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
economicenvironmental 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
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?
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?
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.