Friday roundup: Tempe to let actual voters vote on Coyotes arena, D.C. sues Dan Snyder over whatever he’s got

If you’ve wandered over to the social media network Mastodon in hopes of sticking it to The Man or just seeing what’s up, and are having the common Mastodon newbie experience of “Wait, how do I find anything to read here?”, I’m happy to report that Field of Schemes is on the air there at @fieldofschemes@mas.to. (If you haven’t wandered over there yet, you can start by signing up with a server that has openings, it doesn’t matter which one, you can always switch later.) I’m also on there with a personal account at @neildemause@mastodon.online, where you will find even more dumb jokes about our dumb world beyond stadiums, if that floats your boat.

And if you are a traditionalist who just wants to get their news and dumb jokes the old-fashioned way, by going on the web, stay right here, and we shall begin:

  • Today’s big news is that the Tempe city council voted unanimously last night to send the Arizona Coyotes‘ proposed arena to a public vote next May 16. As previously discussed here, the public tends to be more fickle about its approvals than governmental bodies, okaying stadium and arena plans about 50% of the time, vs. 96% for elected officials. On the other hand, there’s still the story that then-Miami Heat executiv Jay Cross told at a 1997 sports developers’ conference that we told in Field of Schemes the book — it has lots of good stories, you should consider buying a copy if you don’t have one, or at least the electronic version — about how he decided a public referendum was just fine if you treated it like “a political campaign … no different than if you’re running for the Senate, or governor, or mayor,” and proceeded to dump a ton of money into campaign ads, and won handily. So, we’ll see what happens in Tempe, but do buckle in for a whole lot of paid pro-arena propaganda, which I will be here to debunk where necessary, where else am I gonna be?
  • D.C. attorney general Karl Racine announced this week that he’s filed a consumer protection lawsuit against the Washington Commanders, owner Dan Snyder, the NFL, and league commissioner Roger Goodell for allegedly deceiving the public about, well, pretty much everything: This seems to have started over the question of whether the team kept two sets of books to cheat both the league and ticket holders out of money they were due, but now is extending into any “public misrepresentations, omissions, and ambiguities of material fact,” including misleading Washington area fans into thinking Snyder wasn’t a complete asshole. This sounds a bit like a fishing expedition on the part of Racine, but even if so, the discovery phase where he subpoenas the team and league for evidence promises to be awesome, so I am very much here for that and hope you will be too.
  • Still no official election results in all those close races that could affect stadium plans: Steve Sisolak is marginally gaining on Joe Lombardo in Nevada, Loren Taylor still has the lead for mayor in Oakland but they aren’t going to finish the next round of counting second-place votes under the city’s ranked choice voting system until Monday, and Anaheim isn’t sure who its next mayor will be either. None of these races feature super-pro-subsidy candidates vs. super-anti-subsidy ones, so it may just be a matter of whose names end up appearing in the headlines for the next few years, but it’s still worth keeping half an eye on.
  • Everybody loves a good fly-on-the-wall “inside story,” but this one in the Buffalo News about the Bills stadium planning is mostly just the team’s architect reminiscing about how he and team officials brainstormed guiding concepts like “Progressive. Modern. Timeless,” which is entertaining without actually being very informative: If nothing else, you’ve gotta love an article that can report things like “Some of the more philosophical principles – ‘Belonging,’ ‘Pride’ and ‘Respect’ among them – become tangible in the branding of the stadium” while keeping a straight face.
  • The Arlington Heights Village Board voted in favor of a non-binding pre-development agreement with the Chicago Bears, which is exactly as noneventful as it sounds, but the dream of a giant suburban Bears complex remains alive, at least until somebody decides that building whole new neighborhoods isn’t profitable anymore.
  • I promised you comedy up top, here’s your weekly moment of comedy: The Nippon Ham Fighters, who as you must always reminded are not the “Ham Fighters” but rather the Fighters who are owned by Nippon Ham, just opened their new stadium to the media, who discovered that the backstop is several feet closer to home plate than league rules allow. Team officials won’t say how they plan to resolve this issue — moving home plate or tearing out some seats would seem to be the only real options — but meanwhile, HA ha.

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22 comments on “Friday roundup: Tempe to let actual voters vote on Coyotes arena, D.C. sues Dan Snyder over whatever he’s got

  1. I certainly hope this council buys at least one copy to read, as it would be money well spent, unlike this sham of a proposal presented by Mr Meruelo.

    1. Who/where is this Mr Meruelo? And do any Tempe officials ask or care if Meruelo really can back up this proposal? All I see is this snake oil Nick Wood show. Is this a hockey arena or some kind of scam to get zoning approval for 2100 (up from 1600) ultra luxury condos/apartments? How can a team that spent a decade begging Glendale for operating subsidies while struggling to pay state taxes suddenly have $2 billion+++ for this development? And while tough questions went unanswered, the Tempe Development Review Commission unanimously approved a zoning change to high density urban core 65+ du/acre. This is just like my Rottweiler who chases skunks, and Tempe is about to get skunked.

      1. Agreed, that Mr Meruelo is MIA, unlike other owners of sports teams asking for their development concessions from their local politicians.

        Do you have confirmation/link of the meeting minutes and the final vote?

        1. Development Review Commission – November 15, 2022

          Note: Presentation starts at this timemark.

          [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P5xygFJQWA?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&start=4920&wmode=transparent&w=640&h=360]

  2. “Progressive. Modern. Timeless”

    Where Timeless means “We start thinking about a new one in 20 years.”

  3. I grew up in Tempe and can tell you that it’s one of the better run cities around, so I’m not surprised that they decided to put it out to voters. Also, the Coyotes need Tempe far more than Tempe needs them. That said, it’ll be interesting to see what kind of influence ASU decides to yield. My guess is that voters will approve the new arena because Tempe is fairly progressive.

    1. It seems to me that ASU would prefer this not to happen. It will be competition for their own arenas and sporting events.

      1. Is a 20,000-seat arena really a direct competitor for a 5,000-seat one? Seems like two very different markets.

        1. ASU also owns the 11,000 seat Desert Financial Arena. ASU torpedoed the Rio Salado / McClintock arena on ASU property the Coyotes were pushing in 2017.

      2. And every time a concert comes to Arizona there will be intense competition, with 5 indoor venues seating 16,000 or more.

        1. I would think one of them would have to end up closing. Even the New York City area couldn’t support five full-sized concert arenas, so Phoenix doesn’t seem to stand a chance.

  4. Pardon my ignorance on this… but I didn’t see anything in the linked article that says the public vote/referendum will be binding.

    Is it a binding public vote? Or is this just an advisory vote meant to give elected officials some idea how the people they represent who are motivated enough to vote on this matter feel?

    Secondly, from what I see nothing so far in the development plan has addressed the concerns of the airport or city of Phoenix… both of which object strongly.

    Putting hundreds or thousands of homes under the direct flight path to an airport is not a good idea… and becomes less and less a good idea the closer you get to the end of the runways.

    It is not clear to me (I live nowhere near Tempe or Phoenix) whether either the airport or city of Phoenix can actually stop this, or whether the owners of the airport could successfully sue for any disruption to their business plans etc. if flight paths are forcibly modified (typically airports have a significant amount of control over what is built near them for obvious reasons… and no-one can argue the airport isn’t existing infrastructure…)

    I’m not saying an arena in Tempe (especially if it is actually privately funded) is a bad idea, but an arena this close to an airport and which will be surrounded by homes and commercial development? Yeah, that’s quite a bit worse than an arena that is occupied for a few hours a day 50-75 days a year. Much worse.

    Why is this the only parcel of land apparently under consideration?

  5. This is the only site in Tempe that’s big enough to do all this. There are rumors that they have a Plan B in other municipalities but Tempe is the preferred destination given its location in the area.

    So on the one hand the city is contributing money towards the cleanup of the site and would be kicking back property taxes. One could argue that they wouldn’t be getting the property taxes but for the development happening so the only out of pocket costs would be the site cleanup.

    On the other hand one whatever city services the new development would need the city would instead be out of pocket for.

    So it comes down to weather the additional economic activity that spills over to the rest of the city generates enough taxes to pay for the city services used by the development.

    I would bet against it being worth it because there simply hasn’t been enough demonstrated interest in hockey in Arizona to suggest that there will be a lot of activity and with 2 other major league venues in the Phoenix area I don’t think the concert/event business will be that lucrative for this arena. They’ll have to bid against the Suns and Glendale arena for each show.

    Also, the other problem is the RFP for this site was written so that basically only the Coyotes could respond. Its not like any real estate developer could have made a proposal.

    1. “Demonstrated interest in hockey” is not much to go on. Before they had NHL teams and arenas in good locations, there wasn’t much demonstrated interest in hockey in Dallas, Tampa, Raleigh, Las Vegas.

      And in Washington, for example, there was very little demonstrated interest in hockey even long after they got an NHL team and a downtown arena. Chicago was near the bottom in attendance for a long time until Bill Wirtz finally died.

      In all of those cases, what generated interest was the “product” on the ice and investment in sales and marketing.

      Arizona could, in theory do that do. It’s a big enough market that they should be able to find 17,000+ people a night who want to come and they should be able to draw a lot better in Tempe than they did in Glendale, everything else being equal.

      Yeah, not many people who live there grew up with hockey and the ones that did usually support other teams, but that could also be said of Tampa, Washington and Las Vegas too and they draw well.

      So whatever arena they move to – in Arizona or otherwise – they will have to market the team as if they’re an expansion team. Not so much that they alienate the fans they do have – no need to change the name of the team, for example – but they will have to “reintroduce” the team to the market and then follow through on that with a decent team.

      That could be difficult because, of course, they aren’t actually an expansion team with a blank slate.

      They’ve built up a lot of bad PR over the years, especially the last few years, and that may have alienated a lot of people who could otherwise be persuaded to care, especially the sort of people that buy luxury boxes and sponsorship deals.

  6. Behind the newspaper’s paywall(*), Tempe voters expected to decide future of Arizona Coyotes arena deal, but this part stood out:

    “Thursday’s decision is a strong indication that voters will have the final say on the project during the May 16 special election, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will appear on the ballot. City Council members still have to make it official at a later date.

    That’s about six months after city officials had hoped to wrap up the deal, but they said they didn’t have a choice because community groups such as Central Arizonans for a Sustainable Economy, or CASE, were going to petition the project if they didn’t.

    A recent lawsuit from CASE to stop a separate $1.8 billion development deal on Tempe Town Lake likely played into the City Council’s decision to send the Coyotes’ project to the ballot.

    CASE sued over the proposed South Pier at Tempe Town Lake because it didn’t include any affordable housing units on-site. The Coyotes development isn’t likely to include very many cheap apartments, either.

    “There is not enough affordable housing in the project itself, especially when they’re asking for a (tax break) in order to build the project,” said Joshua Wells of CASE, in explaining why his group challenged the Tempe Town Lake development.

    South Pier is still held-up in court with no end in sight. That means a similar legal challenge against the Coyotes project could have prevented the team from breaking ground for much longer than the six-month delay caused by the special election.”

    (*) https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2022/11/11/tempe-voters-expected-decide-future-arizona-coyotes-deal/10664052002/

    1. Ahh, that makes more sense. I’d also seen that the Coyotes had requested the referendum, which checks out if they’re trying to forestall a lawsuit.

      1. That is interesting. Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine why the Coyotes would prefer a referendum given the stakes of losing.

  7. +1 on buying the book!

    I bought and read it a few years ago, might be time to read it (or buy it!) again :D

  8. Today, November 15, the Tempe council will vote to change their General Plan for Mr Meruelo’s sports arena complex.

    Look, we have pictures of your dumpy streets, but we have providing our pretty renderings!

    https://www.tempe.gov/home/showdocument?id=99171&t=638036868835168703

    1. How did they manage to get lens flare on the “before” photos? Isn’t that a violation of the First Law of Vaportecture?

  9. On November 14, 2022 the Director of Aviation Services sent a letter to Tempe’s principal planner in advance of the Development Review Commission meeting.

    https://www.skyharbor.com/docs/default-source/pdfs/rio-salado-project/cop-aviation-letter-111422.pdf

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