And so we come to the end of another week, one where I’ve been reading a lot about bears and consensual cannibalism. (But not among the bears. Bears are above considering such things, presumably.) But anyway, you want to hear about more pleasant things, like, uhhh, the terrible state of journalism in 2022? Maybe I should consider adding some more bears to these posts.
- Bits of concrete are falling from the Saddledome roof, but that happens to concrete and isn’t a structural issue, so the Calgary Flames arena is “currently safe and structurally sound,” according to city general manager of infrastructure services Michael Thompson. Any concrete-repair costs would be definitely worth factoring into currently ongoing discussions over building a new Flames arena after the previous plan was halted when neither the city nor the team owners wanted to pay for rising cost overruns, but it’s far more likely it’ll just be the subject of lots of tweets saying “The old arena is literally falling apart, build a new one already!” if history is any guide.
- St. Louis’s new mostly-but-by-no-means-entirely-privately-funded soccer stadium was supposed to open this upcoming weekend with a minor-league St. Louis SC City2 game, but instead will not because a city work crew outside the stadium accidentally knocked out power. It’s hard to tell what’s going on, really, because the city won’t talk about it, but a member of the St. Louligans supporters’ group declared the whole situation to be “a huge bummer,” which is hard to dispute.
- Not saying op-ed sections in newspapers are an inherently bad idea that should be entirely rethought, but when the Philadelphia Inquirer ends up running a long opinion piece by the would-be developers of a new Sixers arena that asserts that the arena “will be privately funded and not require public subsidy” (spoiler: this isn’t true) and links that phrase to an Inquirer profile of the developers that actually says nothing of the sort, maybe op-ed editors should at least be doing as aggressive fact-checking of rich people’s opinion pieces as they do for normal people.
- I throw plenty of shade on Axios here for being an attempt to reduce all human communication to a set of over-boiled-down bullet points, but this Axios listicle about Richmond’s new stadium for the Flying Squirrels minor-league baseball team that includes the city’s claims of huge tax windfalls without even mentioning once how much the city would spend on the project provides a lovely case study of journalistic badness. And that’s without even getting into the fact that nobody is asking why Richmond’s stadium renderings include a lower deck that appears to slope down away from the field, though given how the Flying Squirrels are doing this year, maybe the city thinks it’d be easier to sell tickets to watch the backs of other fans’ heads than whatever is passing for baseball.
- Though then we have the Indianapolis Star writing an article about a new arena for the Indy Fuel minor-league hockey team that doesn’t mention how much the arena will cost or how much the public will be expected to kick in for it, so maybe it’s just that most journalism has descended to the level of reprinting press releases. (Or maybe Gannett has just laid off anyone with the time or skills to do anything more than that.)
- Missing all those posts here from the spring about all the public money being wasted on a new Buffalo Bills stadium? Instead enjoy this report (from the Investigative Post, one of the few news outlets to do real reporting on the Bills stadium funding) on how nearby Niagara County is funneling $124 million in tax breaks to Amazon for a new warehouse with jobs paying barely over minimum wage. (Amazon will also get state tax kickbacks, because that’s how Gov. Kathy Hochul rolls.) But at least they’re stable jobs, what with the boom in online ordering meaning Amazon will continue to need more and more warehouses forever … sorry, say what now? Oh. Well, hopefully at least the Amazon workers will get some state-of-the-art cupholders.
The Indy Fuel arena that’s going to be built in Fishers, Indiana is expected to cost around $550 million as part of a $1.1 billion expansion plan at the Fishers District, which right now consists of an IKEA and a bunch of eateries across the street from a TopGolf. The whole idea is meant to build a bunch of hotels, convention space, and additional retail to create a suburban entertainment venue that other states seem to enjoy, but it goes against a common philosophy that Naptowners and really Hoosiers in general tend to enjoy about sporting events (or really anything); staying downtown.
The Fuel currently play at the Indiana Farmers Coliseum, located at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, which is relatively easy to get to in the city (besides getting into the fairgrounds cause unless it’s the state fair, they only allow, what, two entrances open for events which presents bottlenecks?) and itself had undergone a massive renovation back in 2012-2014 where they literally gutted the building to expand space as much as possible. The team is usually at the lower end of the ECHL attendance figures, but that’s because the team has only made the postseason twice and won one playoff game in their entire existence.
I think fans’ concerns aren’t entirely unfounded. Moving up to Fishers will add a lot of time to their travel schedule (plus, we don’t have a robust mass transit system; our city’s bus system is notoriously awful as it is and doesn’t even come close to touching Hamilton County), and whenever a team moves into a new venue, they will try to justify that with price increases. Especially a historically bad team. I am not sure if Indianapolis could support two hockey teams, one professional and one developmental, but perhaps a USHL or NAHL team could move into the Coliseum given that it will at least maintain that ability for people to have access to the sport.
It seems likely that the Indy Fuel arena will be financed similar to the Indy Eleven’s (USL team) proposed soccer stadium in downtown Indy, where state and local taxes generated within the entire development will be diverted to fund the stadium. If that’s correct, then the Indiana General Assembly will have to approve another Professional Sports Development Area (or PSDA). Unfortunately, Indiana legislators will rubber stamp this because, like city leaders and general citizens, they fail to recognize or ignore the fact that these venues will be paid for by taxpayers. As businesses and residents move into the PSDA, state and local taxes are diverted from the general purpose to fund the stadium. It’s so disappointing.
It’s Indiana.
Clean water? Nah!
Sports venues? Of course!
It looks like $550 million is for a whole multiuse project, which makes sense since even in this day and age it would be hard to spend $550 million on an 8,500-seat arena.
https://apnews.com/article/nhl-sports-hockey-indiana-indianapolis-406f870a5c40c32ebd9b3f045bda5354
None of which indicates how much tax money would be used, for the arena or the overall development. “A lot” is a good guess given it’s Indiana, but would be nice for somebody to at least report some half-assed official numbers, even.
Indianapolis had a USHL team that went dormant for reasons I’m unclear on.
Indianapolis is certainly big enough to support an AHL team if it could find the right building.
Indy has the population to support but it’s just not a big hockey market.
City of Fishers just announced a plan to pay a portion of debt service of the arena with a 1% food and beverage tax increase.
There doesn’t seem to be a reliable way to easily predict what can or cannot be a hockey market. It depends on the arena and how the team is run.
“Look chaps, I’m done for… I’ve got a gammie leg and I’m going fast… so, you’d better eat me”
Eeeeeew! With a gammie leg?
“you needn’t eat the leg, Hodges”….