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Nothing Doing for Cards, Twins: The St. Louis Cardinals' push for a new stadium collapsed in late May, as the Missouri state legislature declined to vote on a $346 million stadium financing bill before adjourning on May 17. "People and the Legislature had this preconceived idea that it was corporate welfare for billionaire owners and millionaire players," complained Jeff Rainford, chief of staff for St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay. Cardinals owner Mark Lamping immediately declared that since "the state is not interested in helping keep the Cardinals in downtown St. Louis...the Cardinal organization has no choice but to begin exploring alternative locations in the St. Louis area to build a new ballpark." Unfortunately for Lamping, the only parts of the St. Louis area not in Missouri are in neighboring Illinois, which has shown little inclination to fund a Cardinals' ballpark after being burned for $432 million in Soldier Field reconstruction costs by the Chicago Bears. . . . The Coalition Against Public Funding for Stadiums is moving ahead with a November ballot initiative to require a public vote on any sports facility subsidies. . . .

The city of St. Paul terminated its discussions of a new stadium for the Minnesota Twins on July 11, after being unable to agree on a financing plan with team owner Carl Pohlad. A planned September referendum on a 3% bar and restaurant tax hike to finance the city's share of construction costs has been called off. . . . The Twins had earlier agreed to settlement of contraction suit, will play in Minnesota in 2003. But Baseball Weekly's Bob Nightengale, usually a pro-owner voice, reports that Twins owner Carl Pohlad still hopes to be bought out and contracted in 2004. . . .

The Arizona Tourism and Sports Authority has until September 12 to pick from among three possible sites - Tempe, Mesa, or Glendale - for a new Cardinals football stadium. Mesa's bid is also subject to a referendum on September 10, after opposition groups gathered 17,000 signatures forcing a public vote on the plan. The original Phoenix site fell through after the FAA determined it was unacceptably close to flight paths at a nearby airport. . . .

The new owners of the Boston Red Sox seem determined to move ahead with a moderate renovation of Fenway Park, in place of the new-stadium plans abandoned by former owners last year. (The Boston Globe, previously hostile to renovation but now a part-owner of the team, has editorialized in favor of saving Fenway in recent months.) No word on whether public money would be required, though the citizen group Save Fenway Park! has suggested federal preservation dollars could be used. . . .

Baseball's attendance woes continue, leaving even baseball insiders to question the conventional wisdom that new homes invariably bring new fans. Even baseball commissioner Bud Selig admitted: "The positive shelf life of a new stadium has shrunk considerably. The new parks in themselves can't be a long-term or mid-term panacea." (Though this didn't stop Selig from simultaneously insisting that renovation of Kauffman Stadium is necessary to the Kansas City Royals' survival.) Attendance at Selig's Milwaukee Brewers' Miller Park (opened 2001) is down more than 30% in 2002, the Pittsburgh Pirates' PNC Park (2001) is off more than 25%, and the Detroit Tigers (Comerica Park, 2000), Colorado Rockies (Coors Field, 1995), Cleveland Indians (Jacobs Field, 1994), and Texas Rangers (The Ballpark at Arlington, 1994) have all seen double-digit drops this season. . . . While fans haven't been pouring into Miller Park, something else has been: a cascade of water from a leak in the retractable roof drenched a section of seats during the All-Star Home Run Derby. . . .

The aborted plan by developer Philip Anschutz to bring the NFL back to L.A. managed one thing: jump-starting talks in San Diego for a new stadium for the Chargers. "We'll do everything we can to stay here while also convincing the people that the stadium issue must be tackled - and may have to be tackled sooner than expected," said Mark Fabiani, a former consultant to Bill Clinton and Al Gore hired by the Chargers to spearhead stadium efforts. Under the lease they renegotiated with the city in 1995, the Chargers can leave town at any time. . . . Minnesota Vikings owner Red McCombs also took advantage of the Anschutz bid to declare that he would consider moving his team, unless the Minnesota legislature builds him a new stadium. The Vikings are in the middle of a 30-year lease on the publicly funded Metrodome. . . .

The Oakland A's extended their lease on the former Oakland Coliseum through 2007 in early July; the team can buy out the remainder of the lease at any time, however, by giving 120 days notice and paying a $250,000 escape fee. Talks continue about building a new stadium for the A's in Oakland, though neither a site nor financing has been settled on. . . . A slim majority of Oakland voters polled in May said they'd approve of public funding for a combined stadium/housing project, but the approval numbers dipped to 40% for a stadium alone. . . . A poll of Indianapolis residents in June found that only 24% would support public tax money for a new Colts stadium. . . . While 84% of Washington D.C. residents would like to see major-league baseball return to their city, only half would support public funding of a new stadium, according to a Washington Post poll in June. . . .

An investigative series by the New Orleans Times-Picayune's Josh Peter revealed that the Bears' reported $200 million contribution to the Soldier Field project includes less than $30 million from the team, thanks to an NFL stadium fund that launders personal seat license money through tax-exempt shell companies. Nationwide, while the public has spent $4.4 billion since 1995 on new football stadiums, the teams themselves have only put in $1 billion, according to the Times-Picayune. . . .

The latest audit of Milwaukee's Miller Park put the total pricetag at $413.9 million, $21 million more than the last estimate and $91 million more than the original agreement voters approved in 1995. The stadium district is also being sued by Mitsubishi for $87 million in additional costs for the stadium's trouble-plagued retractable roof. . . . Houston stadium officials "knew all along" that the $367 million cost estimate for the Houston Texans' new stadium was insufficient, according to the Houston Chronicle. To pay for increased materials costs and the addition of such items as fancier luxury suites and a weight room, the city is tacking on $82 million in ticket taxes, parking taxes, and redirected sales taxes from items bought in the stadium. . . . A debt rating agency has warned that the ticket tax at the new Memphis Grizzlies arena may not bring in enough revenue to pay back its share of construction costs, leaving Shelby County to pay the difference out of general funds. . . .

An exhaustive article in the Boston Globe has revealed the full extent of how George W. Bush's stadium and stock dealings helped pave his road to the White House. Needing $606,000 to buy into the Texas Rangers, Bush borrowed half a million dollars from a bank of which he was a director - a loan he later paid off with proceeds of his controversial sale of Harken Energy stock right before the company's stock price plunged. After the city of Arlington (at Bush's prodding) had built a new stadium for the team with public money, Bush would go on to sell his share of the Rangers for $14.9 million - a profit of more than 2300%. . . .

"Congress Threatens To Leave D.C. Unless New Capitol Is Built," the Onion reported in its May 29 edition. The Beijing Evening News promptly picked up the satirical story as a genuine news item, leaving red-faced editors to bemoan that "some small American newspapers frequently fabricate offbeat news to trick people into noticing them, with the aim of making money." . . . Meanwhile, the Nigerian e-mail scam has even discovered stadium subsidies, with one version of the venerable hoax now asking for personal bank account numbers to help redirect funds from "supply of stadium equipment/building and re-construction of our proposed new national stadium." --August 2, 2002

New Ballparks Not So Hot: New baseball parks continue to be no panacea for ballclubs: attendance at four of the five ballparks that opened in 2000 and 2001 is down from last year's averages, with even the division-leading Pittsburgh Pirates seeing ticket sales slide more then 30% from last year's inaugural season at PNC Park. (Part of the problem in Pittsburgh: a fan rebellion over price increases that cost the Pirates 7,000 season-ticket holders during the offseason. The last-place Detroit Tigers, meanwhile, are drawing barely 20,000 fans a game to three-year-old Comerica Park, including an all-time low of 11,833 fans on April 9 to watch the home team lose to the White Sox. Attendance at Comerica is so dismal that Sumitomo Bank, the stadium's mortgage holder, felt compelled to publicly deny that the Tigers were in danger of defaulting on their loan for the stadium, which Sports Business Journal has called "the poster child for the message that a new ballpark does not necessarily solve a club's financial woes." . . . Other early-'90s stadiums appear to have fallen victim the slump that commonly hits new facilities in about their 8th year after opening: Jacobs Field (9th year) is off 22.8%, The Ballpark at Arlington (9th year) 23.5%, and Coors Field (8th year) 7.3% from last year's averages. "The notion that a new stadium is a panacea was overblown," stadium consultant Marc Ganis, who spent the '90s promoting new stadiums as panaceas, told the Philadelphia Inquirer this week. "You can't just open a new stadium and expect that to take care of everything." . . .

While baseball stadiums are doing worse than projected, their tenants may be doing much better, according to Forbes magazine's yearly analysis of baseball's finances, which estimates that major-league teams had a collective operating profit of $75 million in 2001 - this after MLB commissioner Bud Selig told Congress last November that teams had lost $232 million as a whole. The main discrepancy: team expense reports, of which Forbes' Michael Ozanian noted, "we couldn't take all of them at face value." (Sports economists such as Andrew Zimbalist have long noted that teams can hide revenue by charging themselves with bogus "expenses" such as consultant contracts for their own owners.) Selig issued a statement calling the Forbes figures "pure fiction," leading Twins infielder (and players union rep) Denny Hocking to quip, "Gee, should I believe a magazine that spends 365 days a year researching finances? Or a guy who has zero credibility?" . . .

Meanwhile, the push for new stadiums continues unabated, with baseball leading the pack. The St. Louis Cardinals sent e-mails and postcards to season-ticket holders in March and April, asking them to call their state representatives to support public funding for a new facility to replace Busch Stadium. (Through April 15, Busch was 10th out of 30 MLB teams in attendance, ahead of new parks in Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and Texas.) Opponents of public funding have vowed a referendum campaign to block the $346 million project; latest polls show 64.5% of St. Louis residents opposed to public funding for a new baseball stadium. The Missouri legislature is expected to begin debating stadium bills this week. . . .

Spurred by talk that the Minnesota Twins could be folded after this season if no new stadium is built, the state of Minnesota is again considering public financing for a new baseball facility, after years of rejections at the voting booth and in the legislature. The latest plan - a complicated scheme in which the state would sell $300 million in stadium bonds, which would be paid off by municipal taxes and interest on a $165 million loan from the Twins - was approved by the Minnesota state house March 25. (To fund the city share of a stadium, St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly has suggested doing so with a 3% city tax on food and beverages, which has local bar and restaurant owners up in arms.) With the state in the midst of a budget crisis that could shutter the governor's mansion, however, the stadium effort appeared to have stalled again by late April. . . . Taking no chances, the Twins spent $338,000 on stadium lobbying efforts during the first three months of 2002, making the ballclub by far the biggest Minnesota lobbyist in that time period. . . .

Even as Minnesota debates stadium funding, MLB continues to use the contraction gambit to bully other cities into considering new stadiums. "If there's no new stadium on the horizon, if they're drawing 10,000 a game and not doing well on the field, presumably that would translate into local revenue," MLB VP Sandy Alderson told the Miami Herald on March 20, when asked about the possibility of the Florida Marlins being contracted. "Depending on where that local revenue stacked up, they could or could not be a potential candidate." Later that week, MLB commissioner-for-life Bud Selig told Kansas City reporters that while the Royals would not be contracted, "there is no question that the stadium issue has to be addressed for Kansas City to keep up with Detroit and the clubs in their own division. The Kansas City stadium is a lovely ballpark. It needs to be upgraded if we want to keep Kansas City a competitive franchise, which we certainly do." . . .

Not all teams are slavering for new stadiums, however. The new Boston Red Sox ownership continues to insist it would prefer a renovation and expansion of Fenway Park, though it's remained mum on how much this would cost or who would pay for it. The citizen group Save Fenway Park! issued its long-awaited prospectus for renovating Fenway earlier this month, detailing how Fenway Park remains both popular and lucrative even entering its tenth decade, and arguing that renovation would be a cheaper and less risky option than building a new stadium, which would likely require substantial public subsidies. The Boston Globe, previously hostile to renovation but now a part-owner of the team, lauded the prospectus in an April 14 editorial as "argu[ing] persuasively that Fenway Park, built in 1912, provides exceptionally strong revenues as well as a historic legacy." . . .

Over in football, with the long-running Arizona Cardinals stadium site search at last having settled (once again) on the city of Mesa, the team could once again have a community battle on its hands. Members of an "upstart group" (in the Arizona Republic's words) called Stand Against the Stadium Site are threatening to put the proposed stadium to yet another referendum. The state's sports authority says it would switch to a backup site rather than face a referendum, but no viable alternative sites have yet been located. . . .

An investigation by the Chicago Tribune has revealed that the upcoming $632 million renovation of Soldier Field for the Bears will cost more and have fewer benefits than public officials promised voters. Among the findings: $26 million in hidden subsidies will bring the total public cost to $432 million; an internal analysis by the Chicago Park District showed that the agency will make $900,000 less the first year a renovated stadium is open; and almost half of the 19 acres of "parkland" supposedly created by the project will be made up of landscaped berms and highway medians. "You're not able to play on a slope or on the middle of a roadway," said Erma Tranter of Friends of the Parks, which is suing to stop the renovation. The article also revealed how PR firm Burson-Marsteller encouraged the Bears to refocus the stadium debate away from "public funding for the Chicago Bears stadium needs" and onto preserving a landmark and "doing things right, the Chicago way." The Soldier Field renovation, funded primarily by a 2% hotel tax, will be the largest public subsidy ever received by an NFL team. . . .

The Oakland A's are reportedly about to sign a five-year lease extension on the Network Associates (nee Oakland) Coliseum, while continuing efforts to get a new stadium. While the city of Oakland is considering a downtown site, the city's recent $280 million bailout of the Oakland Raiders has left little taste for public financing. In the words of county supervisor Gail Steele: "I don't think there will be the political will on the part of the people to do this." . . . The San Diego city council has relieved the Padres of their obligation to build a $15 million parking garage next to the new stadium being built by the city. . . . The city of Detroit is reportedly considering tearing down Joe Louis Arena for an expansion of neighboring Cobo Hall, which would then house the Detroit Red Wings. Cost: between $200 million and $600 million. . . .

The Pittsburgh ACLU is suing the city of Pittsburgh and its sports authority for arresting four protestors who handed out leaflets to fans outside the new publicly owned PNC Park on March 2. The demonstrators, who were calling attention to the use of sweatshop labor by baseball apparel maker New Era, were first ordered not to distribute literature outside the park; when they entered the Pirate Gear Shop to check on merchandise being sold there, they were arrested and told they would be banned from the ballpark. "I don't think Allegheny County residents realized that when they bought the Pirates a stadium, they were also giving away their rights to free speech on the city's sidewalks," said the ACLU's Witold Walczak. . . .

The retractable roof of Milwaukee's new Miller Park is beset by "design errors" that need to be fixed, according to the city's stadium board. It's as yet unclear how much a fix would cost, or who would pay for it. . . . The Brooklyn Cyclones minor-league baseball team has informed Coney Island's yearly Mermaid Parade that it is not welcome to use their city-financed stadium this year. "I suspect there's an ultraconservative discomfort with the parade itself," said Coney Island USA director Dick Zigun, which runs the campy annual parade featuring men and women dressed (and often half-undressed) in mermaid garb. --April 30, 2002

Arena Buzz: Shifting an NBA team from a small city to an ever smaller one that has twice failed as a pro basketball site wouldn't make much sense - that is, unless arena politics came into play. With Charlotte voters having rejected funding a new basketball arena in a June 2001 referendum, Hornets owner Ray Wooldridge signed a deal January 17 to move the club to New Orleans for the 2002-03 season. "This deal is not going to fall through," declared Wooldridge. "I think the likelihood is 100 percent."

While New Orleans would be by far the smallest NBA market - its TV market is just the 43rd largest in the U.S., compared to Charlotte's 27th - it does have a relatively new basketball facility, the New Orleans Arena, which presently houses the New Orleans Brass minor-league hockey team. As part of the relocation deal, the state of Louisiana would spend about $15 million to refurbish the arena, using existing hotel-motel taxes, and would guarantee the team annual arena revenues of at least $18 million a year, with the state kicking in up to $2 million a year to make up any shortfall.

Back in Charlotte, Charles Held, leader of Citizens Opposed to Sports Taxes, said the New Orleans announcement wasn't a sad day for his city: "In fact, we may be striking a blow for taxpayer interests above these out-of-control sports franchises." But Held may have spoken too soon: On Feb. 11, the Charlotte city council voted 8-3 to approve $231 million for a new arena to replace the 14-year-old Charlotte Coliseum. Supporters and opponents of the plan packed the hearing room; one resident took the microphone to tell legislators, "In handling tax dollars, you've been dumb as a rock."

Finally, further complicating matters is that the NBA still must give its approval to the franchise shift, and is likely to be concerned about New Orleans' tiny market size and history as a two-time basketball loser. (The New Orleans Buccaneers of the old ABA moved to Memphis in 1970; the New Orleans Jazz relocated to Utah nine years later.) Ticket sales in New Orleans have been sluggish so far - just 10 luxury suites and 2,062 season tickets through Feb. 15. The Hornets can unilaterally void their deal if 54 luxury suites, 2,450 club seats and 8,000 other season tickets are not sold by March 15. . . .

As promised, Rudy Giuliani cut a deal with the Mets and Yankees for new stadiums before leaving office, announcing an agreement his final weekend as New York mayor. And what a deal it was: two retractable-roofed stadiums, to be built next to the existing stadiums for a total of $1.6 billion; half the cost, $800 million, would be paid by the city, making it the most expensive public stadium subsidy in U.S. history. (The remaining $800 million in tax-exempt bonds would be paid off by the teams, a scheme that might run afoul of U.S. tax law.

Whether Rudy's dream domes will ever be built, though, is far from certain. His replacement in City Hall, Mike Bloomberg, promptly announced that "given the lack of housing, given the lack of school space, given the deficit in the operating budget, it is just not practical this year to go and build stadiums." Bloomberg chose not, however, to reverse the sweetheart lease extension Giuliani had granted to the teams: $5 million a year apiece for the next five years in rent rebates, to be used for stadium "design and planning"; and escape clauses that would allow the teams to relocate with just 60 days notice if they determine that the city doesn't intend to move ahead with new stadiums. Newly elected city comptroller William Thompson immediately asked Bloomberg to renegotiate the new leases, while newly elected City Council Speaker Gifford Miller remarked that "I think it is irresponsible of the past administration to have made an eleventh-hour deal which weakens the city's negotiating position."

Meanwhile, with Bloomberg having appointed NYC 2012 president Dan Doctoroff as deputy mayor for economic development, attention has focused on a possible Olympic stadium on Manhattan's West Side. "[Bloomberg] wouldn't have picked me, and I would not have accepted, if we were not in sync on [an Olympic stadium]," Doctoroff told reporters in late January, only to have the mayor retort the next day: "Down the road, a football stadium that could also be part of a Javits Center that could also be an Olympic venue would be great. But it's just much too early to tell what we're going to do." . . .

To the surprise of absolutely no one, MLB commissioner Bud Selig announced in early February that owners were putting off discussion of eliminating two teams until 2003 at the soonest. A ruling by the Minnesota Supreme Court that the Twins are bound by their lease to play the 2002 season in the Metrodome put the final kibosh on contraction talk for this season.

Scuttlebutt has instead turned back to the idea of moving existing teams, with Selig at one point alluding to Washington, D.C., as the "prime candidate" to receive a relocated team. But while the sports press has all but moved Montreal to the D.C. area for 2003, the question remains as to where they'd play: RFK Stadium is 16 years older the Expos' existing Olympic Stadium, and plans for a new D.C. stadium have gone nowhere. Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, whose state had been looked to as the source of a new stadium, has indicated there is no money for one now that Virginia is facing $3.5 billion in budget shortfalls over the next two and a half years. Gabe Paul, head of the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority, has said he'll wait until at least 2003 to propose taxes for stadium funding. . . . Minnesota's State Senate is considering a bill to allow the city of St. Paul to raise restaurant taxes, currently 7%, to 10% in order to help finance a new $300-million-plus stadium for the Twins . . .

The long-delayed San Diego Padres stadium is finally creaking into motion again, after the dismissal of the latest lawsuit against the project. But the plan looks far different now than when it was approved by voters in 1998: the cost has risen from $275 million to $450 million, and new hotel projects that were supposed to help finance it are uncertain thanks to the lagging tourist economy. Bond financiers Merrill Lynch raised eyebrows when they announced in November that ballpark bonds would be sold at a sky-high 8.83% rate, though that was later lowered to 7.84%; San Diego County is reportedly considering buying as much as $100 million in bonds to help defray the city's costs. . . . The Padres are also still without a naming-rights sponsor for their new stadium, joining the growing list of teams unable to find buyers for their homes' names. One consideration companies may be weighing: four corporations (TWA, PSINet, Fruit of the Loom, and Enron) have gone bankrupt in recent years after inking pricey naming rights deals. . . .

Even as the Padres saga drags on, San Diego is facing renewed stadium demands from its NFL team, the Chargers. The Chargers have also raised ticket prices by about $10 apiece for the 2002 season, which could cost the city millions more on its agreement to buy all unsold tickets up to 60,000 per game. "If they can't sell tickets at the current price," city councilman George Stevens told the San Diego Union-Tribune, "how do they expect to sell them for $10 more?" . . .

In further Enron news, the Houston Astros have appealed to the bankruptcy court overseeing the scandal-ridden company's restructuring, asking to be let out of the 30-year, $100 million naming-rights deal that has slapped the now-notorious Enron Field moniker on Houston's new stadium. Enron's collapse has "tarnished the reputation of the Houston Astros," the club insists. Ridding their home of Enron's name could be difficult, though: The company has kept up to date with its payments on the contract, including paying $108,000 for a 14-person luxury suite nearly $90,000 for 35 season box seats in January. The next payment is not due until Aug. 31. . . .

With the sale of the Boston Red Sox nearing completion to a group led by former Florida Marlins owner John Henry and former San Diego Padres owner Tom Werner, talk has turned from replacing Fenway Park to renovating and expanding it. Perhaps most remarkably, the Boston Globe - now a part-owner of the team via its parent company, the New York Times Co. - editorialized on Feb. 11 that "Red Sox fans deserve a chance to enjoy ballgames for decades to come in a stadium saturated with baseball history as much as they deserve a chance to sit in reasonably comfortable seats and root for a competitive ball club," while criticizing the old ownership's "blinkered conclusions" that only a new stadium would do. . . . Estimated renovation costs for Fenway run from $125 million to $300 million; no word on how it would be financed, but state house speaker Tom Finneran has said the $100 million in state funds approved back in July 2000 is no longer on the table. . . .

The remaining U.S. cities bidding for the 2012 Olympics (Houston, New York, San Francisco, and Washington) may not be able to win over the International Olympic Committee without increased public subsidies, according to Olympic historian John MacAloon, who told Sports Business Journal, "There are quite a few IOC members who are on record saying they will never again support a host city that does not offer significant government support." In December, Pulitzer-winning muckrakers Donald Bartlett and James Steele reported in Sports Illustrated that the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, which had claimed to be breaking even, have in fact received $1.5 billion in government subsidies. "No responsible sports economist takes either official reports or Olympic organizing committees seriously," noted MacAloon. . . . Salt Lake City merchants are complaining that the expected tourist windfall from the Winter Olympics has failed to materialize, with downtown restaurant business off about 45 percent from normal, according to the Utah Restaurant Association's Tom Guinney. . . .

The Hornets are not the only NBA team levying move threats in hopes of shaking loose some arena dough. Rich DeVos, the billionaire owner of the Orlando Magic, has announced that his team is up for sale, and relocation is a possibility. "We are not naive enough that we believe we can tell the new owner what to do with their property," Magic president Bob Vander Weide told reporters. . . . The Phoenix Cardinals are still without a site for their new stadium after the FAA nixed their original plan for being too close to flight paths at Phoenix's airport. . . .

The state of Missouri is still considering financing for a new St. Louis Cardinals stadium, even as it faces a $1 billion budget gap. The latest plan would exact a $100 million penalty from the team if it failed to build additional development around the stadium site. The Kansas City Royals and Chiefs are also seeking state money for renovations to their existing stadiums. . . . Former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley has thrown his support behind public financing for an NFL stadium in his city: "I believe having the Super Bowl in L.A. justifies whatever taxpayer dollars are spent - and they may be very minimal - in getting L.A. the finest football stadium," declared O'Malley, who is most famous for relocating his team from Brooklyn in 1958, in exchange for a massive land grant from the city of Los Angeles. --February 16, 2002

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