a petition drive that's on a tight timetable (deadline: tomorrow) — that couldn't possibly have been intentional, could it?

January 13, 2012

49ers' hefty PSL prices raising eyebrows

The San Francisco 49ers put "stadium builder licenses" (aka personal seat licenses) up for sale this week for 9,000 seats at their planned Santa Clara stadium, and the initial reports seem to show a fair bit of sticker shock among fans.

The prices on the initial round of lower level club seats run from $20,000 to $80,000 for a lifetime license to buy tickets (fans then still need to pony up for tickets as well). That's significantly more than the PSLs that the New York Giants PSLs (which topped out at $20,000) and Jets (top price $84,000, but with some lower-level seats priced as low as $2,500 after PSL sales stalled) and even more than the Dallas Cowboys PSLs, which run from $16,000 to $50,000.

If commenters on the official 49ers message board are any guide, this could be a tough sell, with 84% of those polled saying they have no interest in buying PSLs at these prices. (Sample comment: "I was prepared to pay $10K per seat to keep a similar location, but twice that AND a ticket price increase of over 250% is just plain crazy.") This could change as lower-priced PSLs become available for non-club seats, obviously, but it's certainly not a good sign for the 49ers as they try to avoid the a Jets-style PSL glut and last-minute price slashing.

All this should be of concern to Santa Clara, because the PSL money is slated to be used to pay back $450 million in public debt that the city stadium authority will be borrowing from the 49ers, at 8.5% interest. [UPDATE: Sorry, confused two different stadium loans there for a minute. For the full explanation, see my original post, which got it right.] If there's a shortfall ... well, nobody's exactly sure what happens, except that it'll be the city's problem, not the team's. It actually presents a weird incentive for the 49ers in setting prices — if they price seats too high and they don't sell, they're still guaranteed to get their cash from Santa Clara (except for the actual tickets they'd end up eating, obviously), which may be one reason the team has been so aggressive about pricing.

Of course, there's also that petition drive underway to hold a revote on the entire stadium project, which makes this not exactly the best time to piss off your fan base. The stadium opposition group Santa Clara Plays Fair issued a press release last night touting radio show host (and former weatherman and current climate change denier) Brian Sussman's switch from the pro-stadium camp to the anti-stadium side, with Sussman telling listeners, "My eyes were finally opened when the football team informed me my four seats in the new stadium would cost $160,000." How many of his fellow fans balk at those prices could determine whether the Santa Clara succeeds or fails — and just possibly, whether it gets built at all.

January 09, 2012

49ers, Santa Clara kick in more money for stadium land

After a years-long, often-contentious negotiation, the San Francisco 49ers finally agreed to a deal to rent land from the Great America amusement park for its new Santa Clara stadium — and it will end up costing both the team and the city millions of dollars.

For the 49ers, the price is straightforward: $12.5 million in cash for the right to build on the amusement park's overflow parking lot, and use the main lot on game days.

Santa Clara gives up something that's harder to quantify: Instead of getting a cut of Great America's profits when revenue passes $56 million (a figure that the park hasn't reached in recent years), the threshold gets raised to more then $64 million. Great America will also get guarantees of a reduced rent if it chooses to extend its lease beyond 2039.

Santa Clara officials say they'll make some of this money back from parking revenues, but given that the amusement park will also presumably have to be closed (or at least patrons will steer clear because of minimal parking) on game days, there's lost tax revenue there as well, making it even tougher to say the actual public cost of this deal. Regardless, it's likely going to provide a boost for those collecting signatures this week to get a re-vote on the ever-changing 49ers deal back on the ballot for this summer.

The 49ers, meanwhile, are taking the referendum campaign seriously enough to have asked a local electrical union to hire "interceptors" to disrupt the petition-gathering. The union has since toned down its web page seeking anti-referendum workers, but not before somebody did a screengrab of the original.

December 30, 2011

California's RDA ruling could affect A's, 49ers, Chargers stadium plans

As if the umpteen stadium and arena battles ongoing in California needed more drama, the state's supreme court handed down this yesterday:

The court ruled unanimously in favor of a state law passed last summer that abolished redevelopment agencies and voted 6 to 1 to strike down a companion measure that would have allowed the agencies to continue if they shared their revenues.

More than 400 redevelopment agencies will cease to exist after Feb. 1. Authorized by law since 1945, the agencies have been responsible for such success stories as Old Pasadena and San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter but also plagued by projects that some argued had little public benefit.

First, some brief backstory: After Gov. Jerry Brown declared his intentions earlier this year to stop allowing city redevelopment agencies to siphon off property tax proceeds for local development projects, the state legislature offered a compromise of sorts: If RDAs would cut the state in on a share of the boodle, they'd be allowed to continue. Yesterday's court ruling struck down that deal, saying that while the state could shut down RDAs it couldn't attach strings to them; and so, as of a month and two days from now, all RDAs will cease to exist. (Ironically, the court was ruling on a lawsuit filed by a bunch of cities and their RDAs, which were trying to knock down only the piece of legislation that would eliminate RDAs, not the one that would allow them to continue. Whoopsie.)

This is big news for the sports world because, as you might imagine, cities have been thrilled to hand out development dollars when it's not really their money they're spending. (While technically RDA spending is just a straight-up TIF — any new tax revenue gets diverted to pay for the project — in practice, at least according to Brown, the state has ended up filling the gaps in school spending and other local services that have resulted.) So pretty much every sports construction project now underway or in the planning stages in California has involved RDAs, which means many of them may now be in jeopardy.

A quick scorecard, from north to south:

• Oakland's Victory Court plan for an A's stadium appears to now be out the window, since that relied on an RDA-based TIF. However, its second "Coliseum City" plan for the A's and Raiders could still move ahead, according to Newballpark.org, as Oakland's existing stadium site is "part of a separate joint-powers agreement which allows the Coliseum Authority to raise money for its own projects."
• Any thoughts of moving the Golden State Warriors to a new arena in San Francisco will likely be hampered by the ruling.
• Santa Clara's stadium funding was thought to be already in place — barring a last-minute petition drive — but $40 million of that was supposed to come from the city's RDA, which now must turn it over to the state instead. (I'm not clear on what happens to the $4 million the city RDA already pre-paid to the 49ers last March.) That's not a huge sum to be made up on a $1 billion project, but given how the whole financing plan is already held together by spit and baling wire, you never know what could turn out to be its striped bass.
• San Jose's RDA already completed its part in the city's proposed A's stadium plan, giving team owner Lew Wolff an option to buy RDA-owned land for the project last month. Yet a lawsuit filed earlier this month by the Giants-funded Stand For San Jose charges, among other things, that San Jose illegally jumped the gun by agreeing to sell the land before going before a public vote; if a court agrees, then San Jose could be forced to go back and hold a referendum before selling the land — except at that point the RDA would no longer exist to do the sale.
• AEG's downtown Los Angeles football stadium project would use a TIF, but it seems that it's one that doesn't require an RDA. (I think this is because rather than actually redirecting the money, the city would just be totaling up the new tax benefits and hoping they're enough to pay off the stadium bonds, but don't quote me on that.) Still, this could give a minor boost to Ed Roski's City of Industry stadium plan in the race for first place among L.A. stadium plans that don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting approved by the NFL or attracting an existing team owner.
• The San Diego Chargers, whose stadium chief previously said that without RDA money, their stadium plans are "done, finished," are indeed completely hosed. But they kind of knew that already.

In any case, before anyone gets too excited about it being a new day in Baltimore, the state legislature — which, you'll recall, started off this whole mess by trying to save RDAs while reclaiming a share of their money — can always pass new legislation reestablishing some form of local redevelopment agencies. This being the California state legislature, of course, that will inevitably be a long and painful process — which is why I told the San Diego Union Tribune that my prediction is for "gridlock," as team owners wait to see how the new world order shakes out.

The interesting bits here in the short run will be how the 49ers (and, if necessary, the A's) handle the potential new speed bumps in their stadium campaigns. More news to come in the new year, I'm sure.

December 22, 2011

Santa Clara group starts petition drive, is upstaged by blown power line

As promised, Santa Clara Plays Fair has launched a referendum campaign to block $850 million in city loans to fund a new San Francisco 49ers stadium. If they can collect 6,000 signatures within 30 days, a public vote could be held ... okay, I'm not exactly sure, so I'm going to go with "in the future."

The community group, though, couldn't even get top billing in the lede of the San Francisco Chronicle article about its own petition drive, which instead began:

The power outages at Candlestick Park this week were a visible reminder of why the 49ers want to move to a new stadium in Santa Clara.

Yes, that's right: The 49ers want a new stadium because the old one has crappy splices on the power lines outside, which led to two power outages during Monday night's game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Me, I'd just ask for new power lines, but I guess that's because I lack the vision to be an NFL owner.

December 20, 2011

NFL establishes "G-4" stadium fund, there is much rejoicing

Just realized I never recapped last week's NFL owners meeting to formally re-establish the exhausted G-3 stadium fund, as previously pre-announced last summer. And so, without further ado:

• The new loan program — which actually will be called "G-4" — ups the maximum loan level from $150 million per team under the old plan to a maximum of $200 million under the new one. Only projects costing at least $400 million, and with a "private contribution" from the team of at least $200 million, will be eligible for the top loan level
• As under G-3, teams can repay the loan with club seat money they normally would have had to share with the league. They can now also use incremental regular ticket revenue, defined as the difference between ticket sales in the new stadium and average sales in the last three years of the old one.
• "The project must not involve any relocation of or change in an affected club's 'home territory.'" That's in keeping with the old G-3 plan's goal of aiding teams in building new stadiums in their existing hometowns (to avoid the kind of city-hopping that gave us the St. Louis Rams and Tennessee Titans). Still, it's worth noting that this means the Minnesota Vikings, for example, can access $200 million in G-4 loans for a new stadium in Minnesota, but not for one in, say, Los Angeles.

Teams looking to build new stadiums without paying for them themselves are, naturally, thrilled — since this is money that they wouldn't normally get to keep anyway, it's effectively a grant, not a loan. (Unless club seat and ticket sales come in below projections, in which case they're on the hook for the difference.) San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York tweeted that he was confident his team would be first to get a cut of the G-4 boodle, San Diego Chargers stadium czar Mark Fabiani called it "great news for the team and our fans," and Vikings stadium chieftain Lester Bagley called it "good news," though he quickly added the caveat that the Vikings still don't have a deal for the other $800 million it takes to build a stadium these days.

And that's the catch: Most of these teams were counting on NFL funds as part of their stadium deals already, so while the establishment of G-4 comes as a relief to them, it doesn't really do much to fill the funding holes that most of these teams (except for the 49ers) still have in their plans. And while it'd be nice if the teams used this free league cash to reduce their demands on taxpayers, it looks like most of them instead intend to use it to replace their own share of stadium costs.

For more on all this, the San Diego Union Tribune has helpfully posted a document containing a brief summary of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell's press conference and the actual G-4 document language. Highly recommended for anyone who finds discussion of "tranches" to be compelling reading.

December 14, 2011

Santa Clara council okays $1B 49ers stadium plan

As expected, the Santa Clara city council voted unanimously last night to approve the plan for a $1 billion San Francisco 49ers stadium, $850 million of which will be borrowed by the city and then repaid (hopefully) by the team.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, this leaves "one final obstacle" to the stadium project, which is for the NFL to agree to put up $150 million towards the plan as part of its Son of G-3 fund. There's also the little matter of actually negotiating a lease, which is supposed to take place "in coming months," but given the unanimous backing of the council, that's unlikely to present much of an obstacle, though how precisely it goes down could have momentous impacts in terms of who's on the hook if stadium revenues fall short of projections.

The Merc News also reports that the 49ers are now expected to try to break their Candlestick Park lease after the 2013 season, and open their Santa Clara stadium in 2014. That's an ambitious timetable, but certainly doable given California's year-round construction climate. Assuming the NFL acts quickly on its $150 million, we could actually see the 49ers playing in a new stadium before the water riots start.

December 05, 2011

Santa Clara stadium deal for 49ers piles risk on top of risk

After a perusal of the "Disposition and Development Agreement" for Santa Clara's proposed San Francisco 49ers stadium, the deal looks even riskier for the city than what was reported on Saturday. In brief:

• As reported previously, the stadium will now cost $1.02 billion. Of that, $170 million will come from a mix of NFL funds, cash from the public redevelopment authority, and "other revenues ... from sources described herein," none of which are actually described therein, from what I can tell. It's implied elsewhere in the document that the 49ers will spend $150 million (which is expected to come directly from the NFL as a "loan" to be repaid by luxury suite revenue that the 49ers would normally have to share with the league) and that $10 million will come from the RDA; the other $10 million appears to be a mystery.
• Another $450 million will come via a short-term loan to the city-run Stadium Authority, to be secured by the sale of naming rights, personal seat licenses (here called Stadium Builder Licenses), and that ever-popular "other revenue." This loan needs to be paid off by 2015; for any amount that isn't, the Stadium Authority will need to sell new long-term bonds, backed by ... the document doesn't actually say, so presumably that'd be the authority's problem.
• The remaining $400 million will come via a "subordinated" loan, where the 49ers will borrow money from the banks and then re-lend it to the Stadium Authority. As if that's not confusing enough, the loan from the 49ers will be paid off via rent from the 49ers — which is "expected" to be "in the range of" $30 million a year, and "anticipated" to be enough to pay off all of the authority's outstanding debt.
• The Stadium Authority will now be responsible for operating costs of the stadium during the non-NFL season, with the 49ers covering operating costs during the season. This, frankly, sounds like a nightmare: If 49ers fans break something during the season and it needs to be repaired during the offseason, who pays the bill? Once again, the DDA doesn't say.
• The Stadium Authority can rent out the stadium during the offseason, as well as during the season "subject to approval" of the 49ers and "the payment of certain costs." The authority and the city will then split any proceeds.

The upshot remains what I said on Saturday: If naming rights and PSL sales go well, the city could end up being able to pay off the stadium without dipping into public funds, but that's a pretty big "if." The DDA specifies that "no city general funds" will be committed to the stadium debt — as required by the public referendum that approved the deal — but as we've seen elsewhere, when stadium authorities fail, it's up to their host cities to bail them out.

On top of that, it's clear that the DDA leaves a ton of details to be worked out in the actual stadium lease, which it says will be worked out by the Stadium Authority board (aka the Santa Clara city council) "in coming months." What the specifics actually look like — in particular, how those 49ers rent payments are set — could determine whether Santa Clara ends up covering its costs or becomes another Indianapolis.

December 03, 2011

49ers strike deal for Santa Clara stadium financing

The San Francisco 49ers and city of Santa Clara announced yesterday that they've agreed on a financing deal to build a $1 billion stadium. The highlights:

• Goldman Sachs, U.S. Bank, and Bank of America will loan the city $850 million towards construction costs. Another $150 million will come from the 49ers, via the sale of luxury suites.
• The city's share — double the amount initially approved a year and a half ago — will now be repaid by ticket sales, stadium naming rights, $30 million a year in rent (up from $5 million) from the team, $150 million from the NFL, $40 million from the city redevelopment agency, and $35 million from hotel taxes.

I'll have more on this after I've had a chance to read the actual development agreement, but for now the upshot appears to be that by upping the team's rent by $25 million a year and having the city use the proceeds to pay off an extra $400 million in debt, the 49ers convinced banks to finally provide a loan for the stadium. (Having a city treasury to fall back on as collateral always helps.) The downside for the city, obviously, is that a risky deal just got even riskier.

Regardless, barring an unexpected lawsuit or a sudden change of heart by the Santa Clara city council, it seems likely that we're looking at construction starting sometime next year, with the 49ers landing in the South Bay by 2015.

More on Monday.

November 28, 2011

Sales taxes are still regressive, 49ers and Kings still spinning wheels, and other non-news

With Thanksgiving making for an epically slow news weekend — aside from for those reporters lucky enough to cover Black Friday pepper-spray incidents — we were instead treated to a smorgasbord of stadium non-news stories this weekend:

• Rich people pay more property taxes while the poor and middle class pay more sales taxes, reports Cincinnati.com. This is considered newsworthy because the deal to cut property taxes following a sales-tax hike to pay for new Bengals and Reds stadium will mean not just a massive transfer of funds from taxpayers to the sports team, but also from the hoi polloi to the hoity toity: "The half-cent stadium sales tax paid by homeowners is estimated by the county to be a maximum $192 annually, while owners of the county's highest-value homes get rollback rebates of $1,175 or more — netting them nearly $1,000 apiece under the current structure."
• The NBA lockout looks to be over, and everybody in Sacramento is back to saying what they were saying before about a new Kings arena. "Our position from day one is that this has never been about building a facility to benefit a professional sports team," said Mayor Kevin Johnson, who two years ago kicked off his arena campaign by declaring that without one the Kings "very may well look elsewhere." The apparent end of the lockout "is good for the efforts to keep the Kings in Sacramento," said Michael Ault of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, which is working on efforts to keep the Kings in Sacramento. And a local economic consultant and a woman who runs a restaurant said they hoped the end of the lockout would help the economy. This is considered newsworthy because it's the same thing the Sacramento Bee runs every other day, and the announced resumption of the NBA season gave them an excuse to run it on page one.
• The San Francisco 49ers are winning, but don't have a new stadium yet, writes the San Francisco Chronicle. And they're not especially talking to San Francisco about one, while continuing to pursue one in Santa Clara. This is considered newsworthy because ... okay, I'm stumped on this one. Maybe the reporter was originally assigned to cover Black Friday, but came away empty-handed when no shoppers thought to bring pepper spray?

November 17, 2011

Santa Clara spending $10m on prep work for uncertain 49ers stadium

On Tuesday night, the Santa Clara city council approved spending $10 million in city money to begin preparing land to build a $987 million stadium for the San Francisco 49ers.

Except the city doesn't have $10 million, so it's borrowing $6 million from the 49ers to help pay for the infrastructure work. And the 49ers don't have $987 million, or even the roughly $500 million that would actually come out of the team owners' pockets (the rest would be fronted by city bonds and paid back by naming rights and PSL revenues — maybe). But Tuesday's action at least guarantees that they're going to build one impressive hole in the ground.

October 12, 2011

Raiders, 49ers on Davis' death and stadium deal: No comment

In case you're wondering what the death of Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis means for the team's possible relocation plans, the San Jose Mercury News has a rundown for you:

• "[Davis' son and new owner] Mark Davis did not comment on his intentions."
• "[Raiders CEO Amy] Trask said, 'I am working with our team, our organization and the Raider family to navigate a very difficult time.'"
• "[San Francisco] 49ers spokesman Steve Weakland said in an email: 'Out of respect to the Davis family and the Raider organization, we have no public comments at this time.'"

In other words, no news is no news. It's possible that Mark Davis has a bit less distaste for the 49ers than his dad, but in the end, what's expected to make a shared 49ers-Raiders stadium happen or not — whether in Santa Clara, Oakland, Los Angeles, or Kuala Lumpur — is likely going to be money, not enmity. Trask has already been working on it, after all, so if the numbers pencil out, having a different Davis to answer to isn't likely to change things — and likewise if they don't.

September 20, 2011

49ers buy amusement park that had sued to block Santa Clara stadium

The San Francisco 49ers don't have to worry about the on-again off-again lawsuit threats by the owners of the Great America amusement park near the team's would-be Santa Clara stadium site. That's because the 49ers are about to become part-owners of the amusement park, as part of a consortium spending $70 million to take it off the hands of its current owner, Cedar Fair.

This would be huger news a couple of years ago, when Cedar Fair was the primary obstacle to the Niners' stadium dreams. Now, with the bottom having fallen out of the team's private financing, they have bigger fish to fry. Maybe next they can try buying a bank.

September 12, 2011

Cal legislature okays fast-track for all stadiums and arenas

The bill to fast-track Los Angeles' $1.2 billion downtown football stadium indeed passed the California State Senate on Friday, by a 32-7 margin. And later the same day, the senate also passed president pro-tem Darrell Steinberg's bill allowing all development projects to be exempted from lengthy lawsuits — which, depending on how you look at it, either puts all of the state's big projects on equal footing, or uses a loophole granted to one developer as an excuse to grant loopholes to all developers (so long as their projects are worth at least $100 million).

Assuming Gov. Jerry Brown signs the bills — no word from the governor's office at last check — this will obviously smooth the path for AEG's L.A. stadium, as well as proposed buildings for the San Francisco 49ers, Sacramento Kings, and San Diego Chargers, among others. Still, the main holdup in all of those cases is money: The 49ers still haven't firmed up their share of construction costs, the Kings arena finance plan right now mostly amounts to wishful thinking (the latest involving selling off future parking revenues for up-front cash), and AEG needs to find an NFL owner who wants to give up either a hefty annual rent, a hefty share of stadium revenues, or a hefty share of the team itself in exchange for moving to L.A. Not having to worry about pesky lawyers is a nice plus, but pesky bankers are still the main reason why stadium deals do or don't get done.

August 15, 2011

Santa Clara reclaims half its redevelopment funds for 49ers

The city of Santa Clara looks to have finally resolved its attempts to reclaim redevelopment funds that it had earmarked for a San Francisco 49ers stadium and which the state was trying to take back. The upshot: The city will repay the state $11.2 million this year and $2.7 million each year thereafter, amounting to about half of the city's available redevelopment funds, but will be allowed to keep the rest.

With the city having promised $40 million to the 49ers, $2 million and change per year isn't going to cut it, so it's unclear what this will mean for the stadium plan. "In a project of this size and financial complexity, it's going to require some flexibility to see it through," 49ers spokesperson Steve Weakland told the San Jose Mercury News, which translates as "We'll figure something out."

Realistically, a few million missing dollars in public money isn't likely to have as big an effect on whether the project gets built as the underlying shakiness of the $493 million in private money, what with the economy still in the crapper. NFL money would help some, obviously, but it still looks as if the most financially workable scenario involves the 49ers and Raiders sharing a stadium — which, since it presumably requires one to be the tenant and one the landlord, is going to be no easy feat to negotiate.

August 04, 2011

49ers unveil teeny tiny stadium

This just in: The San Francisco 49ers have finally succeeded in building a stadium! Okay, it's only two-and-a-half feet long, but why quibble over details?

Aside from allowing team employees to fondle it, the new stadium model looks pretty much identical to the computer renderings that were issued two years ago, though the "green roof" looks to have disappeared. (Either that, or the 49ers' craft drawer ran out of felt.) There will, however, still be metaphors about both Roman amphitheaters and open-source software.

July 26, 2011

The NFL's new stadium fund explained (sort of)

With the NFL lockout finally over, the blogwaves are afire with talk of how the league's new collective bargaining agreement will affect various teams' stadium campaigns. We've already seen a report that the San Diego Chargers could get up to $150 million in NFL stadium funds, another that the San Francisco 49ers and Raiders could pool their stadium credits to get $300 million for a shared stadium, and still others that AEG's planned Los Angeles stadium could get a cut. (The Minnesota Vikings could also be in line for funds, though apparently they've already been counting that particular chicken before it hatched.)

So how much money is really available, and where is it coming from? The press reports are maddeningly incomplete and contradictory, but this is, to the best of my knowledge, what's going on:

• Back in olden times, the NFL had a program called "G-3," which allowed home teams to keep the visitors' share of club seat revenues to use to help pay off new stadium costs. Initially implemented to help convince NFL teams to remain in large markets — it was originally concocted, in fact, by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who limited it to the top six media markets, of which he just happened to play in #6 — it was eventually expanded to the whole league. Then the program ran out, and the flow of funds stopped.
• The successor to G-3 — which, sadly, won't be called G-4 — instead takes a 1.5% cut off the top of NFL revenues, and allocates it to stadium projects. (Sources disagree over whether this comes entirely out of the players' share or the owners would contribute as well.) At $9 billion a year in total league revenues, that would imply $135 million a year in stadium credits — though apparently the math isn't nearly so simple, which may explain why this article says only $95 million. Still, that's a huge amount of money, enough over ten years pay off about $734 million in stadium bonds. (It's not $950 million in stadium bonds because payments ten years from now aren't worth the same as payments now.)
• That huge number notwithstanding, scuttlebutt is that only three teams will be allowed to tap the new stadium loan fund, with rumors putting a cap at $150 million per team. That'd mean that from among the 49ers, Raiders, Vikings, Chargers, any team moving to L.A., and maybe the Jacksonville Jaguars, at least a couple of teams would get left out in the cold. Unless the NFL expanded the program again, which it seemingly would have the money to do.

All in all, this is a good thing for both teams wanting to build stadiums and for taxpayers not wanting to put their own money into stadiums, as this is the NFL recognizing that — because of its weird status as a league where the vast majority of revenue comes from national TV contracts — if it wants to encourage teams to stay in big markets and avoid killing the Fox golden goose, it needs to subsidize stadiums with its own money. Of course, it also could end up helping grease the wheels for some otherwise stuck stadium projects that would still involve some taxpayer money — $150 million per stadium doesn't go all that far — so in that sense, not so good. But in the grand scheme of things, billionaires voting to spend some of their own billions on projects to increase their billions is nothing to sneeze at.

July 21, 2011

Raiders, 49ers double down on stadium demands

In case you missed it — and judging from my email inbox this morning, not many of you did — the San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders have finally bowed to the wishes of the NFL and begun discussing a shared football stadium, a la what the New York Jets and Giants pulled off in New Jersey:

"We've put our teams together," 49ers Chief Executive Jed York said late Monday at an event for NFL fans in Los Angeles. "It doesn't mean we're going to find the right deal that fits for both teams, but we're certainly going to get a look at those options."

The Raiders appear amenable to a partnership. "We have said repeatedly that we have an open mind with respect to our stadium solution," said Raiders chief executive Amy Trask, also on hand for the "NFL 101" event, held at the Los Angeles Coliseum. "An open mind means an open mind as to sharing a facility with the 49ers. I say to Jed regularly that we should have not only an open mind to the sharing of the facility, but to the location of the facility which we might share. And so there are a lot of options for us to consider."

The key phrase there, obviously, is "the location of the facility." The 49ers have been focused on Santa Clara, but that's been on hold since last fall due to financing holdups. (Though if the NFL settles its labor situation this week as rumored, that should help clear things up there some.) The Raiders, meanwhile, have been mumbling quietly about a new stadium in Oakland, but not much has been heard on that front since Oakland's stadium authority announced a feasibility study almost a year and a half ago. San Francisco is still pushing its own stadium plan, meanwhile, and there are plenty of other cities in the Bay Area within driving distance of Oakland and SF on a Sunday afternoon, if it comes to shaking loose new ideas.

Reading tea leaves, it seems like the pact between the two Bay Area teams is on the one hand an admission that in the current economic climate (and California's current budget mess, not to mention its laws about public referendums for taxpayer-subsidized projects), neither team has a great shot at getting a stadium built on their own; and on the other, a show of force that could be used to pit local governments against each other in a bidding war. After all, if you're the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority, which is more likely to light a fire under your butt: The Raiders asking for a new stadium, or the Raiders and 49ers saying, "You can have both of us together, or else we're both heading to the South Bay?" It's all about the leverage.

April 28, 2011

Can't tell the Oakland Coliseum names without a scorecard

The Oakland Coliseum just got its fourth corporate name in the last 14 years, after Overstock.com agreed to pay $1.2 million a year for the next six years for naming rights for the home of the Raiders and A's. (Make your own jokes about unloading excess outfielders.) That's not a ton of money, but as I told the Bay Citizen (and Craig Calcaterra seconded), used stadium names aren't worth much, because eventually everyone just calls it "the Coliseum."

Worse yet for the new name owners: They themselves are in the process of changing their name, to O.co (supposedly this already happened back in January, but I guess either someone forgot to get the memo or it doesn't apply within the U.S.). So if anyone calls it anything but "the Coliseum" it'll likely be "the O," which will only end up being free publicity for a different company, or maybe for robot assistants.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco 49ers have hired CAA to sell naming rights to their as-yet-unbuilt Santa Clara stadium, which makes it even less clear what the heck Gideon Yu is for.

April 27, 2011

49ers' hiring of Yu a sign of stadium desperation?

The San Francisco 49ers have hired venture capitalists and ex-Facebook exec Gideon Yu to be their "chief strategy officer," a move that has already triggered all kinds of speculation about why on earth a guy of Yu's stature would take such a job, and what this means for the 49ers' Santa Clara stadium deal. As the San Jose Mercury News' Tim Kawakami writes:

Guys like Yu usually buy teams (or at least purchase percentages of them), they don't seek employment from them.

So... I asked [49ers owner Jed] York specifically if Yu is coming in as a minority investor, and York said he was not.

But it's sort of like saying a crumbling institution is hiring Bill Gates strictly as an IT guy—umm, at some point, that doesn't quite fly all the way.

Kawakami speculates that the 49ers "need some new brainpower on the financing front," and that Yu could even be a potential buyer for the team should the Yorks decide to sell. Certainly with the Santa Clara stadium currently stalled by the one-two punch of the lockout and the economy, new ideas would be welcome. But unless he has some hidden talents, it's hard to see how Yu is going to generate a billion dollars out of thin air unless things change significantly on the football revenue front.

March 22, 2011

Santa Clara prepays $4M to 49ers for stadium

And the deed is done: The Santa Clara city council yesterday voted 5-2 to hand over $4 million to the San Francisco 49ers to start preparing their proposed stadium site, even though financing for the deal isn't in place yet. Also, even though council members only had two hours to read the contract before voting on it.

Sums up the San Jose Mercury News:

Stadium supporters insist the move is only safeguarding money already pledged to the stadium -- and approved by voters in June.

Yet, the risk is clear: If the team starts spending the city's money to prep the site and then abandons the project, it would be money down the drain -- unless another developer comes in with a new project.

It's also not entirely clear, to me anyway, what happens to the other $36 million in regional development authority money promised to the 49ers if Gov. Jerry Brown succeeds in decommissioning the RDAs. Or why the city didn't just hand over all $40 million to the team now. Though right now it seems like government officials all over California are just panicking about Brown's death-to-RDAs plan, so maybe expecting legislation that makes total sense is asking a bit much.

March 21, 2011

Santa Clara to vote on "protecting" RDA money by giving it to 49ers

Ten days after voting to transfer its regional development authority's assets to the city, Santa Clara city officials have come up with an even more dramatic idea for blocking Gov. Jerry Brown from reclaiming RDA money for the state: Handing over $4.5 million, and possibly as much as $40 million, to the San Francisco 49ers, as an advance on the $114 million the city plans to give the team for their new stadium if it ever gets built.

"In order to protect that money, we have to take away one more argument from the state," Santa Clara Mayor Jamie Matthews told the San Jose Mercury News. He called the vote, which is planned for later today, a "conceptual action to protect our funds."

Not everyone feels that way, as you might imagine. Councilmember Jamie McLeod told the Merc News that "we still have to make sure we don't overcommit the city financially," while Jay Keehan of the group Santa Clarans Play Fair warned that any contract with the 49ers would need to require that the team repay the money if the stadium is never built. (Or, better, if it isn't built by a certain time, since the thing about "never" is that it never actually arrives.)

In related news, meanwhile, Santa Clara County has settled its lawsuit against San Jose's RDA over $62.9 million in funds it said it was owed, with San Jose officials agreeing to hand over a property worth an estimated $10 million and commit to a payment plan on the rest. San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed explained that Gov. Brown's war on RDAs was the motivation here as well: "It's certainly in our interest to get the money over to the county rather than have the state take it away."

Of course, the state can still take away the RDA's future revenue streams, and it's not entirely clear from the reporting what happens to Santa Clara's money if the RDA's pockets are empty when it's time to make payments. But for San Jose officials, it at least clears the way for them to attempt their own transfer of RDA land to the city for an Oakland A's stadium ... if that ever gets built.

March 11, 2011

City of Santa Clara tries 49ers RDA money grab

The city of San Jose wasn't the only one to attempt a grab of RDA money on Tuesday: nearby Santa Clara's city council also voted on Tuesday to transfer $140 million plus 178 acres of property from its development authorities to the city. About $40 million of the money is earmarked for a new San Francisco 49ers stadium.

It's not entirely clear whether these moves are legal: The state legislature is set to enact budget language that prevents cities from raiding their RDAs' bank accounts before the authorities are folded, but as Marianne O'Malley of the state Legislative Analyst's Office told the Sacramento Bee, "Whether it's going to work completely is not entirely clear."

In any case, 49ers president Jed York insisted that he had "alternative plans" that would fill the $40 million gap if the RDA money weren't available. Which you'd think would raise the question of why the city of Santa Clara is being asked for the money if the 49ers don't need it, but perhaps that's not the sort of thing that's raised in polite company.

February 23, 2011

Santa Clara council appoints selves as stadium authority, but still short $40m

The Santa Clara city council moved last night to protect their San Francisco 49ers stadium plan from Gov. Jerry Brown's threat to eliminate regional development authorities by voting unanimously to appoint a new stadium authority made up of ... themselves.

"What we want to do through these actions is confirm the very excellent programs that our redevelopment agency has been able to bring to the city of Santa Clara," Santa Clara City Manager Jennifer Sparacino told KGO-TV.

What the council can't confirm, however, is the $40 million worth of tax money that the Santa Clara RDA was expected to kick in to the 49ers stadium — if Brown succeeds in eliminating the RDAs, that money goes back into the general fund. "We're counting on those funds, we're expecting that investment to be there," said 49ers spokesperson Lisa Lang; Santa Clara Mayor Jamie Matthews said there's no Plan B if the RDA money is taken away.

Added Matthews: "Are you at a time out before you can continue the game? No, We're at the longest yard at the end zone." Does that make Gov. Brown Warden Hazen?

December 27, 2010

Stadium news from around the snowy globe

Slowly getting back up to speed here — it still looks like this outside. Let's start with a quick news roundup:

• Quebec Mayor Regis Labeaume has set a December 31 deadline for getting funding in place for a new NHL arena, but that surely ain't happening, especially not with Prime Minister Stephen Harper having pretty much ruled out using federal cash for sports facilities. Labeaume said earlier this month that he had a "Plan B" for arena financing, but according to a federal government negotiator, "right now we have nothing on the table."
• The 49ers signed a lease extension committing them to play in whatever the hell Candlestick Park is called these days through the year 2014. This isn't really much of a surprise given that team officials had already pretty much said a new stadium in Santa Clara couldn't open until 2015 at the soonest. But it is a reminder that leases are made to be extended.
• It looks like that plan for San Diego to build a new Chargers stadium with TIF district dollars isn't likely to happen, now that everyone involved has noticed that there isn't enough redevelopment district money left to build both a stadium and other planned projects. TIF money could still be a piece of the puzzle, of course, but somebody's going to need to find some more cash before any San Diego stadium deal can proceed.

November 01, 2010

Goodell: Niners stadium funds must come from players' hides

Echoing what San Francisco 49ers officials said two weeks ago, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell this weekend all but said that there will be no new stadium in Santa Clara until a new labor agreement is reached:

"It's the CBA. That's what (investors) are concerned about," Goodell said on the eve of the 49ers' game against the Broncos at Wembley Stadium. "They want to make sure that the CBA is something that will allow them to finance a stadium. And that's challenging in this environment." ...

"And then you add the economy on top of that, it's a difficult environment to get a stadium built," Goodell said. ...

"I think (new stadiums) are great for the fans, but the financing no longer comes from the public sector," he said. "A lot of these stadiums are being moved to privately run facilities. And that's fine. It's a transition. But that transition is changing the economics for the owners."

And why exactly would the NFL commissioner be publicly pooh-poohing a stadium plan that the 49ers have been working feverishly on for years? Because the intended audience isn't the city of Santa Clara, which already signed off on $444 million in stadium subsidies back in June, so doesn't need any more convincing. Rather, it's the players union, which is being served notice that owners are planning to cry poverty, despite record profits, by claiming that if owners are going to be asked to build privately financed stadiums, players will have to kick back some of their salaries to make it happen. (And no, I'm not sure how Goodell got away with calling a stadium getting $444 million in taxpayer money "privately financed" — but at the risk of blaming the messenger, that's modern journalism for you.)

In other words, Goodell's statement is a bargaining tactic, so there's no reason to believe the 49ers stadium plan is any more (or less) endangered than it was a few months ago, although that was pretty endangered to begin with. The real upshot seems to be that there will be no action on a new 49ers stadium — and possibly other stadiums, including one for the Minnesota Vikings and whatever may or may not get built in L.A., until the league has finished using the stadium issue as a bludgeon with which to smack around the union at the negotiating table. So depending on how long the anticipated 2011 lockout goes on, we could be in for a long hiatus.

October 21, 2010

49ers: No Santa Clara stadium until labor battle's settled

The San Jose A's project isn't the only South Bay stadium plan running into trouble this week: San Francisco 49ers officials announced yesterday that it won't be able to raise private money for its planned Santa Clara stadium until the NFL's labor situation is resolved. According to a team statement:

Until there is a new collective bargaining agreement that embraces the realities of NFL economics today, the Santa Clara stadium project won't attract the required funding from either the NFL clubs or the financial markets. Since the financing plan needs to be in place several years before the stadium opens, the planned 2014 opening date may be delayed by a year.

So, is this just a shot across the bow of the players' union — agree to givebacks, or you'll make the 49ers cry! — or a genuine sign that the Santa Clara project's financing is in real trouble? There are some hints in a statement from an official for Goldman Sachs, the vampire squid investment bank hired by the Niners to arrange private financing, who told the San Jose Mercury News, "In order for the project to become reality, we need the participation of the league in the funding." The NFL, in turn, issued a statement saying that the "current economics of the NFL and the uncertainty of our labor situation" make it impossible for it to invest in stadiums, and that "We are working hard to reach an agreement with the players union that will provide the resources once again for significant capital investments by the league in projects such as a new Bay Area stadium."

What this all sounds like is that the 49ers have no hope of raising the money for a stadium just via private investors — no real surprise given the nearly $1 billion price tag, and anyway the team has said this before — but that the NFL isn't going to reinstitute its league-funded loan program for new stadiums unless it can fund it with givebacks from the union. Which means what we have is a standoff, one that likely won't be resolved until after a work stoppage that wipes out part or all of the 2011 season. And then the NFL would have to arrange to reinstitute the loan program, and Goldman would have to line up private investors in what's projected to be a still dismal economic climate ... at this rate, 2015 could be optimistic.

August 03, 2010

49ers threw $5m at stadium voters

Campaign filings show that the San Francisco 49ers spent nearly $5 million on their stadium referendum campaign in Santa Clara this spring, including a last-minute infusion of $800,000 from Niners owner Jed York. That would be a record for a Santa Clara referendum, and close to one for any stadium campaign anywhere. It would also be more than $300 per "yes" vote.

Meanwhile, the opposition, Santa Clara Plays Fair, raised a little over $20,000 for the "no" side. That means the 100-to-1 rule remains in place: Outspend your opposition by a factor of 100, and you'll probably win a stadium vote; less than that, and you'll probably lose.

June 11, 2010

Bay Area papers: Oh wait, 49ers stadium finances don't work after all

Now that the San Francisco 49ers' $444 million in stadium subsidies from the city of Santa Clara has been approved, everybody is jumping to say that the private side of the deal looks increasingly uncertain, possibly enough to cause the whole thing to collapse:

• Howard Mintz of the San Jose Mercury News says there are "no guarantees" the 49ers can line up $493 million in private money, given the lousy economy. Meanwhile, the grim naming rights market (that is, outside of websites looking for some quick media exposure) means the city could have trouble raising its $330 million &mdash though as Roger Noll pointed out last week, the "cart before the horse" nature of the stadium plan means the building would be in the ground before the naming-rights shortfall became apparent.
• San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom declared that the Santa Clara plan is "built on shaky economic ground" and that "San Francisco stands ready to welcome its 49ers home" — adding, in an apparent attempt at hardball: "But we will not wait forever."
• Noll tells the New York Times that in his assessment, "there's only a 50 percent chance that it gets built" in Santa Clara.

Of course, everybody's just guessing right now, but "up in the air" seems a fair assessment of the Santa Clara stadium plans. The bigger news from the Times article, came in this tangential bit at the end about Oakland A's owner Lew Wolff inviting a fan who wants to keep the team in Oakland into his luxury box for a chat:

Mr. Leon and his friends talked with the A's owner from the third inning on, at first hardly noticing that Dallas Braden was on his way to pitching a perfect game. Mr. Wolff left in the seventh inning, pulling on an Earthquakes jacket as he walked out of the suite.

That's right: The owner of the Oakland A's apparently left a game in the 7th inning when his pitcher was pitching a perfect game. I'm not taking sides in the issue of where the A's should play, but this should certainly give Wolff a leg up in the race for worst owner in baseball.

UPDATE: The A's fan site newballpark.org has now picked up on this exciting controversy, insisting that Wolff typically heads down to the box seats around the 7th inning, and so didn't miss out on Braden's perfecto. More updates to follow after the surveillance video has been analyzed by the NSA.

June 09, 2010

49ers get $444 million in Santa Clara cash, just need half a billion more

And so the 100-to-1 Rule stands untarnished: Voters in Santa Clara, where the San Francisco 49ers spent at least $4 million campaigning for a new $937 million stadium, as against about $20,000 by the opposition, have approved the plan, with Measure J winning by a 60-40% margin.

What Measure J actually approves, though, isn't the stadium per se, but rather the package of $114 million in direct tax subsidies, plus $330 million in money that's supposed to be reimbursed from uncertain venue revenues, that the 49ers say they need to make their stadium work. And there's still one huge missing piece of the puzzle: The team says it wants the NFL to kick in via a subsidized loan (actually a grant, since the team could "repay" it via revenues it would otherwise have to give to the league anyway). Only trouble is, the program that supplied these loans ran out of funds three years ago, and it now needs to be renewed as part of the next collective bargaining agreement.

And the only trouble with that is that the old CBA doesn't expire until next March, and the league and players already look to be headed for contract armageddon after that, with the players' union head predicting that the chances of a lockout in 2011 is a 14 on a scale of 1 to 10. So it could be quite a while before the Niners know whether they can count on NFL help, meaning construction likely wouldn't begin until 2012 at the earliest — making the team's plans for a 2014 opening possible, but not necessarily likely.

And it's worth noting that a lot can happen in two years. In 1997, after all, the 49ers won a vote to get $100 million in public money for a new stadium in San Francisco, one that never ultimately got off the ground. Team owner Jed York says this deal is less complicated, without an adjacent mall and with better transportation infrastructure. Still, as San Jose Mercury News columnist Gary Peterson notes, yesterday's vote was "not to be confused with a touchdown. It's more like a first-and-10 from midfield."

June 07, 2010

Could 49ers bail on Santa Clara plan even if vote passes?

The long-awaited Santa Clara vote on a 49ers stadium will finally be held tomorrow, but according to Sports Illustrated's Ann Killion, even a resounding yes vote might not put an end to the controversy. That's because, Killion speculates, the team's owners themselves might not be able to afford their share of the deal:

With cost overruns, it could amount to well more than half a billion dollars. No one thinks the York family can stomach that kind of investment.

"The worst thing that could happen to the Yorks is if this passes," said one source close to the ballot process.

Of course, blind-sourced quotes like this are a dime a dozen, so take this with a grain of salt. The bulk of Killion's column, meanwhile, is devoted to an interview with Stanford sports economist Roger Noll, who gives his clearest explanation yet for why he thinks the stadium deal would represent a substantial risk for the city of Santa Clara:

Santa Clara has assured voters that if $330 million can't be raised through naming rights and seat licenses the 49ers will pay for the costs or the project will be killed. But, in a cart-before-the-horse scenario, the stadium authority will be created and borrow finances before those rights can be sold.

"The sequence of decisions is incorrect," Noll said.

Meanwhile, Niners owner Jed York did an about face on last week's veiled threat to move the team out of the Bay Area, telling our old friend Zennie Abraham that "the San Francisco 49ers will remain in the Bay Area." Not that you should necessarily believe him any more (or any less) this time around, but maybe it'll win a few votes of people who'd otherwise be peeved by the perceived threat to move to L.A. if things don't go the Yorks' way in Santa Clara.

June 01, 2010

Spending, chattering heat up as 49ers vote nears

The Santa Clara vote on a new stadium for the San Francisco 49ers is exactly one week away, and the papers are alread abuzz with talk about who'll win and ... okay, mostly who'll win, because that's all that papers care about these days.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Ray Ratto writes that if the stadium referendum loses, 49ers owner Jed York could go down in history like Giants owner Bob Lurie, which is fightin' words in the Bay Area. San Jose Mercury News columnist Mark Purdy is confused why he doesn't get to vote just because he doesn't live in Santa Clara, but nonetheless praises the 49ers stadium campaigners for "keeping it relatively low-key and businesslike" — notwithstanding the $150 per registered voter they're spending on the referendum campaign, a possible new record for a local election and 180 times what opponents have spent.

Over in the Bay Citizen, meanwhile — which isn't a newspaper and so can pay attention to those other things, what were they called? oh, right, "issues" — Alameda County Supervisor Gail Steele had this to say about Santa Clara's plans to rely on seat licenses to finance the city's $330 million share of the stadium cost:

"They're crazy. ... "I don't want to hear they're in Santa Clara and they're in an upper-income area. Today's market is really really risky — we've been to hell and back with this stuff."

Yes, we noticed.

Finally, the Mercury News speculates that if the Santa Clara vote fails, the 49ers could get a new stadium in "San Francisco, Oakland [or] even Los Angeles" — notwithstanding that the only source in the story who comments about an L.A. move asserts that it's not going to happen. But of course, it's not like this kind of misdirection matters, since it's not like the Yorks are using veiled threats to go to L.A. to encourage pro-stadium votes — oh, wait:

"What's at stake is making sure the 49ers have a permanent home in the Bay Area for the next 40 or 50 years," York said this week in an exclusive interview with Comcast SportsNet.

"Growing up in Youngstown, Ohio, I watched the (Cleveland) Browns become the Baltimore Ravens. And my family never wanted that to happen with the 49ers, to look somewhere else outside the market."

Polls open at 7 am next Tuesday. Vote early and vote often.

May 18, 2010

Noll: 49ers stadium public cost could triple

The always thoughtful sports economist Roger Noll had an op-ed in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle analyzing the upcoming Santa Clara vote on a 49ers stadium. His conclusion: The promised taxpayer subsidy level is low by NFL standards, but risks rising by as much as 200% if some of the financing turns sour.

This is a point I've harped on before, but Noll goes into more detail. In particular:

Seat licenses played a major role in the plan to renovate the Oakland Coliseum to lure the Raiders back from Los Angeles. Sales of Raiders licenses were less than expected, which increased the public cost of the renovation. A scary feature of the Santa Clara proposal is that it repeats a flaw in the Coliseum plan: the stadium authority, not the team, will sell the seat licenses.

The stake in license sales is huge. If 30,000 are sold at an average price of $4,000, the stadium authority will collect $120 million, but this estimate could be off by 50 percent or more. Without a marketing study, the revenue from license sales cannot be reliably estimated.

Noll adds that the city of Santa Clara has promised in its stadium FAQ that the 49ers will pay any shortfalls or else the project will be killed. However, he adds, "the problem with this answer is that the Stadium Authority must borrow and pay its commitment to finance the stadium before tickets, naming rights, seat licenses and pouring rights are sold."

Noll concludes by cautioning voters: "Santa Clara residents should realize that the stadium is public consumption with an uncertain price tag, not a lucrative investment." That sums it up pretty well — if you vote for a 49ers stadium, be sure that you want it at $409 million, not just at $79 million.

May 11, 2010

SF Chronicle: Niners stadium opponents say — oh, who cares about them?

The San Francisco Chronicle chimed in yesterday with a long report on the Santa Clara 49ers stadium battle; unfortunately, it largely left out the "news" part, instead opting for a he-said-she-said recounting of the two sides' arguments (opponents: "It'll cost taxpayers more than they're saying!"; 49ers: "Nuh-uh!") without any attempt to determine whose numbers are correct. C'mon, people — I already did all the math for you.

In any case, though, the Chron soon moved on to its main point, which was that it doesn't much matter who's right, as the opponents are doomed to failure in any case:

It's going to be an uphill battle for the stadium opponents. A poll released late last month by the San Jose Mercury News and KGO-TV found that 52 percent of likely voters in Santa Clara supported the stadium plan while 36 percent intended to vote against the measure, and there has been little to suggest the numbers have moved much since then.

The stadium also has the enthusiastic support of government, business and labor leaders in the community, including five of the seven council members, the trustees of the Santa Clara Unified School District, the president of the city's Chamber of Commerce and a variety of other officials.

Curbed immediately picked up on this message, calling the Niners stadium "inevitable." It's so much less work to cover the ponies than the news.

May 03, 2010

NFL dangles Super Bowl as Santa Clara stadium reward

The NFL did that thing the NFL does on Friday, promising a Super Bowl for Santa Clara if the city builds a stadium for the San Francisco 49ers. Or rather, promising to "support and encourage a Super Bowl bid," which isn't quite the same thing, though it works the same for generating headlines.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Examiner examines what the 49ers have meant to San Francisco (economically, not emotionally), and comes up with this list:

• They pay $5.5 million a year in rent, but the Recreation and Park Department spends $4.1 million on stadium upkeep.
• San Francisco gets about $2.4 million a year in taxes from the team.
• Some jobs are created, but mostly they're only ten days a year, as the team's full-time staff is already located in Santa Clara.
• The city gets free exposure when images of San Francisco landmarks appear on national TV broadcasts, but probably still would even if the team moved, as Santa Clara doesn't have any landmarks.

Thus having downplayed the 49ers' economic value, the Examiner nonetheless insists that a new stadium would be "play a crucial role in stimulating the economy," citing "business and tourism officials" and a 1997 report that bringing a Super Bowl to town would "generate $300 million for The City." Do we really have to go over this again?

April 26, 2010

49ers stadium has poll lead; Great America seeks rent cut

The first major polls are out in the runup to the June 8 vote in Santa Clara on a San Francisco 49ers stadium, and so far, the ayes have it: The stadium referendum leads 52% to 36%, with 11% undecided. (Or as San Jose Mercury News reporter Howard Mintz puts it, the Niners have "a substantial fourth-quarter political lead" — journalists just can't resist a cheap sports metaphor.)

Likely voters are less inclined to support the plan than occasional voters, however, and 63% of respondents said they are at least "somewhat worried" about the cost to taxpayers. Roughly equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans support the stadium proposal, if you care about such things.

Stadium opponents note that neither the ballot question (which is apparently what was read by pollsters) nor 49ers campaign materials mention the public costs of the project; Santa Clara Plays Fair activist Chris Koltermann told KGO-TV: "I went through all the 49er campaign materials and came up with a list of 15 fictional statements including 'no impact on general fund.' That's not true and 'no costs to residents,' that's not true."

Meanwhile, Cedar Fair, owners of the Great America amusement park that would lose a parking lot to the 49ers stadium, added to its lawsuit against the project a new demand that the city eliminate its $5.3 million guaranteed rent if a stadium is built:

"We believe it is essential that any proposed resolution include a realignment of the economic interests of the city and Cedar Fair," Geoffrey Etnire, an attorney for the company, wrote in a letter to City Manager Jennifer Sparacino. "The city must be prepared to accept some of the risk that the revenues and profitability of Great America will be reduced."

Reading between the lines, it sounds like Cedar Fair would accept a rent that fluctuated with its revenues. That could still represent a multi-million-dollar hit to the Santa Clara city budget, though.

As for what Cedar Fair will do if its pleas for a rent break are ignored, that's unclear. Santa Clara Mayor Patricia Mahan, asked on Friday whether she'd consider lowering the amusement park's rent, replied: "No. We have a contract. A contract is a contract."

April 13, 2010

Great America owners file new suit against 49ers stadium

One San Francisco 49ers stadium lawsuit leaves, one enters: Great America amusement park owners Cedar Fair, fresh off their sale to new investors falling through, have again sued the city of Santa Clara, charging that its environmental impact review for the stadium project is insufficient. (The stadium would be built atop what's currently a Great America parking lot.)

Cedar Fair already has one suit pending against the city, charging that it violated state law by signing a binding agreement to build the stadium before EIR was complete. Yesterday was the deadline for filing a direct EIR challenge, and the San Jose Mercury News speculates that the new suit "may be another tactic to jump start negotiations with city and 49ers officials." Undoubtedly, but given how long these negotiations are going on, it certainly holds the threat of delaying the project, if nothing else.

Unlike the citizen lawsuit that was kicked out of court last week, this suit does not seek to challenge the June 8 voter referendum on the 49ers deal, which will still go forward. If it passes, then we can expect to see both Cedar Fair and the Niners gearing up their lawyers.

April 06, 2010

49ers stadium lawsuit bounced, vote to proceed

So much for that lawsuit to block a June vote on the San Francisco 49ers' planned stadium in Santa Clara: A county judge yesterday dismissed the suit, saying the plaintiff lacked "clear and convincing evidence" that the ballot language was misleading. The June 8 vote will now presumably go ahead, as will all the 49ers' campaign spending.

(UPDATE: The San Francisco Chronicle's John Cote notes that while a 49ers-aligned attorney testified yesterday that the lawsuit's claim of a $114 million stadium subsidy — which is not mentioned in the ballot language — was "plucked out of thin air," the figure in fact appears in the 49ers' own documents.)

In related news, the sale of Cedar Fair, the amusement park company that controls the proposed site of the 49ers stadium and which has opposed it on and off, has fallen through, apparently because the new investors weren't happy with Cedar Fair's revenues. What this means for the stadium deal is uncertain, but then, what the now-aborted sale meant for it was uncertain, too.

April 02, 2010

Can Santa Clara stadium opponents avoid Arlington activists' fate?

The San Jose Mercury News has a nice profile today of the opposition to the San Francisco 49ers stadium plan in Santa Clara (including a photo of frequent FoS reader and commenter Chris Koltermann). The article compares the Santa Clara battle to the similarly funding-deprived opposition to the Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington, but notes that opposition to public subsidies is much stronger in California, adding:

Arlington's [stadium activist Wayne] Norred says the "No" side has an advantage in Santa Clara that wasn't a factor in the Cowboys' campaign: Two City Council members, William Kennedy and Jamie McLeod, oppose the project. Arlington's City Council was 9-0 in favor of the Cowboys deal.

"That shows a crack in the city's political structure on the thing," he said. "If they are moonbats, you have a problem. But if they are reasonable people, that helps."

Speaking of the Cowboys stadium, its price tag has now officially hit $1.2 billion. This isn't a problem for Arlington, since the team covers cost overruns, and shouldn't be in Santa Clara, since the 49ers have promised the same (though there's still the nagging question about revenue shortfalls). But it is an indication of how stadiums on paper never quite match up to actually existing ones.

March 23, 2010

49ers face suit, Quakes need sponsors, A's report still on hold

Much news from Santa Clara County:

• A former Santa Clara mayoral candidate has sued to block the June vote on building a new San Francisco 49ers stadium. Deborah Bress charges that the ballot language is misleading and hides the project's true costs; given that this issue has been raised before, if nothing else it'll be interesting to see a court of law take up the question.
• The 49ers, meanwhile, have already spent $1.4 million on the stadium vote campaign, including, presumably, for the lawyers who wrote up that contentious ballot language. The stadium opposition has raised all of $3,000, which according to the 100-to-1 rule (stadium referendums generally only pass when proponents have outspent opponents by that margin) indicates that if these spending trends keep up, the Niners have a good chance of winning the vote. Assuming, of course, that there is one.
• Over in San Jose, meanwhile, Earthquakes owner Lew Wolff clarified his plans for where the heck he'll come up with $40 million or so in "sponsorships" to pay for his proposed new stadium: He's going to make some calls. "The process of contacting potential advertisers and sponsors will begin in about a month, maybe sooner," Wolff told MLS Insider, adding, "It has to be privately financed in California, there is no public financing, so we do need certain level of pre-commitment to get the stadium done."
• Finally, MLB commissioner Bud Selig said Sunday that he's still waiting for that three-man commission he appointed last April to finish its report on sites for a potential new Oakland A's ballpark — the most important element of which will be whether San Jose is on the list, and if so whether the commission has decided how much A's owner Wolff would have to pay the San Francisco Giants owners for an official incursion into their MLB-designated territory. "They're getting reasonably close to competing their work, but they have some left," Selig told reporters Sunday. "They're working their way through a lot of things and they've made no recommendations to me." This is taking longer than watching Jack Cust try to score from first.

March 01, 2010

Poll: Santa Clarans evenly split on 49ers stadium

An independent poll of Santa Clara voters has found them evenly split, 45%-45%, on whether to build a new stadium for the San Francisco 49ers. Caveat: The poll was only of 200 Santa Clarans, and has a seven-percent margin of error. Still, it's a sign that the vote could go down to the wire, despite the Niners' rather whopping campaign spending advantage.

The poll was reported by San Francisco Chronicle columnists Matier and Ross, who last week promoted the idea of a shared stadium in Oakland for the 49ers and Raiders, of which Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty enthused, "I'm not sure how much public participation would even be needed, aside from providing the land. ... We've already been approached by one developer interested in building it." As Santa Clarans could tell you, "not sure" really isn't good enough when it comes to stadium finance plans.

February 15, 2010

Oakland to study shared Niners-Raiders stadium

And we're back to this again: The Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority Board is about to conduct a "feasibility study" of building a new NFL stadium either on or adjacent to the site of the Oakland Coliseum, for the Raiders and possibly the San Francisco 49ers as well.

A shared 49ers-Raiders stadium, a la the new New York Jets-Giants facility opening this year, has already been endorsed by the NFL, and 49ers owner Jed York said he'd consider moving to Oakland, though it's unclear how much that's a ploy to get Santa Clara and San Francisco to up their antes for stadium bids. Especially since Alameda County supervisor Gail Steele promised that no public funds would be used in building a new stadium, given that the county still owes $150 million on its ill-fated renovations to the Coliseum 15 years ago. Though as readers of this site know, there are public funds and then there are public funds.

February 10, 2010

Santa Clara adapts stadium ballot language to meet 49ers' demands

The Santa Clara city council voted 4-3 last night to approve modified language for the upcoming San Francisco 49ers stadium initiative to be voted on by residents in June. In particular, the council agreed to language requested by the 49ers front group Santa Clarans for Economic Progress that the ballot question indicate the stadium would involve "no new taxes for residents" — something that dissenting council members insisted was misleading, especially given that the language won't mention the $114 million in hotel taxes and redevelopment money that would go to the project, let alone the $330 million in bonds that the city will put up, in the hopes of being paid back down the road by stadium revenues. This was enough to convince stadium supporter Joe Kornder to join two stadium opponents in voting against the ballot language, saying he was worried the process had lost "its objectivity."

The Santa Clara council doesn't appear to have posted the final approved language yet, but I'll post a link here as soon as it does. Or, even more likely, some readers will do it first in comments.

February 04, 2010

49ers footing nearly entire Santa Clara stadium lobbying bill

The numbers are in for how much of the budget for Santa Clarans for Economic Progress, the group that's lobbying for a new 49ers stadium, is supplied by the team itself, and the answer is pretty damn near all of it:

Of the almost $364,000 in cash or work time donated to Santa Clarans for Economic Progress -- a group of business owners, former civic officials and others -- all but $985 of it came from the team, the records show. The contribution total includes about $147,000 in staff time from at least five team employees working on the campaign.

The next biggest contributor to the effort was former City Councilwoman Lisa Gillmor with $200.

I think this officially redefines Santa Clarans for Economic Progress from a "49ers-funded group" to a "49ers front group." Journalists, reset your stylebooks.

January 22, 2010

Santa Clara 49ers vote set for June (maybe)

As expected, the Santa Clarans for Economic Progress petitions to hold a public vote on building a stadium for the San Francisco 49ers have been found to be valid. (Or a random sampling of them were, anyway. You know, this could have saved us all a lot of time ten years ago.) Now the referendum, as written by the group (and its sponsors, the 49ers), will automatically go on the ballot for a previously scheduled special election on June 8.

Or maybe not, as the San Jose Mercury News has switched gears and now reports that the Santa Clara city council will decide on Tuesday when the vote will take place. Though the same article says that it will take a simple majority of voters "to approve building a $937 NFL stadium in the city," so fact-checking (or proofreading) may not be the Merc News' strong point.

January 13, 2010

49ers file Santa Clara stadium petitions; vote in June?

The Santa Clara 49ers stadium took another step closer to a public vote yesterday, as the team-backed group Santa Clarans for Economic Progress submitted 8,043 signatures towards putting an initiative on the ballot. If at least 4,640 of the signatures are found valid, the city council has the choice of putting it on the ballot in June, or waiting until the regular election in November; if it clears 6,970 valid names, the vote automatically takes place in June.

There's been a ton of debate among Santa Clarans (several of whom have posted comments on this site) about whether the paid signature gatherers were misinforming people about the purpose of the petitions. (The city council has the option of putting its own referendum on the ballot if the 49ers don't, which would potentially provide more public disclosure and safeguards.) It's not immediately clear if this is grounds for challenging the petition signatures, or indeed what you can do if you've signed the petition and now wish you hadn't.

December 21, 2009

49ers: We like Oakland better than SF

The San Francisco 49ers situation keeps getting weirder and weirder. In the latest twist, 49ers president Jed York said in an interview Friday (but published yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle) that if Santa Clara doesn't work out, Oakland would make a better home for the team than San Francisco. The Oakland Coliseum "has the location and the infrastructure. It's right on a freeway, and it has BART access," said York. "At this point, Oakland just makes more sense."

The NFL has already declared its preference for the 49ers and Raiders sharing a stadium, so it would certainly work out from that perspective. As for how fans of the two rival teams would feel about it, the comments on this site probably say it best.

December 17, 2009

Great America owner sold, 49ers impact unknown

This just in: Cedar Fair, the owner of the Great America amusement park that's suing to stop the 49ers stadium slated for its parking lot in Santa Clara, has been sold to a private investment firm. Asked what this would mean for the stadium battle, an Apollo Global Management spokesperson told the San Jose Mercury News: "No comment. At this point, that's all I'm saying."

December 11, 2009

More shots fired in 49ers stadium war

Speaking of Bay Area bidding wars, San Francisco responded to this week's activity in Santa Clara by issuing new renderings of its own planned 49ers stadium yesterday (coming on the heels of last month's new renderings).

"These illustrations not only show how dramatic a new stadium could be for San Francisco, but they also show how this entire project is going to completely rejuvenate an entire community," Mayor Gavin Newsom told a press conference. First FoS reader to find the rejuvenation in the illustrations wins a free prize!

Meanwhile, NBC Sports football blogger Mike Florio cites a "league source" as telling him that the NFL would prefer that the 49ers and the Raiders share a stadium, since one would be cheaper to build than two. That source wouldn't be the NFL commissioner ten months ago, would it?

December 09, 2009

Santa Clara 49ers stadium takes one step forward, one back

As expected, the Santa Clara city council approved its environmental report on a proposed San Francisco 49ers stadium last night, setting June 8 as the date for a public vote on the measure. As not expected:

• The owners of Great America, the amusement park whose parking lot would be the site of the new stadium, sued the city to block the deal, saying Santa Clara had invalidated the environmental review process by entering into a binding agreement to back the project before the environmental report was done. The legal brief released yesterday by Cedar Fair goes on to state: "As the California Supreme Court has recognized, when a city reaches a binding, detailed agreement with a private developer and publicly commits resources and governmental prestige to that project, the city's reservation of CEQA review until a later, final approval stage is unlikely to convince public observers that the agency fully considered the project's environmental consequences."
• Santa Clarans for Economic Progress, the Astroturf group funded by the 49ers that was behind last month's pro-stadium mailing, announced that it would start gathering petition signatures to get its own initative on the June ballot. A petition-backed initiative would have the advantage of not being subject to environmental review rules — meaning it could give the 49ers an end run around the Cedar Fair lawsuit. No word just yet on what happens if both measures make the ballot, and one wins and one loses.

December 08, 2009

NFL stadium-grubbing notes from all over

I don't know if it's something in the water or the holiday spirit or what, but the last couple of days has seen a rash of attempts to drum up support for NFL stadium deals on pretty flimsy pretexts:

• NFL commissioner Roger Goodell reiterated his henchman's statement from a couple of months ago, insisting that Dolphin Stadium need upgrades if it's going to host more Super Bowls after this year. No word on who would pay for any renovations — which could reportedly include a partial roof to protect fans from rain and/or moving seats closer to the field — but the South Florida Sun-Sentinel did report ominously that South Florida Super Bowl Host Committee Chairman Rodney "said it will be up to the community, which is bidding for the 2014 Super Bowl, to determine the importance of hosting the NFL's championship game."
• The Los Angeles Times reports that the NFL's decision over the weekend to try to eliminate some revenue-sharing payments to low-revenue teams could be "the jab that knocks them to the canvas in the next two or three seasons" and prompts them to relocate to, say, Los Angeles. Given that this will at most amount to a few million dollars a year per team and will likely be overturned in the next collective bargaining agreement, if not sooner than that by a union challenge, this seems a bit of an overstatement.
• A survey of 550 Minnesota residents found that they were more likely to say it was important to keep the Vikings in town when the team was winning, as it is now. Though the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported this as "When Vikings win, drumbeat for new stadium beats faster," it doesn't look like the poll actually asked whether respondents wanted a new stadium; and, in fact, a higher percentage of residents said this year that the Metrodome is an acceptable home for the Vikings than in past seasons when the team was losing.

In other NFL stadium news, the Santa Clara city council is expected to vote tonight to set a 49ers stadium vote for next June. Starting tomorrow: Six months of new pretexts!

UPDATE: But first, the owners of Great America, whose parking lot the 49ers stadium would be built in, are suing the city to void the deal! The fun never stops!

November 23, 2009

49ers fund pro-stadium mailing to everyone in Santa Clara

There's still no date for a vote on the $937 million Santa Clara stadium project for the San Francisco 49ers, but that didn't stop Santa Clarans for Economic Progress from sending out a mailer to all of the city's 46,000 registered voters last week, urging them to vote "yes" on the project. Reports the San Francisco Chronicle:

So how did Santa Clarans for Economic Progress pay for that? With a little help from the 49ers, of course.

Lisa Gillmor, a former city councilwoman and central figure in the pro-stadium group, said the 49ers provided a substantial contribution for the mailers and the team was expected to continue funding Santa Clarans for Economic Progress.

"It will be the significant share of our campaign budget," said Gillmor. She declined to say how much the team put up or the total cost of the mailing, saying it would compromise strategy.

Gillmor added that she expects "San Francisco interests" to finance the "no" campaign, which led Bill Bailey, treasurer for the opposition group Santa Clara Plays Fair, to say that his organization has received only a single $50 donation from anyone in San Francisco.

Weirdly, it doesn't look like the San Jose Mercury News has reported on the mailing yet, though it has found room to speculate on the stadium project's impact on San Francisco's UFL franchise.

November 18, 2009

California NFL stadiums creep forward

California may be setting records for budget deficits, but that isn't stopping it from also setting records for most NFL stadium projects all at the same time. Some recent developments:

• The city of San Diego is about to hire a stadium consultant to explore ways to pay for a new downtown stadium for the Chargers near Petco Park. Chargers stadium czar Mark Fabiani told the San Diego Union Tribune yesterday that the total cost at that site could be less than $800 million, though it's unclear if he was including land costs — the Union Trib notes that Fabiani had previously indicated that revenue from developing land around a new stadium "would play a big part" (their words) in funding construction.
• Zennie Abraham, a former economic advisor to the city of Oakland, notes that San Francisco came out with an economic environmental impact report for its 49ers stadium plan the same time as Santa Clara issued its EIR, and claims the S.F. report looks better. (Abraham derides the Santa Clara report as "written as if by a snickering, snipping bureaucrat who had no patience with questions.") Abraham further notes that with two cities in the running, "the NFL will use Santa Clara as a, well, pawn, in the creation of a deal that ultimately works for both the league and the 49ers." Of course, he could just as easily have said that San Francisco will be used as a pawn to get a better Santa Clara deal. It's how whipsawing works.
• "Walnut's most high-profile resident" came out in favor of the new NFL stadium proposal in neighborhing Industry, calling it "a great opportunity to provide a lot of jobs and to be an economic boost for the area." This famous Walnuttian? Charlie Beck, who was just appointed to be the new chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, notwithstanding that he lives 20 miles from the city limits. (Also, Lance Parrish and Taboo may argue this designation.)

November 16, 2009

Santa Clara on 49ers: Gah, the cars!

With Santa Clara set to hold two meetings on its $937 million San Francisco 49ers stadium proposal (most of which would be paid for by the team, though it's a matter of some dispute exactly how much) today and Wednesday, the city released its revised environmental impact report on Friday, including 160 pages of public comments. As the San Francisco Examiner sums them up:

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District is worried about greenhouse gasses and dust emitted during construction. The Santa Clara County Water District wanted more assurance about bridges and levees. And local residents said they feared the value of their homes will plummet.

But the most concern was saved for transportation impacts. Whether it's streetcars, BART, busses or cars, just about every agency within earshot of Santa Clara City Hall said they were concerned about traffic, traffic and more traffic.

The report indicates that the 49ers are willing to avoid scheduling weeknight games (including Monday nights) if there are insurmountable traffic problems, something that could raise eyebrows among the NFL schedule makers. Though I suppose if the league wants to get the 49ers into a new stadium that badly, it's cheaper than funding it themselves.

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

Santa Clara approves no-bid contract for 49ers

How a bill becomes a law, California version: First, a football team seeking an exemption from competitive bidding rules for its new stadium gives $1,000 in campaign money to a state senator, who then guts one of her own bills and replaces it with language that does what the team wants. Then the state assembly votes to approve it. Then the state senate, which didn't want to seem pushy by voting first on its own bill, approves it too.

This brings us to last night, when the Santa Clara city council voted 5-2 to take advantage of the new state law and hire a 49ers stadium contractor with no competitive bidding, and without the voter referendum that is usually required to do so. There will still be a vote, mind you, but only on whether to do the project as a whole, not on whether to give the 49ers a pass on competitive bidding for the stadium contractor.

And if you're still reading at this point, good for you. As a reward, here's a video of Dutch people singing on a boat.

October 07, 2009

L.A. developers target six (or seven) NFL teams

Majestic Realty stadium czar John Semcken has officially announced his hit list for NFL franchises to lure to Los Angeles, and it looks like the L.A. Times guessed right:

Semcken said new talks would begin after the Super Bowl in February, and may involve the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Buffalo Bills, the Minnesota Vikings, the St. Louis Rams, the Chargers and the Oakland Raiders.

The San Francisco 49ers could also be pursued if a vote for a new stadium in Santa Clara fails.

Semcken said a new stadium could open in 2013, but a team could be relocated as early as next year or the year after, playing at a temporary site for the first couple of years.

In related news, Majestic owner Ed Roski has lost $1 billion of his $2.5 billion net worth in the last year, according to Forbes, thanks to the California real estate crash. Stadium consultant Marc Ganis calls this "significant"; Majestic says it's just a flesh wound.

September 11, 2009

One step forward, one back for Santa Clara 49ers stadium

It was a good news/bad news day for the San Francisco 49ers: The bill to allow them to evade public bidding rules in selecting a stadium contractor without going before a public referendum passed the state senate last night, but Cedar Fair is getting uppity again about allowing a stadium to be built on one of its parking lots. (The city owns the land, but Cedar Fair has a long-term lease for its Great America amusement park.) "Cedar Fair does not believe that the proposed stadium and Great America can coexist without overcoming significant legal and operational issues," Cedar Fair attorney Geoffrey Etnire wrote in a letter to Santa Clara city manager Jennifer Sparacino. "However, Cedar Fair will come to the table in good faith to explore possible resolution of this conflict." Translation: Give us more money, or we'll sue you so hard your heads will spin. Isn't this where we came in?

September 06, 2009

49ers no-bid bill moves forward

If you've been wondering what ever happened to that bill to get the San Francisco 49ers out of a Santa Clara stadium referendum, it passed the state assembly on Thursday. (No details that I can find on the vote tally.) Next up, the state senate, which has yet to vote on the bill even though its main sponsor, Elaine Alquist, is in the senate, not the assembly. California is weird.

Just to be clear, the 49ers will still need a public vote to approve the stadium project if the Alquist bill passes, just not one to evade competitive bidding requirements for selecting a stadium contractor.

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."

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.

July 16, 2009

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.

July 14, 2009

Two economists, no waiting

The San Francisco Chronicle:

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.

July 08, 2009

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

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.

June 25, 2009

49ers vote still up in the air

The city of Santa Clara joined its neighbors in San Jose in punting on a decision on a stadium referendum Tuesday night, saying only that a vote on a San Francisco 49ers stadium would likely take place in March, April, or June. The vote would consist of two ballot questions: One on approving the overall project, the other on allowing the team to forgo competitive-bidding rules in selecting a contractor.

Meanwhile, a recent report by Santa Clara claims that a football stadium would be a boon to the city's money-losing convention center, creating "synergies" (read: more conventions would come to town if they could use the stadium space, too) that would generate hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in new tax revenues. In the memorable words of Heywood Sanders, this theory is "a lot of hooey."

June 12, 2009

Unanswered questions in Santa Clara 49ers deal

Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle had an unusually perceptive editorial on the proposed 49ers stadium in Santa Clara, noting that there are still many unanswered questions about the deal:

One team or two? The 49ers insist they can make a stadium deal work without partnering with the Raiders - though they list it as a possibility.

How much public money? The 49ers claim that Santa Clara's contribution is $79 million. But that does not include $35 million from a proposed hotel tax or the full cost of a $42 million parking garage. Are there other hidden costs?

Is the financing plan realistic? Even though the 49ers are liable if revenues fall short, the city is a partner in this deal and expecting a return on its investment. Voters deserve to know whether the revenue assumptions (ticket licenses, naming rights, concession rights, etc.) are plausible.

Of course, it's not like the Chronicle editors are asking the hard questions about a stadium deal in their own city. Because that would be wrong.

In other Niners news, an online poll of readers of the San Jose Business Journal showed almost 2-to-1 support for the stadium plan, though there's no way of knowing how many of those people are actually registered to vote in Santa Clara — nor, as one blogger notes, "safeguards in place to keep Carmen Policy from voting 500 times from different IP addresses." Great America amusement park owners Cedar Fair, meanwhile, are still grumbling over being cut out of negotiations around the stadium that would rise in their parking lot — which, given that Cedar Fair's lease needs to be reworked as part of the deal, has to be a headache that the 49ers would rather not have.

June 03, 2009

Santa Clara okays 2010 vote on 49ers stadium

At 1:30 this morning, the Santa Clara city council voted 5-2 to approve the city's deal with the San Francisco 49ers for a $937 million stadium, which would cost taxpayers $79 million — or $114 million, or $444 million, depending on how you're counting. The plan will now go to a public referendum, likely next April.

One interesting last-second twist: Cedar Fair, owners of the Great America amusement park whose parking lot would be the site of the stadium, asked for the vote to be delayed so they could complete negotiations with the 49ers, but were turned down. So it's still conceivable that Cedar Fair could go back to holding up the deal if they feel like they're not getting a fair cut.

June 02, 2009

Noll: Santa Clara 49ers deal is tops

Stanford economist Roger Noll has analyzed Santa Clara's proposed deal with the San Francisco 49ers for the San Jose Mercury News and concluded that while some of the revenue projections may be overly optimistic, "you're still going to end up with a better deal than just about any other city has received." While that's admittedly not a very high bar to set, it still should ease qualms about the deal somewhat, given that Noll has been doing this since we were knee-high to David Samson.

In the same article, Santa Clara assistant city manager Ron Garratt responds to my concern that the stadium authority could face revenue shortfalls and require an Indianapolis-style bailout, saying that in either cases of cost overruns or revenue shortfalls, "the city isn't going to pay those expenses." If so, that's great — but it's not what it says in the term sheet. There is a provision stating that "the Stadium Authority will be liable for development costs of the Stadium only to the extent of Stadium Authority Construction Sources actually available," but given that it doesn't say who'll pay these costs otherwise — not to mention that construction would need to begin before things like naming rights and certainly PSLs are sold — this hardly looks like an iron-clad guarantee.

Meanwhile, two community activist groups, Santa Clara Plays Fair and Not With My Money, have begun organizing to defeat the plan if it goes to referendum next spring, saying any government subsidies for a football stadium would be too much. What, like there's something else they could be doing with the money?

June 01, 2009

Could 49ers deal blow up on Santa Clara?

Late Friday night, the city of Santa Clara released its term sheet with the San Francisco 49ers for a new $937 million stadium, a 38-page tome with more moving parts than a Dubai skyscraper. Without going into too much detail about leases and sub-leases (and with a bit of help from the San Jose Mercury News analysis) here's the big picture:

• The city will put in $42 million directly, with another $20 million estimate for moving an electrical substation. The city will also give Great America $17 million worth of parking spaces to compensate it for the stadium being built on one of its parking lots.
• If local hotels vote to approve it, a new hotel tax will supply $35 million.
• A newly created public stadium authority will sell $330 million worth of construction bonds, to be repaid by the sale of naming rights, personal seat licenses (here called "Stadium Builders Licenses"), and a ticket surcharge. The authority will also pay for operating costs on the stadium, but will be reimbursed by the team via annual rent payments.
• The 49ers and the NFL will be on the hook for the remaining $493 million, plus any and all cost overruns.

On the face of it, this sounds great: As 49ers CFO Larry MacNeil put it, "The city's contribution at $79 million is fixed. Ours is not." But there's a big if: While the term sheet guarantees that the team pays for cost overruns, it doesn't say anything about revenue shortfalls. What happens, in particular, if when the stadium authority goes to sell naming rights, PSLs, and so on, it ends up with too little money to pay off those $330 million in bonds? That wouldn't have been a concern a year ago, when stadium names were expected to fetch upwards of $20 million a year, but the naming-rights market has slumped since then — witness both the Dallas Cowboys and New York Jets and Giants stadiums going as yet un-corporate-monikered for lack of a deep-pocketed buyer — and the local history of stadium authorities selling PSLs isn't exactly a glorious one. All of which means there should be at least some concern that the authority could end up short of cash and headed for the Indianapolis scenario, with a choice between raising city subsidies or having the stadium go bankrupt.

There are other questions that don't appear to be answered by the term sheet as well: Will there be additional public infrastructure costs? Will the team get any tax breaks? What penalties will the team be subject to if it tries to break its lease early and move, to avoid the kind of mid-lease shakedowns we've seen in other cities?

Further confusing things is a report from the Santa Clara school district that projects $141 million in new revenues for local schools if the stadium is built — something that came as a bit of a surprise to city officials, who had calculated the school tax benefit would total only $20 million. "I will tell you that this thing is hideously complex," school board VP Andrew Ratermann told the Merc News. Good thing there's plenty of time to look it over before the city council vote — oh wait...

May 29, 2009

Santa Clara 49ers plan expected today

The city of Santa Clara is expected to issue a "term sheet" tonight for its proposed San Francisco 49ers stadium — all of four days before the city council is scheduled to vote on it — and the San Jose Mercury News notes that past deals in Cincinnati and Indianapolis have ended up with taxpayers holding the bag unexpectedly thanks to overly generous lease terms. "You can't judge a stadium deal by the upfront cost," some stadium blogger and book author told the Merc News. "There was a time when if you were a sports owner and you were going to build a stadium, the subsidy was all upfront. It would just be a check from the legislature for $300 million or something. Now it is far more likely to be buried in the details of the lease."

I'll be reporting back here with my analysis of the term sheet once it's available. If you feel like playing along at home, check the Santa Clara city website starting tonight around 7 pm Pacific time.

May 20, 2009

Santa Clara 49ers deal: Wait for it...

The city of Santa Clara announced as promised yesterday that it agreed to a financing plan for a San Francisco 49ers stadium, and the long-awaited details are ... not going to be released until May 29, in advance of a June 2 city council meeting on the plan. Unnamed sources tell the San Jose Mercury News that the total public subsidy will be "well under $90 million," but the San Francisco Chronicle reports that Santa Clara Mayor Patricia Mahan says it will also include $62 million to move an electrical substation and build a parking garage — given how little agreement there's traditionally been among elected officials as to what constitutes a "subsidy," it's probably best to wait and see the fine print.

May 19, 2009

Santa Clara 49ers stadium plan expected today

The San Francisco Chronicle reports this morning that the San Francisco 49ers and city of Santa Clara are expected to announce today plans for a $916 million stadium deal to be presented to voters next March. The deal is said to involve $70 million less in public subsidies than the last plan, and the team has agreed to pay rent to the city, though how much they wouldn't say. The owners of the Great America amusement park who had threatened to block the Niners settling next door, meanwhile, are now said to be more willing to sell their park to the team — though again, for what price is unknown.

More on this after the official announcement today.

February 03, 2009

Goodell: Everybody gets a new stadium!!!

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell had a busy weekend. In between watching some football game, he took time out to address the stadium situation of three of his league's teams. Needless to say, in no case did he say, "Enh, they're fine where they are":

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell conceded Friday that the 49ers and Raiders stadiums must be replaced, and he said that a shared stadium facility may be the best option in a credit challenged economy racked by recession and job losses.

Asked whether he and the NFL have determined that a joint stadium should replace the decaying Oakland Coliseum and Candlestick Park, Goodell said, "The point that you point out here is that this facility is badly needed in the Bay Area. We have asked both teams to evaluate the possibility of a shared stadium.

"We can't come to a conclusion right now if that's the best option. And in these times, when it's more challenging to get these stadiums built, we have to be more creative."

Nice touch with the "decaying," there - usually the adjective of choice is "crumbling" or "outmoded," but the stench of maggots really gives some extra zest to the image.

In any case, the real news here is that 1) the NFL has sided with the two-team option as the best bet for a new Bay Area stadium, and 2) they still don't have a clue who'd pay for it. Goodell mentioned the New York Jets and Giants stadium as a precedent, but that was able to draw off league suite revenues under the now-defunct G3 program; without outside aid, it's not clear whether the Raiders and 49ers would be any better able to make money going halfsies at a new stadium than building one apiece. In which case, you'd think they might be just as well staying put - but we can't have that, can we, Commissioner?

"I know [owners] Zygi Wilf and Mark Wilf want to continue to have the Minnesota Vikings in Minnesota in a new stadium and I share that," Goodell said during his state of the NFL address in Tampa, Fla. "They have worked very hard to be able to get to that point. They have understood the priorities of the community, they have stood by and they've allowed the baseball stadium and the Gophers [football] stadium to move forward because they recognize those priorities and there are always priorities in the community.

"I think we have to continue to work with the governor and the leadership in that community to understand those priorities and figure out how we get a new stadium built. That is necessary for the Vikings. We all want the Vikings to be there in the long term, successfully. They need a new stadium, that's clear. I think it's recognized by all parties and we need to get down to the difficult business of figuring out how to do it."

Clearly not.

January 10, 2009

Niners to consider Raiders stadium share?

Another one bites the dust?

The San Francisco 49ers on Friday acknowledged that the battered economy likely will slow down their plans to build a new stadium in Santa Clara and now has them willing to discuss a once unthinkable option - sharing a new home with their cross-bay rival, the Raiders.

This isn't the first time the notion of a shared 49ers-Raiders stadium - who knows where - has been floated, but it is the first time the 49ers have publicly said they'd consider it, albeit only if they keep getting nowhere with their own Santa Clara plans. If the teams do end up sharing digs, it could provide another option for the similarly stadium-stymied Oakland A's: Stay put at the Oakland Coliseum and tear down the Raiders-inspired "Mount Davis," which most Bay Areans seem to agree is the only thing that ruined the place for baseball.

Niners to consider Raiders stadium share?

Another one bites the dust?

The San Francisco 49ers on Friday acknowledged that the battered economy likely will slow down their plans to build a new stadium in Santa Clara and now has them willing to discuss a once unthinkable option - sharing a new home with their cross-bay rival, the Raiders.

This isn't the first time the notion of a shared 49ers-Raiders stadium - who knows where - has been floated, but it is the first time the 49ers have publicly said they'd consider it, albeit only if they keep getting nowhere with their own Santa Clara plans. If the teams do end up sharing digs, it could provide another option for the similarly stadium-stymied Oakland A's: Stay put at the Oakland Coliseum and tear down the Raiders-inspired "Mount Davis," which most Bay Areans seem to agree is the only thing that ruined the place for baseball.

This site written and maintained by Neil deMause. Copyright © Neil deMause, all rights reserved.

Powered by Movable Type 3.2.