It was a slow week for stadium and arena news — even money-grubbing plutocrats and their elected-official pals like to go on vacation in the summer — but there are still a few more items of note that didn’t make it to posts of their own:
- Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan, who is currently waiting out state decisions on both the Penn Station redevelopment that could try to relocate the Garden and the arena’s never-ending $50 million–plus-a-year [CORRECTION: currently $43 million a year and rising] property tax break, has been sprinkling campaign donations around the state legislative races. Gothamist asked the ten state senate candidates Dolan’s PAC has funded what their thoughts were on the tax break, and four said they want to keep giving MSG tax money, one said they didn’t, and five didn’t deign to answer. Given that bills to repeal the exemption have never even gotten a committee hearing, that should probably be no surprise, but $400,000 in campaign ads never hurts to shore up the positions that elected officials are already taking.
- Washington Commanders president Jason Wright said “I think we’ll still be able to hit our timeline” for a new stadium, without actually saying what that timeline is, that’s one way for no one to be able to prove you wrong. The Commanders’ currently lease has another five years to run, but as we’ve seen many times before, leases can almost always be extended, so basically Wright is saying here that “we still want a new stadium, hopefully once people forget what an ass my boss is.”
- Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said last fall that he wants a new arena to replace the team’s 20-year-old one, but then this week Stars CEO Brad Alberts said “it’s a great place to play for a long time” but “it needs a renovation.” Is this good cop/bad cop, pivoting to a more politically palatable plan, something else? Once, we had government beat writers who could (sometimes) explain what’s going on, but this was reported by a guy who mostly seems to know about railroads, so he may need a little time to get up to speed on arena financing.
- Oklahoma City has approved construction of a new arena — no, no, not the new arena for the Thunder, that’s still under negotiation, this one is at the state fairgrounds for horse and livestock shows. The $102 million project is getting $77.3 million in public money, most of that from OKC’s MAPS sales-tax hike, which helped pay for the Thunder’s current arena and may help pay for a new one; as Robert Moses found, having your own revenue stream targeted for stuff you want to build is a great way to get to build stuff.
- The owners of the New Jersey Jackals indy-league baseball team have announced they’re moving out of Yogi Berra Stadium in Montclair, which is weird since that stadium always seemed to be the only reason the Jackals existed in the first place. Though here comes a potential bid from Paterson for the Jackals to play at their rehabilitated Negro League ballpark, Hinchliffe Stadium, so maybe the Jackals owners are just trying to see if they can take advantage of the decimation of the minors to shop around the local stadium glut for a better deal.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/msg-entertainment-plans-spinoff-madison-square-garden-radio-city-1235201932/
MSG Entertainment is exploring a spinoff two of its most iconic properties — New York’s Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall, as well as its regional sports channels — in a bid to provide cash and new options for its MSG Sphere project, which is set to open next year in Las Vegas.
MSG Entertainment’s board of directors explored the move, and in a statement Thursday the company outlined the plan.
Under the plan being considered, the iconic New York arena (home to concerts, live events and New York Knicks and Rangers games), Radio City Music Hall, the Beacon Theatre and the Chicago Theatre, as well as those venues’ entertainment and sports booking businesses, would be spun out into a new live entertainment and media company.
Also part of the new company would be the MSG Networks’ RSN business, the arena rights deals with the Knicks and Rangers, and the Radio City Rockettes and their Christmas Spectacular show.
While definitely ridiculous to exempt MSG from property tax, I think the $50m per year is inflated. The only thing I could find on that number says that the $1 billion renovation increased the taxable value by $800m.
A good property tax attorney would be able to argue that cost == value for tax purposes. Would be fun to see the income that would be submitted during discovery, though.
Should say cost does not equal value
It’s $43m a year — I misremembered, will correct:
https://ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/penn-station-redevelopment-testimony-june-2022.pdf
It’s going up every year as midtown property gets more valuable, though, so it should hit $50m a year soon enough.
Even though the American Airlines Center opened after Cuban bought the team, the vote and design were well before. Ross Perot Jr. (prior owner) had little interest and let the Stars design it better for hockey viewing, sightlines, etc. That probably irritates Cuban although I doubt it irritates him enough to spend billions on a new arena with his own money, but explains why the two teams aren’t necessarily on the same page.
Suburban fans would not go into downtown Newark to support the minor league team there, will they go into Paterson to the renovated Hinchliffe Stadium? (I sure would, also to see the nearby Great Falls and eat ethnic foods.)
Even if they were able to modify Hinchliffe for baseball, one question is could they get it done in time for next season? Parking and traffic would be a major problem even if the Jackals only drew the 2+K like they did during glory years of Floyd Hall’s ownership. (Keith, IIRC the Newark Bears averaged over 6K in attendance their first two seasons but less than 500 in their final season.)
Yeah, the problem with the Bears wasn’t some kind of fear of Newark. (People go to NJPAC, after all.) It was that the novelty wore off, and then the team got demoted from the Atlantic League to the Can-Am League and stopped bringing in ex-big leaguers, and eventually it all cascaded. I went to a game there in one of the final seasons, and my son got three foul balls because the players outnumbered the fans — they should have used that as a selling point, honestly.
Thanks for the Robert Moses link Neil! A nice trip down memory lane!
If the state senate candidates know what’s good for them, they’ll take the money and do whatever Dolan tells them.
If they don’t, you know what happens next… JD & the Straight Shot show up Rolling Stones style on the back of a flat bed truck at your next campaign rally.
Sure, it’s the nuclear option… but it works pal….
Is the shakeup at MSG due to them getting in way over their head with the Sphere project in Las Vegas? The numbers seem astronomical and the size of the venue appears to limit the type of events (how many acts can sell out a 17,000 seat arena regularly in the same town over and over?) yeah it’s Vegas and they have a U2 residency set up. But when you spent nearly $2 billion on a venue, while you have several competing venues that size- seems like it’s only going to succeed if other businesses think it’s cool and want to build one in their city.
How do the Commanders have a lease when the team owns the stadium. Is the lease for the land it sits on?
That’s a good question — I’ve found one reference to it as a land lease, but most sites just say “stadium lease” without specifying. (The likely sources for the lease itself are coming up empty.) My assumption has been it’s a land lease, but it could be some other weird thing like the Madison Square Garden operating permit for all we know.
In any event, teams can almost always break leases before they end, and they can certainly always negotiate extensions. So the 2027 date is mostly just for team execs to be able to wave around as a mock deadline.