Last of the semi-abbreviated news roundups! Things return to normal next week.
- The Tempe city council voted 5-2 last night to approve opening talks with Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo for a new arena and development project, which would cost $1.7 billion and have at least $200 million and maybe significantly more covered by tax kickbacks and other public costs. This all happened last night at a time when I couldn’t watch, but here’s GO PHNX’s primer on what the meeting was set to be about, and here’s a set of computer-rendered flybys with enough lens flare to make even J.J. Abrams blush, hopefully that’ll hold you little bastards until more information is available.
- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has vetoed a bill to give $35 million to Tampa Bay Rays owner Stu Sternberg for a new spring training facility in Pasco County because of that time the team’s Twitter account said that gun violence was bad. It’s hard to tell if this was grandstanding a la that time Donald Trump called for eliminating NFL teams’ tax-exempt bond status as punishment for allowing players to take a knee during the national anthem then quietly put the tax break back in his tax bill, or if it’s just that DeSantis likes vetoing things, but either way Pasco County still intends to try to go ahead with the deal without state money.
- The owners of the Kansas City Current women’s soccer team, who promised to build a new stadium with their own money but now are asking for $6 million in state tax credits because their construction costs went up, as one does, tried to provide a bit of a carrot by dropping some new renderings of the proposed stadium that include fans walking to the game in daylight while cars on a nearby road zoom past under dark of night. Or maybe this isn’t a carrot, but rather a threat to blot out the sun if they don’t get their way? More news as events warrant.
- Asking for more public money for stadiums when costs rise is apparently going around: The developers of a Pawtucket soccer stadium want a whopping $30 million in added tax kickbacks to cover their increased costs following “inflation and supply chain nightmares.”
- The Nashville Scene has a long overview piece on the Tennessee Titans‘ stadium demands that makes an excellent point: Since a large chunk of construction costs would be paid off by kicked-back sales taxes from currently undeveloped land around the stadium site, this would create “time-sensitive pressure to quickly develop the East Bank into a stadium district that can generate enough sales tax to back $1 billion in debt.” And that in turn would create pressure for Nashville to sink even more public money into incentivizing (such a nicer word than “bribing”) developers into building up the area; Mayor John Cooper already has $1 billion in infrastructure upgrades planned for the site, and this could easily create a subsidy feedback loop that would drive taxpayer costs still higher.
- Having the Colorado Avalanche in the Stanley Cup playoffs has been a big boon to sports bars in Denver, says the owner of one sports bar in Denver, while having the Edmonton Oilers in the Stanley Cup playoffs has been hit-or-miss for sports bars in Edmonton, say the owners of sports bars in Edmonton. Nobody seems to have asked anyone else in either city how their business has been what with everyone busy watching hockey, but surely responsible journalists will soon remedy that by — okay, I can’t even pretend sarcastically anymore, this is what you’re going to get from sports reporters now and forever, folks, just get used to it.
- All the candidates for Illinois governor say they oppose using state money to help the Chicago Bears move from Chicago to Arlington Heights, but then nobody has actually asked for state money, so there’s no political cost to saying this, and anyway it’s easy enough to switch gears once you’re governor, so this probably doesn’t mean much.
The article about the Coyotes arena states that it would cost Tempe at least $200M while bringing in $180 in new taxes over 30 years, then has the gaul to say that’s an amazing deal for Tempe.
Stadium proponents aren’t even trying anymore, smh.
*$180M
Yeah, Craig Morgan seems to think his job is to support the Coyotes position and a lot of fans are convinced he’s the only reliable source for information on this, even though a lot of his opinions don’t seem to be backed by any source on the record. They’re also falling for the old “tax money on the development isn’t public money” thing.
I agree with him that it sounds like the airport issues are probably not deal-breakers. They’re just looking for concessions.
But his argument seems to be that other developments broke the rules the airport is citing now so why can’t the Coyotes?
Well, life is unfair. Maybe those other developments got away with it because the airport didn’t mind them, but it does mind this – for reasons unclear to me – so it’s going to press the issue. I’m not sure a judge would accept “whataboutism” as a valid argument if it comes to that, but I’m not a lawyer.
On the other hand, given that the property needs a lot of clean-up, the city might decide that it has to give away something in order to make that happen and that, from a tax-revenue and quality-of-life point of view, a bad deal to get a place cleaned up is still better than no deal.
“whataboutism” is a generic political construct deployed by people who are guilty of the the very same thing they are (generally on tv) complaining about in order to avoid having to explain exactly why they think it’s wrong for someone else to do something that they themselves have engaged in in the past (or are actively engaging in at that moment, for that matter).
It is often hard to know what judges will or won’t accept… even where actual precedent exists. Its a strange world.
As to the Coyotes, why not build as much of the structure underground as you possibly can. It will eliminate the air traffic issues and reduce a/c costs. Just sayin’.
I’m not sure. Maybe that’s geologically impossible.
Building underground may be costly, considering that the proposed arena would be close to the Tempe Town Lake reservoir — which affects the water table in the area. By how much, I’m not certain.
Thankful that Ron “Mr. @$$HOLE!” DeSantis is not my governor. Not that I’m for public handouts to sports teams; but HIS reasoning for not giving the Rays $35 million! (shaking my head)
Though I don’t believe we should pay for ballparks and arenas for billionaire owners, I just don’t feel comfortable with the DeSanits veto. If he said he doesn’t want to use public money for sports teams is one thing. To think it was done because the Rays had a view on guns that differs from the governor’s is alarming. He worries about the 2nd amendment, but forgets there is the 1st in front of it.
I am absolutely not touching the culture wars with a 10 foot pole on a website concerned with public welfare to rich sports owners but I’ll take what I can get. But isn’t giving the Rays free goodies like asking Southern Baptist to give their weekly collections to a Scientologist outreach program. Its a conservative state. Fighting theatre with theatre is not good policy but you won’t hear all of these groups making billions off the culture wars complain
Taking money from one group of people and giving it to another is what taxes are.
*Taking money from one person and distributing it to many people is what taxes are. FIFY
DeSantis vetoing the ballpark is good because we shouldn’t subsidize sporting venues.
WHY DeSantis vetoed is, however, is horrible because, like practically everything Ron DeSantis does, it’s motivated by hatred and spite as opposed to logic and reasoning. This is the same guy who is engaging in a scorched earth campaign with the state’s biggest employer thanks to some nonsense scare tactics.
Exactly. Leadership used to mean finding ways to get things done efficiently and responsibly. Now it means finding ways to prevent most things from getting done any way possible.
Just as quickly as DeSantis vetoed state funds for the Rays, five of their players announced their opposition to a Pride Night sponsored by the ballclub last weekend.
It’s not difficult to see that as groveling before a demagogue who’s become the hard right/Christian Right favorite for the 2024 election.
Seems to be some issues with Mr Meruelo’s financials.
Tempe City Council votes to move forward with negotiations on Coyotes arena development proposal
“Councilmember Lauren Kuby expressed serious concern about entering into a partnership with Meruelo, referencing some of these previously reported incidents. Kuby introduced, via a graphic displayed during the meeting, a business viability assessment for Meruelo’s portfolio, performed by Dun & Bradstreet Finance Analytics, which showed a high delinquency score, a moderate to high failure risk, a high overall risk assessment and a credit recommendation of a maximum of just $5,000 for the Coyotes organization. Kuby said she also had concerns about possible litigation stemming from any breach of the IGA and stressed the need for a forensic economic analysis.”
https://theathletic.com/news/coyotes-tempe-arena-negotiations/SNjjoRRnlzx8/
OOOO, that’s fantastic! An actual professional sports franchise that has a credit limit lower than most FoS readers…
Bettman must be so proud. As for the other members of the NHL owners’ club… well, I’m guessing not so much.
And, there is still a little problem with the airport.
Arizona Coyotes could build arena in Tempe; city agrees to start negotiations on entertainment district plans
“Tamara Swann, the regional administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration sent a letter (https://www.skyharbor.com/docs/default-source/pdfs/rio-salado-project/final-faa-supplemental-letter-to-tempe-06-01-22.pdf) the day before the city council meeting to Tempe’s city manager, Andrew Ching, which said that residential development on that area is a “noncompatible land use.””
https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2022/06/02/coyotes-tempe-arena-vote.html
Ever since Tom Ridge’s nonsensical warning about building SoFi stadium near LAX, I’m often skeptical of these types of FAA warnings. Usually they are drummed up by rival arena developer/operators. Allstate Arena is so close to runway 22 at O’hare, I could hear the planes above me, indoors, during a John Mellencamp concert. Good show, he played Little Pink Houses.
Wasn’t Shea Stadium just about 100ft from the end of the runway at Laguardia?
(not quite that close, but it sounded like that during Mets and Jets broadcasts)
More like 4,000 feet horizontally. But the planes flew by Shea (and still fly by Citi) only a couple hundred feet above the stands.
In Oakland A’s news the BCDC had its forum yesterday. The BCDC staff seems to be on board. There seemed to be 1 or 2 members of the board oppose. The rest were close to the vest
A LOT will be made of the BCDC decision, especially if they remove HT from port usage for ballpark/development. But this (potential) “procedural win” does NOTHING to address paying for this boondoggle (infrastructure/actual ballpark) or the awful ingress/egress issues of the site. Never mind the myriad of safety issues related to active/busy freight/commuter rail line and hundreds of port trucks traversing the area 24/7.
I used to worked at a site where all employees arriving or leaving the facility had to cross a multi track rail crossing (8 separate tracks, iirc, all freight). Even though there were only a couple of hundred vehicles crossing every day, we basically never went a full year without there being some sort of incident.
I would imagine that should this insane project go ahead, some restrictions will be placed on rail traffic during the 5-6 hours that games are actually being played… but not knowing much about what the rail system there is used for I wonder how difficult that might be?
You can delay some freight traffic and impose exclusion windows on the companies that use those crossings. Commuter traffic is often more difficult to manage around ballgame time windows.
Does any part of this multi billion dollar plan include elevating the roadway over the tracks?
No way in hell will UPRR/Amtrak CC allow restrictions during ballgames. UPRR has already filed a lawsuit, so that’s pretty much where they stand on this. Port of Oakland is one of the West Coast’s busiest ports after LA/LB. The freight line in question is integral in getting shipments inland/across the country, as well as delivering freight to port. Amtrak/CC, scheduled intercity rail service between San Jose and Sacramento, won’t allow restrictions either.
Do you see any chance the BCDC could vote it down? There was drama with the first Alameda county funding vote and it wasn’t even close to being voted down.
Like I mentioned above, in the grand scheme of things won’t matter what the BCDC decides; their decision is far from being the primary issue with this boondoggle. BTW, what Alameda County funding vote? Last I checked they hadn’t committed to anything yet.
All these posts are always negative, negative, negative! You really think with thousands of fans on the streets in Edmonton that it hasn’t helped their economy? Really? Why always so negative?
Because when you look at the numbers for any city ever, that’s what they show. I’m positive about that!