That 12,000-seat DePaul University basketball arena that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to spend $125 million in city money on already sounded like a pretty bad idea, given that DePaul is 1) a private college that 2) only draws 8,000 fans a game and 3) has plenty of other arenas it can play at. But it sounds even more craptacular now that Crain’s Chicago has revealed the figures for how many of those tickets are actually used:
Attendance at Blue Demons home games in suburban Rosemont over the last three years has averaged around 2,900, according to Allstate Arena ticket records obtained by Crain’s. That’s about 35 percent of the school’s reported numbers and 30 percent of what McPier officials are projecting for the new arena…
This past season, the official average number of fans that went to DePaul home games at Allstate Arena was even lower: 2,610 based on the Ticketmaster scan system, which tracks exactly how many people come inside.
That is far below DePaul’s reported average home game attendance of 7,938 over those 16 home games. Over the course of the entire season, the school reported total attendance at Allstate Arena at 127,020. The actual attendance was 41,771.
Why are more than 5,000 people a game buying tickets and then not using them? They’re not, explains Crain’s — the discrepancy is largely because of tickets that the university itself buys, then makes available to students or charities free of charge. But even students and charities don’t want to go to DePaul basketball games, so the seats remain empty.
Why does any of this matter? Because the economic impact study commissioned to support the arena project counts those phantom fans as actual money-spending consumers:
That report projects an average attendance of 9,500 at DePaul men’s basketball games in the new 10,000-seat arena, or 152,000 people over 16 games. That’s more than 40 percent of the projected annual attendance of 370,000 for all events at the arena, including concerts, shows and conventions.
While the school would likely still pay to reserve student seats to games at the new arena, recent history suggests the butts won’t actually be in the seats, nor would the fans be out and about spending money in the neighborhood.
So, to recap:
https://twitter.com/Travis_Waldron/status/339713869754798081
I’m giving a new student orientation to Graduate Architecture & Urban Design students @ Pratt today and the last slide of my presentation is going to be a plug for your blog.
Outside of buying you a beer at Hank’s I figured it was the least I could do to help you raise awareness of your blog.
I remember De Paul had some powerful teams back when I was in college in the early ’80s. Maybe they can cheat more and lower admission processes so that the good times can return? Nah, colleges wouldn’t make such a deal for mere athletic success, would they?
“craptacular”
Thanks for an early morning laugh, Neil!
For a brief, shining moment a few weeks back, I thought I’d gotten the word “craptacularity” into a quote in a major U.S. newspaper. Guess it didn’t make the final cut, though.
tickets the school buys for each game to block out seats for students, who can go to any DePaul athletic event “free of charge” if they pay a quarterly $25 student activities fee.
Ah yes, the wonder of (mandatory) quarterly activities fees at university. Collecting money to support entertainment that the students don’t avail themselves of because of need to do school work or work to pay for school/food/housing.
http://thefire.org/public/pdfs/bc1c23991f71143cffc68022eea0b3cb.pdf
Between Kevin Johnson in Sacramento and Rahm Emmanuel in Chicago, it’s worth asking if the Democratic Party has become one of sellouts.
Chief Joe,
A mandatory fee that allows you to watch games for “free”? Sweet. Perfect for a nation of voyeurs…
Reading this blog for 2+ yrs I’ve become familiar with teams holding cites up with the threat of picking up & moving. But what, exactly, was DePaul’s threat?
Threat ? Chicago’s leaders must have decided they still have more TIFs to issue and the University can basically say to the world “we would have built a first-class facility for you alumni to marvel at and student athletes to become better in, if not for those evil politicians rejecting us because we’re a small university.”
Chicago is frequently called out as the TIF-master.
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/rahm-emanuel-keeps-control-of-tif-money/Content?oid=8175391
For example, let’s look at the property tax bill for the South Loop townhouse once owned by Mayor Daley, who pretty much invented Chicago’s TIF program. According to the bill, that property—now owned by Mayor Daley’s daughter—was responsible for $12,889 in taxes this year. Of that, $6,804 went to the Chicago Public Schools.
But if you plug the address into Orr’s converter, you’ll discover that in fact only $506 went to the schools. Instead, about $11,922, or 92 percent of the total, went to something called the Near South TIF. Which, interestingly enough, helped finance the development of the very townhouse community where the property’s located.
Surprised it’s even ~2,900. If you’re a student without a car about the only practical way to get to Rosemont is via the CTA. But to get from the Red Line to the Blue Line you have to head downtown, transfer then go almost all the way to end of the Blue Line (Rosemont is the second to las…
Yes, the minutiae of public transportation are boring as shit. It’s not easy to get to the arena and, as someone else noted, once Ray Meyer handed the keys for the program to his kid, the latter promptly drove the team into bolivian.
I’m sure there are better uses for tax money here in Chicago. Might I suggest the annual (and completely superfluous) repaving of Ashland between Elston and Division?
I swear this country is obsessed with throwing away money on higher education. The City of Chicago has massive debt problems, jobs & services are being cut yet there’s $125M to throw away at DePaul?
No. Let DePaul pay for themselves.
@Jason, Buddy Dyer in Orlando is another on that list
As someone who has worked in economic development in the past and works in on the financial side of other development projects today I can guarantee you Economic impacts Studies are bunk. Even the ones the major Universities put out are just ridiculously shoddily done. I remember a recent one regarding the zoo in Minnesota that had more holes in it than a putting green. There are X number of visitors to the zoo each year, and all the ones who comes from out of town come here SOLELY because of the zoo, and none of them would have come if there wasn’t a zoo, and none of them would have spent any money anywhere else if there wasn’t a zoo.
I am an alumni who is against the use of tax dollars for DePaul. Please sign my petition and pass it along. http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/join-depaul-in-fight.fb28?r_by=8129329