No time or energy for niceties today, let’s get straight to the firehose of news:
- The Jackson County Legislature plans to vote Monday on putting a measure on the April ballot to extend a 0.375% sales tax surcharge for 40 years to fund new Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadium projects, even though neither team has decided what kind of stadium projects they want, let alone agreed to lease terms that would determine what if anything the county would get in return. (Jackson County Executive Frank White counters, “You don’t want to rush into something that the taxpayers have to be responsible for for 40 years without getting some equitable agreement with both teams,” but nobody appears to be listening to him.) Meanwhile Clay County appears to be readying its own sales tax hike ballot measure, only with a much larger (as yet undetermined) sales tax surcharge rate because Clay County has fewer people and so less sales. Bidding wars, man, they can’t be beat — I really need to see if I can get New York and New Jersey to compete to see who’ll agree to renovate my kitchen.
- The San Antonio city council approved a plan to siphon off any future increase in hotel tax revenues from within three miles of the city’s convention center and spend it on convention center upgrades, a renovation of the Alamodome, plus possibly a new Spurs arena. Estimates are that the hotel tax money could come to $222 million, but it’s not clear if that’s present value or over time, and anyway the whole thing is just a guess at how much will be spent at area hotels in the future and what it’ll be spent on is still TBD, but suffice to say there’s a slush fund now should anyone want to tap it.
- St. Paul Deputy Mayor Jaime Tincher says city officials want to spend “several hundred million” dollars on upgrading the Minnesota Wild‘s arena, and when he says wants to spend, he means he wants the state to spend it, not his city. The Wild’s current 23-year-old arena is “aging,” reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and while it’s true that all 23-year-olds are aging just like the rest of us, that’s not usually what the word means.
- Utah Jazz ownership is exploring building a new arena and entertainment district south of Salt Lake City, and city officials are already preparing a counteroffer to keep the Jazz downtown, playing different parts of a metro area off against each other in a bidding war is absolutely the flavor of the month.
- As Hamilton County prepares to spend another $39 million on upgrades to the Cincinnati Bengals stadium under their infamous state-of-the-art clause, county board of commissioner president Alicia Reece says she’d like the team’s next lease to require the team owners to pay more of the costs than the 4% they’ve kicked in so far: “You need to put some skin in the game for our team. Give us some respect.” No official word yet on whether Bengals ownership will be insisting on a no-respect clause in any new lease.
- Tampa Bay Rays co-president Brian Auld says team officials won’t agree to accept $600 million in public money for a new stadium if it would require changing the name to the St. Petersburg Rays because they “want to make sure that this entire project screams inclusive welcomeness.” That’s it, perfect sentence, no notes.
- I guess “Experts disagree on economic impact of 2023 Super Bowl in Arizona” is better than just reporting the bogus economic impact claims in a press release without rejoinder, but it’s still bothsidesing when the weight of the actual evidence is that the actual impact is a tiny fraction of what the NFL claims.
- What will the Baltimore Ravens owners be spending their $600 million-and-more in state subsidies on? For starters, a bunch of high-end clubs including an “ultra-premium field-level experience” connecting to an “exclusive members-only club featuring a speakeasy.” No reports yet on whether it will include a fire pit where well-heeled fans can actually burn taxpayer money.
The fire pit is a great idea. I’m sure some owner will see that and think “why don’t I have one?”
I can’t read that Utah article past a certain point.
Smith/Utah will definitely need a new arena – or be on their way to building one – to get an NHL team. The current arena isn’t really set up for hockey long term.
Sure, if his check clears, the other owners would probably be happy to let Smith put a team in his own backyard (which is no doubt very spacious), but I don’t think he’d want to do that.
Sharing with the Jazz would not be ideal from their perspective either. I thought Bettman, et al. were really holding out for hockey-only arenas.
And I read that SLC wants to build a new arena for the 2034 Olympics, because, of course, an event that only lasts two weeks and comes around every generation or so merits a brand new building.
So perhaps Smith wants somebody to build him a new arena AND SLC to pay for upgrades to keep the Jazz. That would be impressive – not in a good way – if he could pull that off.
Regardless of any of that, the timing isn’t lining up for the supposed Coyotes-to-SLC move that so many people seem to assume is Plan B if or when their latest plan to “finalize” another site in the Phoenix area falls through.
Building a new arena in Salt Lake City as part of the Olympics runs counter to the local organizers’ goals for the 2034 Winter Games, primarily that all the venues are built, maintained and pretty much ready to go.
So, some people (citation needed) may say Salt Lake should try to get a new arena as part of the Olympics, I don’t think it’s going to be as palatable as it was 20+ years ago. That doesn’t preclude other means of using taxpayer money to fund this or other facilities.
I definitely think the economics of building a third arena in the Salt Lake metro area are pretty dubious. It would be the same situation that Tempe ran into during the Coyotes vote earlier this year (adding a third arena to a metroplex that already has venues downtown and in Glendale).
Delta Center saw improvements about five years ago, so the desire to replace that building should be fairly low (although it is “aging,” like all things).
No one’s talking about, so I don’t know the viability of it, but I think replacing the Maverik Center in West Valley City with an NHL-sized facility could work. It wouldn’t add a third arena to the market, the large site already has an arena (albeit for minor hockey and basketball) and a light-rail station. Plus, because Maverik Center only has minor league sports, rebuilding it might be less of a disruption than doing anything to the Delta Center.
The ECHL will probably leave town if the NHL arrives, so that would make sense.
And there just happens to be a new 4600 seat arena in Tempe they could move into…. would/might be the only ECHL arena with an NHL sized press centre and dressing rooms etc.
Win win!
ASU is probably not going to want to share with an ECHL team.
ASU is planning to use that arena for more than just ASU hockey and the ECHL only plays on the weekend so there’d be more conflicts.
The Coyotes got to share it because they invested a lot of money in extra facilities that ASU gets to keep and can, apparently, afford to lose money on the whole thing. An ECHL team cannot afford to lose money every year.
I also recall that one spot for a new Jazz/NHL arena would be in the Power District, AKA on the same grounds as the proposed MLB ballpark, not too far west of downtown Salt Lake City.
https://buildingsaltlake.com/officials-interested-in-building-an-mlb-stadium-on-salt-lake-citys-west-side/
I’m partial to this plan myself as it’s about as close to downtown as you can get without actually being downtown and it’s right off the light rail (which connects directly to the airport).
Now, how it’s going to be paid for matters far more to me than where it’s going to be (as long as it’s in Utah’s population center).
“The San Antonio city council approved a plan to siphon off any future increase in hotel tax revenues…. there’s a slush fund now should anyone want to tap it…”
Oh, music to the ears of a desperate white billionaire…. Daddy needs a new pair o’ shoes, baby….
THIS is what makes life worth living!!! (also, $30k worth of street opioids does).
I think this all (NHL, new $400Bn arena, MLB stadium talk) begs the question:
“Is Salt Lake City the new Greensboro”?
How much do headline writers get paid today anyway???
No, they’re way further along than that.
To get an NHL team – expansion or moved – a city needs to have four things: be a market the other owners want to be in, have an enthusiastic owner who can afford it, have a place the team can play immediately, have a realistic path toward building a shiny new/refurbished arena for the long-term.
Utah has an owner that wants to do it and an arena that could house the team temporarily. It is not at the top of the owners’ wishlist, but they’d probably be ok with SLC given the other options.
So Ryan Smith just needs to figure out a way to get a new arena or radically remodel the one he has for hockey, but given what we’ve seen in other markets, there’s no reason to think he can’t do that.
None of the other possible markets, including Phoenix, currently check that many boxes yet.
The MLB idea is half-baked, however. But the MLB owners seem to think Vegas is a good idea, even though it isn’t, so who knows?