Sorry if I’m posting a bit late this morning, but I started checking Deadspin for any last-minute news, and ended up having to read all of Anna Merlan’s best Avengers: Endgame review ever. If you’re tempted to click that and go read it now, please wait until after reading this post because it will make you forget all about wanting to know about soccer stadium zoning regulations or whatever, and anyway this week’s roundup is relatively short and will let you get back to thoughts on Thor fat-shaming in due haste; if you’re not tempted to click that at all and are wondering how this post went off the rails so quickly, just skip ahead to the bullet points already:
- The Nashville Predators have reportedly agreed to a 30-year lease extension, and it … doesn’t include any massive operating subsidies? In fact, the existing $8.4 million annual subsidy from the city will be partly phased out? That — even if the Predators owners will keep receiving money from ticket taxes and maybe from sales tax kickbacks from non-hockey events and maybe other stuff as well, the Tennessean article is too breathlessly excited to tell for sure — seems too good to be true; we’ll just have to wait until the actual lease terms are announced next week to see if there are any land mines hidden within.
- The Oakland A’s owners are looking to carve out one corner of their proposed Howard Terminal stadium development site to keep it open for shipping, hoping this will win over dockworkers and shipping interests. Maybe that’s what those cranes to nowhere were all about in the vaportecture renderings?
- Good news for Inter Miami owner David Beckham: He got approval to begin tearing down Lockhart Stadium in Fort Lauderdale so he can build his temporary new stadium, as evidenced by this video of a bunch of people in suits and construction helmets causing a small explosion. Bad news for Beckham: He lost his English driver’s license for six months for texting while driving. Guess he’ll have to hang around Miami now, causing small explosions.
- Here is an article about how Canada’s Grey Cup CFL championship being held in Edmonton caused 30,841 people to come from out of town and $29 million — that’s almost $1,000 a person, which sounds like a lot even in Canadian dollars — and how that caused an economic impact of $81 million because multipliers, I guess? Anyway, CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie says that the Grey Cup is “a giant-sized economic funnel that pours dollars and people into a host city and province at a time of year that can otherwise be slow for tourism,” according to a study conducted by someone not important enough to be named by this CFL fan site whose first core principle is to “provide quality news, context and analysis on Canadian football.”
- F.C. Cincinnati‘s new stadium plans are getting caught up in rezoning politics, with people surprised and upset that residents are being evicted from their homes even in areas that aren’t themselves being rezoned. It’s a thing, read up on it!
- An NYC F.C. fan has tweeted that “sources” say the New York city council is set to rush through a new stadium deal this year in advance of the upcoming community board elections in November, which is odd in that 1) the stadium plan is still mostly just some half-baked scheme floated by a developer and 2) New York community boards are appointed, not elected.
- That Seattle city meeting on bringing back the Sonics that turned out not to be a city meeting now isn’t even a non-city meeting, because it’s been canceled. The lesson here: Just because Kevin Durant says something doesn’t mean it’s news.
I agree with you 100% that Community Boards are appointed instead of Elected, but there are people who want to give them actual power instead of being an advisory board. Not to mention from the perspective of those wanting a Stadium (not my personal opinion), trying to get the soccer Stadium finished now makes sense. Why? 1: Before the Shadow Opposition Leader (aka: Ocasio-Cortez), can find local people who will run for office and oppose the Stadium (ask Amazon about it sometime). 2: You want to get your shovels in the ground, because of the possibility that one day the Booker bill to stop tax breaks for Stadium Construction actually becomes Law.
The tweet claims that the current community board is in support of the stadium deal (what stadium deal this is I dunno, but anyway), so why would giving them actual power be a bad thing for NYCFC?
Mostly, this is just an indication that the whole tweet should be taken with an enormous grain of salt, if “according to my source” wasn’t already.
This is not sports related, but giving Community Boards actual power could allow NIMBY’s to stop projects that can be of a benefit to the Community like hospitals, police stations, fire houses, transportation projects, affordable housing schools and the like just because they do not want more traffic, people, etc.
If there is one thing the country definitely needs less of, it is small groups of people overriding the general public interest over relatively small scale concerns.
If NYCFC finally builds it’s floating stadium, surely it will carry either Liberian or Panamanian registry, just like most other ocean going commercial vessels, to avoid most of the standards and laws we assume apply to goods and/or services marketed here.
I don’t see the community boards being an issue on this.