I’m in superbrief mode this morning, but in, um, superbrief: The Hartford city council voted as expected last night to approve about $56 million in subsidies (give or take a mess of free land) for a stadium for the double-A baseball New Britain Rock Cats.
“It is exactly a road map to how we move forward as a city,” council President Shawn Wooden said at the meeting Tuesday. “There is no reward, there is no benefit, without some level of risk. … It’s appropriately risky for the return.”
Risky it certainly is: The initial plan contains no provisions for what happens if the private part of the $350 million project doesn’t get built, which is kind of important given that that’s where all the economic benefits are supposed to come from. Also, there’s apparently a state-of-the-art clause included, of sorts: The city of Hartford needs to pay for any future stadium improvements to keep the building on par with new Double-A venues in Birmingham and Tulsa. That’s better than the El Paso state-of-the-art clause that it looks like Hartford lifted the language from — El Paso just says it must be kept on par with other “first-class” facilities, which opens things up to all kinds of shenanigans — but still means Hartford’s costs here will only go up.
And now, over to you, city planning and zoning commission. I’ll skip the obvious joke.
So depressing that cities are still falling for this garbage, and for AA baseball that is already a few miles away?
State of the Art Clause? Hasn’t anyone learned anything from Saint Louis?
It is clear the mayor and council here are not interested in learning at all since the slightest bit of research on this topic would let them know how stupid their decision was.
Why is it when investing in actual worthwhile things its called socialism but when its fluff like minor league sports its a major investment?
Ugh, why does this keep working? I think of all the public money that’s been used on stadiums in the last 10 years alone and what it could’ve been used on to, you know, actually help the public. Then I cry softly in a corner.
Maybe if we cry real loud we can stop this rain!