L.A. Weekly has a long piece up about how the new Rams stadium development will affect the future of Inglewood, and answers, “Reply hazy, ask again later“:
We’re talking about roughly 25 events year — a bump for the Inglewood tax base but probably not much of an economic stimulus on its own.
No, the real economic kick will come from the office space/housing/God-knows-what-else components of the project, and we really don’t know the scope of that yet.
Also, the story notes, this could increase the pace of gentrification in Inglewood, or it might not, either of which could be good, or bad, depending on your perspective.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg News has its own long piece about how the FAA is working with the Rams to make sure the new stadium doesn’t mess with radar and cause planes to crash, which is actually a concern. “You’re trying to do the exact same thing that you do with a stealth airplane,” one aeronautics professor told Bloomberg, which doesn’t sound like something that would increase the cost of the stadium at all. It is a really, really good thing that Stan Kroenke is covering the construction costs on this one, because the way things are going, we could conceivably end up seeing the first $3 billion stadium in history.
Kroenke is building the most beautiful stadium in American history and doing it with almost no public money and Neil shows his true colors by shitting all over it at every opportunity.
Neil, come clean. You don’t want to influence cities/voters to stop funding stadia for billionaires, you want this to go on forever so you can continue to bitch about it while asking for donations. You have no more integrity than any of the scummy people you write about and just as with them it is all about the money. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Go back to writing trivia questions, you fraud.
This is a clear violation of the no-personal-attacks rule (and HOF_IkeBruce has been banned from making future comments), but I’m leaving it up because in amongst all the venom-spewing, it raises a few points that I’d like to respond to:
1) I’ve actually been pointing out incessantly that there’s very little public money in the Inglewood deal, thanks to the way this weirdly ended up being the NFL shaking down Kroenke, Spanos, and Davis instead of the usual shaking down of cities. Which is no doubt why this one line of mine from Vice got so retweeted: http://twitter.com/minakimes/status/687302356682321921
2) While I do enjoy writing this site (I’d better, since doing it for 18 years if I hated it would be pathological), if I’m doing it for money I’m going about it all wrong — if I add up all the revenue I get from reader donations and ads and divide it by the 5-10 hours a week I spend on it, I’m *maybe* earning minimum wage. There are plenty of other things I could be bitching about (I’m writing a book about one of them – see brooklynwars.com), so if Naheed Nenshi were declared world dictator-for-life tomorrow and outlawed stadium subsidies, I would happily declare victory and let this site grow weeds.
3) Trivia questions, now that was a lucrative line of work. At least back in the days before Big Gaming started outsourcing trivia writing to Bangalore. (I’m only slightly joking.)
Neil:Thank You for all the articles you post and comments you write on the greedy,selfish sports owners who demand new stadiums and the cities and fans that go along with their demands.As for Stan Kroenke and his stadium coming from his own wealth or thru a loan from a bank I wish him well in these volatile economic times.Your site is one I try to frequent at least once a day.Thanks again for having this website.
Isaac Bruce always seemed to be such a mellow guy on TV. Never would have expected this.
I should probably have a “no spoofing” rule as well, though then we might have problems if a real Piggy Wilf showed up.
Wha?
Sorry, my nose has been in the vintage cognac ever since my fellow owners lost their minds and made that stupid L.A. decision. I’d say I love the smell of public stadium cash in the morning but dammit I don’t smell any… I don’t know what the hell is going on any more!