First post of the year, first day back from a long weekend, definitely want to land with something sexy that will get lots of eyeballs. Let’s see, we have … ooh, cost overruns for a minor-league soccer stadium in Oklahoma City, that’s sure to be of interest to literally dozens of people!
And now that I’ve sold it short, this is actually kind of notable: OKC approved $41 million in money for a stadium for the USL Championship’s Energy FC in 2021 as part of its $1.1 billion MAPS 4 laundry list of projects — which included $116 million in upgrades for the Thunder‘s arena, some of which has now been redirected to help build a $900 million new one. It turned out that $41 million was just enough to build “a high school stadium,” though, according to Energy FC co-owner Bob Funk Jr., so whoopsie, somebody needs to find another $30 million! And that somebody will not be Funk:
Kenton Tsoodle, president of The Alliance for Economic Development of Oklahoma City, said the proposal to cover the gap will include $20 million in tax increment financing and $10 million from funding used to build the Omni Hotel…
The stadium and the land, which will be owned by the city, is in a yet-to-start “Core to Shore” TIF district. The project itself won’t generate property tax increment due to it being a public property. Tsoodle said the downtown TIF district, set to expire in 2026, is on track to end with a remaining balance of $20 million — funding proposed to help cover the cost gap of the stadium.
Follow all that? Since the soccer stadium will be exempt from paying property taxes, the city will take tax money kicked back from other downtown land into a pool for downtown development and redirect it to the soccer stadium, plus tax money left over from building a private hotel. I suppose this is good news in that it doesn’t require new tax kickbacks on top of those already committed to, though “Hey, instead of using leftover tax money from our giant development subsidies to fund actual public needs, we’re giving it to the local soccer team” is hard to exactly classify as good news.
The stadium would be built on a former cottonseed oil mill site near downtown. From the Oklahoman’s reporting, it’s not entirely clear how the city would be getting the land — at one point it refers to the land as “donated,” at another to the soccer team owners buying it. Or maybe it just means that Funk and his partners will buy the land and then donate it to the city to get out of paying property taxes on it? Yeah, it probably means that. Welcome to 2024, everybody, it’s starting out looking a lot like 2023!