Columbus arena needs renovations, says local paper, because all the other kids are getting them

One of the trickiest bits for a sports team owner seeking a new or renovated stadium or arena is establishing why they “need” one, especially when the old one isn’t that old at all, and the only problem with it is that the other teams on the block have even newer ones. So when a newspaper — in this case the Columbus Dispatch — sets out to make that argument for you, man, it’s Christmas in June. Let’s follow the bouncing quotes:

“Certainly, every time somebody else builds a new arena or renovates an arena, we look and feel just a little bit older. It’s just the nature of everything,” said Xen Riggs, CEO of Columbus Arena Management.

I would argue that this is not actually the nature of everything. Okay, sure, the circle of life can get you down when you notice that you’re forever aging and other, younger beings are arriving to take your place, but 1) the song is supposed to make you feel better about that, not worse, and 2) how is it that when somebody builds a new arena in, say, California, that makes an arena feel older to Columbus Blue Jackets fans? Do they spend a lot of time traveling to other cities and coming back thinking, Man, our arena doesn’t have Bluetooth-enabled cupholders, that’s the last time I’m ever going to a game? How does the arena experience objectively change just because another, newer building exists somewhere else? Is it a quantum entanglement thing?

Moving on:

Action on the ice or court sometimes is the secondary reason for why people attend events, said Ryan Sickman, director of sports and convention centers for Gensler, the architectural firm behind Quicken Loans Arena’s renovations.

“What an NHL fan in Columbus wants isn’t the same that they expect in D.C. or Las Vegas,” he said. “They’re different people, and their expectations are different. … We need to be designing arenas and venues around that.”

First off, asking a guy whose livelihood depends on people hiring him to renovate arenas what he thinks of renovating arenas might not be the absolute best way to get an objective verdict on whether it’s necessary to spend money on renovating arenas. Secondly, I’m not entirely sure what this statement has to do with an 18-year-old arena being deemed in need of renovations — was it somehow built not Columbus-y enough? Is Gensler designing Quicken Loans Arena’s giant glass wall to meet the particular glass-wall needs of Clevelanders?

Overall, this article is a classic example of media coverage that seems objective on the face of it (“Let’s compare our city’s arena upgrade spending to other cities’!”), while the actual bias resides not in how the reporting is carried out, but in how the question being asked reflects the priorities not of the public the newspaper is supposed to be representing, but rather of the sports team owners who built the arena then demanded that the public bail them out because they were losing money on it. (Or in this case the arena managers running the place — the Blue Jackets owners haven’t been publicly agitating for renovations, but then, with landlords like these, they don’t have to.) Put it all together, and it’s Why don’t we have a glass wall like that arena across the state, you’re embarrassing us in front of our friends, which really isn’t the best way to run public infrastructure policy.

Fortunately, the Dispatch did interview one person — literally only one person in the whole article, but I’ll take what I can get — who doesn’t have a vested interest in more money being spent on ever-newer arenas:

“Every major-league team in the country, either at the arena or stadium level, wants to start replacing their stadium starting at about 20 years, said Victor Matheson, a professor who studies arena deals at the College of the Holy Cross. “Whether they need to replace their stadium or arena at 20 years is a totally different question.”

Victor Matheson is the best.