The Buffalo News may be trying to be your news leader in focusing obsessively on where to put the new sports venue that nobody knows how to pay for yet, but Don Walker of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel isn’t going to take that lying down. Walker’s gone this route before, but today he doubles down on head-down where-will-it-go reporting, with the headline:
Is UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena a possible new arena site?
Well, that sounds like news, anyway? What’s the answer?
Franklyn Gimbel of the Wisconsin Center District says he has been assured by someone at City Hall that a new arena in Milwaukee will not be built on land now occupied by the 64-year-old UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena…
But Mayor Tom Barrett says that’s not true. Every potential site downtown is still on the table, he says.
So either “no” or “yes, the same as every other site in Milwaukee,” depending on who you believe. This could be a great way for Walker to fill column inches (or screens, I guess, since this is a web article): All he needs is a map of Milwaukee and a dart, and he can keep writing this same column for years.
The money is there for a Bucks arena. That’s why this is news. The city collects ~$25M/yr in tourist taxes (hotels, rental cars, downtown restaurants) and spends it on Panther Arena, the largely unused Milwaukee Theatre next door and the semi-used convention center a block or two away. If the Panther Arena site is off-limits, then none of that $25M/yr can be repurposed for the new Bucks arena. Franklyn Gimbel cares because he heads the org that receives that $25M/yr for those three outdated/underused buildings.
“The Wisconsin Center District receives no property tax money or Federal, State or local subsidy. Its operations are funded by operating revenues. Special sales taxes on hotel rooms, on prepared food and drinks sold in restaurants and taverns, and on car rentals repay a $185 million bond issue that funded the Midwest Express Center project, and provide funding to Visit Milwaukee. None of these tax revenues are used to fund WCD operations.”
http://uwmilwaukeepantherarena.com/categories/12-wcdinformation/documents/1-about-us
So, the tax money goes toward construction bond debt (which has to be paid off regardless of whether the buildings are still standing) and to fund Visit Milwaukee (which will continue to exist regardless of what’s on the site). Where are you seeing a $25m/year windfall from demolishing those buildings, Ben?