Another week, another set of closed-door meetings about the Milwaukee Bucks arena funding plan, another batch of news articles filled with nothing but quotes from participants expressing vague optimism:
WISN 12 News reporter Kent Wainscott was told that some funding questions still need to be resolved, but a couple of the participants told him after the meeting that they believe a deal may be closer than it has been to this point.
And:
“I’m confident we will get to a solution,” [Bucks President Peter] Feigin said. “We are happy the Bucks are involved in that solution.”
This is barely news on the best of days — “People Trying to Negotiate Thing Express Confidence That Negotiations Will Be Successful: Film at 11” — but even less so given that everybody at these meetings just expressed the exact same platitudes three weeks ago. A better headline might have been “Chris Abele, Bucks express same optimism on arena deal as they’ve expressed through last month of so-far fruitless meetings.” (It’s wordy, I know, but think how it’d do on social media!)
Come on, Don Walker of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, didn’t anybody say anything about where the money would actually come from?
Asked about the substance of the talks to date, Feigin said negotiators were trying to figure out the revenue streams a new arena would produce, what revenue would result from ancillary development and how that would be allocated.
“That is the crux of what we are trying to figure out,” he said.
So, city, state, and team negotiators trying to figure out how to pay for a Bucks arena are focused on whether it would make any money, and who would get it. Film at 11.