Memphis to TN: While you’re handing out stadium money, how’s about $684m for Grizzlies arena and stuff?

Now that the Tennessee Titans owners have finalized their $1.2 billion (or so) subsidy request for a $2.1 billion stadium, to go on top of the subsidies sought by the $100 million+ in subsidies being given to the Chattanooga Lookouts and Tennessee Smokies owners for minor-league baseball stadiums, we can at least put a total price tag on how much Tennessee taxpayers will be expected to cough up to make their local sports teams wait what

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and his administration are seeking millions from the state of Tennessee, including $350 million in cash, for significant renovations to FedExForum, planned renovations to Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium, enhancements to AutoZone Park and replacing the long-shuttered Mid-South Coliseum with a soccer-specific stadium to house 901 FC. The total project cost is $684 million.

Well, that came somewhat out of nowhere. The Grizzlies and Memphis just agreed in April to rework the team’s lease to buy out the owners’ out clause in the event of low ticket sales for $44.8 million in city and county payments over the next seven years before the lease expires in 2029. But “significant renovations” for the Grizzlies’ 18-year-old arena haven’t been mentioned before now, let alone building a soccer stadium for Memphis 901 F.C., the local USL team. (The work on redoing the stadium that is home to the University of Memphis and the Liberty Bowl was announced in May, without details of who would pay for it.)

The Memphis Commercial Appeal reports that Mayor Strickland, who clearly has never had to think about how his naming conventions would go over with a classroom full of middle-schoolers, was set to reveal his “Big Ask” at a city council hearing last night — but there’s no sign of whether that happened either in the local press or on Twitter, so we’re going to have to do some heavy tea leaf reading here. That “including $350 million in cash” means the other $334 million will have to be either in bonds that the state would pay off somehow, bonds that the city would pay off somehow, or bonds that the team would pay off somehow, any of which could involve additional tax breaks. (Here’s a podcast where the writer of the Commercial Appeal article claims that the city wants to keep another 30 years’ worth of state tax revenue it’s currently using to pay off the initial cost of the Grizzlies arena, which he calls not “a very big lift.”) The University of Memphis football upgrades have already been given a $150-200 million price tag, and most USL stadiums are in the $30-40 million range, so we’re looking at probably upwards of $400 million in state money to be handed over for the Grizzlies, which is a lot for an arena that is younger than a whole bunch of TikTok stars. Or it could be more, or less — we’re going entirely based on what a city mayor told a local newspaper here, so those numbers could be wildly inaccurate.

And speaking of questionable things Strickland told the Commercial Appeal:

“It is truly not just about business or entertaining or the culture of the city,” Strickland said Monday. “It’s not just about tax generation or economic impact. It’s all that and more… Your city identity is tied to sports teams.”…

“Sports, tourism and the economic impact of sports is significant. ..It deserves investment and deserves state investment. And none of it would really be possible without the state going through these big surpluses,” Strickland said.

There’s an element of “Don’t be left a cold Omaha if the Grizzlies leave” here, but possibly the more important insinuation is the big about “big [state] surpluses.” There are very much overtones there of “Hey, you’ve got the money, you agreed to give $500 million to Nashville for a Titans stadium, how about a little for us in Memphis, if by ‘us’ you mean our billionaire NBA owner.” This is by now Exhibit Z in the case that giving federal money to state governments without enough strings attached or even building up big rainy-day funds by cutting state spending can be a terrible idea, because they’ll just give large gobs of any windfall to whoever is standing nearby with the nicest suits and biggest lobbyists, no matter what it was actually supposed to be spent on.

Hardiman, the Commercial Appeal writer, said Strickland told him he expected to have an engineering plan by the end of the year, with the goal of having renovations done by 2026. If Hardiman got anything more out of the mayor about where the money would come from or of what kind of commitments the Grizzlies would be agreeing to in exchange — a lease extension? a lease extension that they can’t just break if ticket sales suck like the old one? — he didn’t say, either in his article or on the podcast. (Yes, I listened to the whole podcast so you didn’t have to. You can thank me on Patreon.) More news to come, I hope, though I know better than to promise it’ll be anytime soon.