Albuquerque mayor shouts from pickup truck his plan to spend $70m or so on soccer arena

Also on Friday, I wrote about how the USL and MLS are increasingly looking set to go head-to-head as competing U.S. soccer leagues, and noted that “cities would be absolutely insane to offer any stadium subsidies just to land a pro soccer team, since every municipality of any size is going to get one now regardless.” I included a link to Portland, Maine’s just-released plans to maybe subsidize a USL stadium there as an example of such insanity — but if I had waited one more day, I could have included Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller’s announced plans to spend a much bigger buttload of money on a stadium for the USL’s New Mexico United:

The Mayor will send a resolution on Monday to City Council to get a bond proposal placed on the November ballot — on which he will also be on seeking re-election — for a new, publicly funded downtown soccer stadium with New Mexico United, a privately owned team, as the primary tenant.

The publicly financed project could cost an estimated $70 million before land acquisition costs.

Spending $70 million plus land acquisition sounds like a lot for a minor-league soccer stadium, and it is. But it’s would also maybe not be the actual public cost: The public bond, which will be presented to the Albuquerque city council on Monday and if approved would go before voters in November, would only be for $50 million; there’s about $9 million in state money that’s been approved (though state officials didn’t approve United owner Peter Trevisani’s $40 million state funding request), and also Keller implied there could be other public spending as well, though he was pretty handwavy about the whole thing:

JOURNAL: What will the total funding be? State and City funds?

KELLER: “For most of it, but we’re open to a private/public partnership. We’re (the city) gonna make sure and fund the minimum amount required for a stadium. But if there’s additional extras — how big it is and how nice it is, that’ll depend on other funds or matching funds from other governments and possibly other folks involved in the stadium who may or may not be with the team (other possible private entities).”

All this for a team that already plays in Albuquerque, at the local baseball stadium, and which isn’t even committing to outfit its new stadium with giant soccer robots like initial renderings promised. Yes, it would be nice for United fans to be able to watch soccer in a stadium designed for soccer, but that isn’t really a core function of municipal government, especially when Trevisani would be the one reaping the rewards of any increased ticket demand. Mayor Keller’s justification for the project seems so far to have been limited to shouting “You all have earned a stadium!” from the back of a pickup truck during a team tailgate party; hopefully he’ll provide more details at Monday’s council hearing, though driving a pickup truck into the council chambers and repeating Saturday’s performance would actually be far more entertaining.