The world may be on vacation this week, but the stadium news decidedly is not:
- The Nashville S.C. stadium squabble continues, months after the city council supposedly approved a $75 million public subsidy (plus free land), and it’s way more than I can recap right now, so please go read the Tennessean’s summary instead while we wait for a final vote next Tuesday.
- The Kansas City Royals had a game delayed by leaky fountains, and the Los Angeles Dodgers had a game delayed when the lights went out. Clearly those stadiums are both outmoded, tear ’em down and build new ones!
- The city council of Mobile, Alabama, decided not to build a new $72 million stadium for the University of South Alabama, and the mayor is worried this will send a message to the NFL that Mobile doesn’t care about the Senior Bowl college football exhibition game, which is put on by a local nonprofit and not the NFL, so I don’t even know, man.
- Tampa Bay Rays designers say they can keep flyballs from hitting the roof at a new stadium, because computers! (Actually because new statistics-keeping, but everybody likes a “because computers” story and statistics are for guys who live in their parents’ basements, so.)
- Did you know that the Indianapolis Colts‘ stadium was built atop the remnants of a once-integrated neighborhood largely demolished for a new interstate? If not, here’s a great, sad Indianapolis Star article all about it.
- The Miami Marlins are experimenting with lower ticket prices to lure back fans, and some NFL teams are experimenting with $5 beers. We could call this the natural order of price-setting in a free-market economy after owners went too far with price increases, or we could get all excited about how forward-thinking owners are, ha ha, it’s Derek Jeter, no one will ever accuse him of that.
- Jason Notte is writing his new Forbes column way too frequently for me to link to them all, but here’s a nice one about how Phoenix should drive a hard bargain with the Arizona Diamondbacks, Arizona Coyotes, and Phoenix Suns to get you started.
- Speaking of other sites you should read regularly, here’s some lovely historical stadium vaportecture from Uni-Watch.
- The Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers owners want $1.16 million in public money for stadium upgrades, because it never hurts to ask.
- Perpetually injured professional baseball player says Wrigley Field and Fenway Park “suck” because his dressing room isn’t palatial enough, film at 11.
- A former Sacramento Kings exec is suspected of embezzling $13.4 million from the team to spend on beach houses, which has nothing to do with stadiums except that the Kings got hundreds of millions of dollars in public arena funding because they said they needed to improve their bottom line, so actually it has a lot to do with it.
- King County councilmember Rod Dembrokski is proposing putting the Seattle Mariners owner’s proposed $180 million lease subsidy up to a public vote in February. This really doesn’t seem to be going the Mariners owners’ way, does it?
Marlins Tix prices & NFL cheap beer: about time.
Indy neighborhood: a pretty sad story. A similar thing happened when the Pittsburgh Civic Arena was built, and later replaced by whatever the Penguins’ home is called now.
Re: Indy…I don’t know, I always find it kind of stupid people seem to think that when a big infrastructure project is going to be pushed through it wouldn’t be pushed through the least economically and politically connected areas?
Are people 5 years old? “Hey we got this big freeway to build, should it go down that valley through the distressed multicultural neighborhood that is full of vacant and blighted buildings, or should we put it up on the hill and tear down the governor’s mansion? Lets try the governors mansion and see how that goes!”
There is/was enough racism and “classism” in the world, you don’t need to go creating it out of decisions that were in most cases purely practical.
It’s not a freeway that is being discussed however. A freeway needs to begin and end in specific areas that require service. With a few exceptions (politically motivated bridges to nowhere), they go where they are required.
Allegedly blighted poor communities that are bulldozed to make way for a tax exempt and non-revenue generating (for the city/taxpayers) facility is not a necessary service.
I think we can all understand when legitimate growth requires the demolition of low density housing to make way for transport infrastructure and and high density dwellings/associated commercial buildings.
Neither of these cases, nor Chavez Ravine for that matter, is an example of that kind of thing.
Also, a single governor’s mansion could be rebuilt elsewhere for a lot less than the cost of relocating and housing 200 poor families… but your point is taken: rich people don’t get prevailed upon for the “good of the many” (or just the sports franchise owners).
Most places the governors mansion is surrounded by other equally “august” residences.
Regardless I totally agree on the general point. I just take issue with the way people try to cast redevelopment occurring in areas where land is cheap and underutilized (from an economic perspective) as some sort of conspiracy. It is just supply and demand.
When it’s private development you’re talking about, sure. (Though even then it’s shaped by zoning laws, etc.) But most large scale “urban renewal” has been as much ideological as economic, with a stated goal to eliminate “blight” that tends to be defined as “those places where the people we don’t care about live.”
https://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/annb/files/2012/01/The-Power-Broker-Chapter-37-One-Mile.pdf
Marlins hired engineers from NASA to determine roof height at Marlins Park. Of course Judge & Stanton found the roof quite a few times. I’m betting that their projections were thrown in the trash when Loria found out how much it cost. Stuart Sternberg has a history of frugality so if there’s a roof it will likely be too low and leak.
The NFL doesn’t put on the Senior Bowl but they do contribute to the game. The games coaches are NFL head coaches, for example. That being said, it’s nuts that a mayor would be THAT concerned about a one-day event that drew under 30,000 people last year. And the fact the organizers are local would seemingly put them on reasonably safe footing.
The Marlins are also going to set up a soccer supporters section for drums and flags but calling it a international fan section. They got the idea from the Baseball World Cup.
Somers: Cardinals’ new naming-rights deal pairs strange bedfellows amid mild reaction
https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/nfl/cardinals/2018/09/04/arizona-cardinals-commentary-naming-rights-pair-strange-bedfellows/1197098002/