Friday roundup: Tempe arena could depend on election, Bears land buy in limbo, Inter Miami stadium maybe finally not?

Happy Friday! I have a fresh shipment of fridge magnets set to arrive this weekend, so if you’re a new or re-upped Field of Schemes subscriber waiting for yours, you shouldn’t have to wait long. And if you’re just waiting for the week’s roundup of stadium and arena news, you don’t have to wait at all, just to the end of this sentence, I swear we’ll get there soon, here we go:

• Hopefuls for Tempe’s city council were asked about the proposed Arizona Coyotes arena with potentially more than $200 million in tax subsidies at a candidate forum last night, and their answers were: “good deal,” tax subsidies are bad, economic development is good but tax subsidies are maybe bad, economic development is good but traffic is bad, Tempe should “evaluate everything very carefully,” development is good but only if it doesn’t cost too much, and jobs are good but tax subsidies are bad. There’s no real way of reading tea leaves there to tell who would vote which way on an arena, but with three new councilmembers set to be seated in July, it certainly could tip the fragile balance that is currently running slightly anti-arena, maybe, if unnamed sources are to be believed.
• Glendale, meanwhile, is about to embark on a $40 million renovation of the Coyotes’ old arena to optimize it for concerts, which, sure, at that relatively modest price tag it might actually pay for itself. Plus if there aren’t enough concerts, there’s always professional bull riding.
• The Chicago Bears owners still haven’t bought the Arlington Racecourse site as they say they want to, and may not until 2023, and even then will only “decide whether it’s financially feasible to try to develop it further,” according to team president Ted Phillips. From the outside, the answer to that appears to be “nope, doesn’t look like it, but hey it’s your $2 billion,” but as it’s still possible the team may ask for public money, it’s worth keeping an eye on even if you’re not a Bears fan concerned about where you’ll have to be spending your Sundays starting in 2027 or something.
• This actually happened last week, but Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and Inter Miami owner Jorge Mas say they’ve finally reached an agreement on a new stadium at Melreese golf course, with the city commission to vote on it maybe as soon as the end of the month. The Miami Herald is skeptical, as anyone should be given how long Mas and his co-owner David Beckham have been trying to work out a Miami stadium deal, but I guess stay tuned both for whether a vote takes place and for what exactly the details will be of what they’re voting on.
• You people keep asking me about this article in the Buffalo Chronicle claiming that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to build a new Madison Square Garden in a public park where my son’s high school soccer team used to practice, and my response is that not only does it cite no named sources (just “an official with Empire State Development”), and my answer is that the Buffalo Chronicle seems to be not a real news outlet, but rather a site run by a PR consultant for “Native American financiers” who runs whatever stories he wants in order to “shape the public discourse.” Also both Hochul’s office and Empire State Development say the story is made up, so please let’s not waste more time and energy debating whether this non-plan would make any sense.
• I know it’s not technically stadium news, but if you’d like to read about how legalized sports gambling isn’t likely to produce the tax windfall that states are hoping for, I wrote an article about this for my old Vice Sports editor Patrick Hruby at Global Sport Matters, go check it out.
• And I also know I spend a lot of time picking on understaffed news sites for terrible reporting and worse copy editing, but you gotta admit it’s pretty hilarious that WYRK-FM in Buffalo has has a headline up for two days reading “Here’s What the New Bills Stadium Should Like.” I sincerely hope it’s strawberry ice cream.