So! Much! News! This post cannot stop it, it can only hope to contain it:
- Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and Jackson County Executive Frank White Jr. — yes, that Frank White — say they’re open to talking with Royals officials about a new downtown stadium, which why shouldn’t they, talk is cheap. White said a few years back that he was boycotting the team after they fired him as broadcaster for saying that their sucky players sucked, but now says, “As I have said from day one, we have a responsibility to ensure the county is using the tax dollars entrusted to us by our residents as effectively and efficiently as possible. Part of that responsibility is being open to opportunities to improve the impact our investments are making in the community, including a potential downtown stadium,” so guess he’s over it! We’ll still have to see what “efficiently” means, and if White will be willing to loose his tongue again if Royals owner John Sherman’s financing plan turns out also to suck.
- The Buffalo Bills stadium campaign has barely gotten started and already has a lot of stupid going on, but the Erie County legislator who is threatening to veto any stadium if the Bills don’t let unvaccinated fans attend games really kicks it over the top — not least because one legislator can’t “veto” anything, especially when the funding the Bills owners are seeking is likely to come from the state, not the county. Leg. Frank Todaro’s bio states that the body-shop owner “has spent his life fixing things that are broken” and “hates waste and is determined to put the Erie County Taxpayer first,” and the hill he has chosen to die on over giving perhaps a billion dollars or so in tax money to the local billionaire sports team owner is whether the billionaire insists on enforcing public health rules, okay then.
- The leading contenders in the extremely contentious Buffalo mayor’s race, meanwhile, aren’t saying much about the Bills stadium plans because — wait for it — the Bills don’t actually play in the city of Buffalo, and neither candidate wants to spend the money for a stadium in the city, because what part of “perhaps a billion dollars” did you miss?
- New Mexico United‘s preferred stadium site may be in trouble because part of it would require eminent domain to take from its private owner, and the property owner is claiming in court that the city is getting around this by pretending it’s taking the land for a traffic circle. I mean, a soccer stadium has a circle in the middle, and soccer players are a kind of traffic, and — yeah, this is why I never became a lawyer. Isn’t there somebody the team owners can just pay off to make this problem go away?
- St. Louis Circuit Judge Christopher McGraugh has rejected a motion by the NFL and Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke to throw out the city and county of St. Louis’ lawsuit seeking about $100 million in damages for moving the team to L.A. in violation of the league’s own relocation rules. The suit, which has been simmering for four frickin’ years since the last time McGraugh refused to dismiss it, will now move to trial in January, but more important, the league and the Rams only have until September 28 to start turning over internal NFL financial documents for discovery, and “each defendant would be fined $1,000 per day after the deadline if they don’t comply” — I can’t tell if that’s $1,000 each per day for the league and Rams or $1,000 a day for each of the league’s 32 owners, but either way, this should be some fun coming up as the league tries to figure out how to keep its secret books secret.
- The Knoxville-Knox County Planning Commission has approved rezoning for a new Tennessee Smokies stadium, which isn’t at all the same as the city and county approving $61 million in public money to build the thing, which hasn’t happened yet. But still, it’s a hurdle, so please mark that off as cleared if you’re scoring at home.
- There’s even more news, but I can get to it next week, it’s not going anywhere. Happy weekend, everybody!
Arguably, Kaufman Stadium is one the the nicest stadiums in MLB, A 1970s stadium that has not lost any of it’s charm and looks better than many of the newer ballparks. If you want the same downtown feel say like Miami, just remove the parking lots and put them far enough from the ballpark so people have to walk at least 1/2 hr to get into the place.
You could build the same exact Kaufman Stadium downtown then what would be the point?
The point of these ballparks in the past was to let people watch baseball games. Not social gathering, not beer of the week in the concessions area, not the worlds greatest lobster sandwich.
Maybe if we promote the game more than the ballpark, baseball would not have a decline in attendance.
It certainly is one of the nicest stadiums in MLB… and it regularly ranks well above the median in fan surveys (for what that is worth). It has also received a $250m “upgrade” in the last decade or thereabouts.
Much easier to build the attractions you want at the ballpark than to clear downtown land for a stadium. Unless you happen to own the land downtown already and are looking to unload it for an impressive profit to a public entity created at your behest to assemble land for a ballpark.
Just saying.
The point is one of the owners of the current team is JE Dunn Construction and they want to build a new stadium on someone else’s dime. Refurbing Kauffman would be the best, but the main construction money was spent in the 1970s so absent a time machine that’s not going to work for them. Also, a new stadium would start roughly the time their work on the new, and in my opinion unnecessary, KCI terminal is completed. So it’s a win-win except for the group that will need to pony up all the cash.
I thought most body shop owners spent their lives overbilling insurance companies for work that either wasn’t done at all or was nothing like as expensive as the invoice says?
Maybe Frankie is the/an exception.
Neil, I think the time has come to act. Call a presser and threaten to use your veto to prevent the Giants and Jets ever playing again at the new Meadowlands if the state contributes so much as one dollar to the Bills new stadium not in Buffalo.
I live in Kings County, that makes me the king of New York state, right?
Brooklynite huh? Queens/Yonkers boy here.
For some reason I thought you were based in LA.
Btw I just learned you wrote for the Village Voice. Nice! I’m sure I’ll read every article eventually. I still can’t believe the Voice doesn’t pay wall. V V archives = ACME!
Manhattan originally, Brooklyn the last 30 years.
Supposedly scans of every Voice issue ever will eventually be up online, with the emphasis on “eventually.” Most of my articles, though, are already from the web era, and so available here (currently without images, sadly):
https://www.villagevoice.com/author/neildemause/
Holy smokes! 27 pages? Thanks for linking that. I’ll definitely enjoy reading them. As usual.
You also wrote for Deadspin I see. Did you bail at the same time as the others? The new owners ruined a great site with great writers. Shame.
Thanks again!
JB
I was never on staff at Deadspin, just wrote for them freelance. But yes, stopped working with them when it turned into I Can’t Believe It’s Not Deadspin — have written a couple of pieces for Defector, which has done a great job of getting the old gang back together.