It’s been a rough week, what with new stadium demands dropping every couple of hours, half of them from Jerry Reinsdorf. But there have also been signs of new organized opposition from all corners, some of them involving heavy hitters:
- The Northern Virginia AFL-CIO came out against the proposed Washington Capitals and Wizards arena in Alexandria after being unable to reach an agreement with the teams and the state on whether a hotel that would be part of the $2 billion project would employ union workers. “If they’re against it, then the arena deal is probably going to have a very difficult time,” remarked Virginia House Speaker Don L. Scott Jr. afterwards, as the arena bill heads for reconciliation talks between the house, which passed it, and the senate, which didn’t even give it a hearing. “If it dies, it dies.”
- Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas, meanwhile, upped the ante on her opposition to Alexandria arena plans, challenging D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Twitter to “compete by both offering $0 in taxpayer dollars to these teams and let them decide where they want to pay to build their own arena.” (Bowser’s account did not respond, unless this counts.) Former Alexandria mayor Allison Silberberg, who is part of the Coalition to Stop the Potomac Yard Arena campaign, was so pleased that she brought Lucas a cake.
- After the Kansas City renters’ group KC Tenants came out against the upcoming April 2 referendum to renew Jackson County’s 0.375% sales tax surcharge and give the money to Royals owner John Sherman as part of a potential $1 billion in public money for a new downtown stadium, calling it “$167 per household, per year, all to pay for a playground for the wealthy and for tourists,” a group of city residents have formed the Committee Against New Royals Stadium Taxes to likewise oppose the tax hike. The group has “little to no money in its bank account,” according to the Kansas City Star’s account of campaign manager Tim Smith’s characterization, but it does have a parked domain name and its organizers are members of the extremely active Save Kauffman (Royals) Stadium at Truman Sports Complex Facebook group, which is a recommended follow if you want to see how extremely angry many Kansas City residents, and Royals fans, are about this whole state of affairs.
- Arthur Acolin, a real estate economics professor at the University of Washington, released a three-page report on the proposed downtown Philadelphia 76ers arena that found that disruptions to existing businesses during construction and operation could cost the city and state between $260 million and $1 billion in lost tax revenues. The math is a little rough — it looks like Acolin just added up all the economic activity in the area of the proposed arena and calculated what would happen if it fell by sample round numbers — but as he writes, “the 76ers have provided nowhere near this level of details nor any of the analysis behind their figures.” It was enough to get the 76ers to respond by calling the report “fatally flawed” and “another attempt by those who oppose the project to obfuscate the truth by pumping out misinformation and half-baked theories instead of engaging in productive dialogue,” in a CBS News article that repeatedly refers to Acolin as “Albert Alcoin,” which should get all their copy editors immediately fired, if they had copy editors, which they probably don’t.
- Arizona Republic sportswriter Greg Moore wrote a column about Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick’s threat to leave town if he doesn’t get public stadium money that includes the subhead “I don’t like bullies,” and really the rest of the column is just icing on that four-word cake.
- I brought my mighty rhetorical weight to the airwaves, or at least the internetwaves, by going on the Sox Machine podcast to talk about why giving Reinsdorf $1.7 billion in tax money for a new Chicago White Sox stadium development (since upped to $2 billion) would be crazytown.
So that’s it, then, the tide is finally turning, and maybe soon we can all stop pushing this damn rock back up this damn hill day after day? Hahaha of course not, the forces of vacuuming up money and giving it to rich people so they can have more money (because that’s what makes them rich people) continue unabated:
- The Utah legislature advanced a bill to hike sales taxes in Salt Lake City by 0.5% to generate $1 billion for an arena for a nonexistent NHL team, with the backing of Mayor Erin Mendenhall. This would be on top of $600 million or more in proposed hotel tax hikes to help pay for a stadium for a nonexistent MLB team. Hockey bill sponsor state Sen. Dan McCay denied that this was giving in to threats by the Jazz ownership that they could move out of the city limits without a new subsidized arena, then added, “you’d hate to see downtown lose the sporting opportunities they have now,” so, yeah.
- Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson delivered up a fresh bowl of word salad about whether he’ll endorse city money being used for a new White Sox stadium: “As far as public dollars, we haven’t gotten into any of those specifics just yet. But I will say that we’re gonna explore all options. … Everything is on the table here. But again, I want to make sure that there’s a real commitment to public use and public benefit. … There’s no guarantee that they’ll get it from the city. What I’ve said repeatedly is that we need to make sure that our investments have real public benefit and that there has to be a commitment to public use. Those conversations are being had, and there are some promising developments that eventually we’ll be able to talk about out loud.” He has it right here on this list…
- The new $27 million Rhode Island F.C. soccer stadium in Pawtucket will now cost state taxpayers $132 million over 30 years, because the Pawtucket Redevelopment Agency got a terrible bond rate. State commerce secretary Liz Tanner defended the pricey borrowing by pointing out that even though the state legislature could have just appropriated the money and saved taxpayers a ton of interest payments, “there would’ve been a level of uncertainty without knowing whether the legislature was going to pass those dollars or not,” and we can’t have that, now can we?
- The Dodger Stadium gondola project — surely you remember the Dodger Stadium gondola project — lurched forward again on Thursday when the Metro Board of Directors signed off on its environmental impact report. The gondola still needs approval from the city of Los Angeles and parks and transit officials, plus to figure out who exactly will pay for its potential $500 million price tag, but if nothing else it lives to gondola another day.
- Oakland A’s owner John Fisher is reportedly focused on staying in Oakland until a new Las Vegas stadium is open in 2028, and also Sacramento is the frontrunner to be the temporary home of the A’s, this is way too blind-men-and-the-elephant for me, maybe let’s all calm down about the latest rumors you heard, guys.
- And in non-sports news, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry defended signing a bill to remove the requirement that recipients of state development subsidies report how many jobs they’ll be creating, because “this program is about capital investment. It is not about job creating.” Just gonna sit here and let that roll around in my brain for a while, have a great weekend and see you back here Monday!
There’s an article in the New York Times this morning about how €4 billion spent on infrastructure and housing for the Paris Olympics won’t have a long term positive impact.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/world/europe/france-olympics-paris-st-denis-poverty-immigrants.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Xk0.XoGv.oFdV60OMnd0T&smid=url-share
How much can billion dollar subsidies for gold plated stadiums do?
“If it dies, it dies.”
That’s quality Ivan Drago channeling.
Article in the Sun Times says Reinsdorf is buying parking lots around the united center.
So far he has spent $44.7 million. No doubt the county has under-assessed that land for years.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/the-watchdogs/2024/02/22/jerry-reinsdorf-united-center-parking-lots-purchasing-white-sox-south-loop-ballpark
“Tourists” go to royals games? Seems like a stretch.
You’ll be amazed at knowing how many people from out of market travel to a major league ballpark for weekend series. Group sales still form a sizable portion of the majors’ attendance.
I have traveled to many baseball stadiums, but KC only drew 1.3 million in 2023 and 1.4 million in pre-pandemic 2019. The royals could easily say how many tickets they sell out of the metro area based on billing address. The fact they don’t specify how many to justify public financing means the number of tourists going to the games is tiny.
And that is tickets distributed. Actual tickets scanned is probably barely over 1 million. Accounting for those who were in Kansas City anyway, or came in for a day trip and spent little outside the ball park, the numbers get even tinier. I have never heard of White Sox fans going to Kansas City when the Sox are there.
Yeah, I’m sure many people drive in from Wichita or Omaha or whatnot to catch a game, but the economic impact of those visitors are minimal. Otherwise, most people are coming to visit KC anyways and decide to catch a game while they are in town, or are someone looking to visit all MLB stadiums (a popular bucket list) and therefore don’t care if the stadium is new.
As a Cubs fan I’d be more likely to go to KC with a stadium located where it is proposed, instead of where Kaufmann is. I’m not saying that it’s worth the public expenditure (it’s not), but there are plenty of fans who travel.
How often have the Cubs played in Kansas City, if ever. How many more visiting fans would go to a game downtown vs Kaufman? Definitely not enough to justify decades of an additional .375 sales tax for decades.
The Cubs have played 11 times in Kansas City and will play there three times this year. (Presumably, they’ll play there every other year now that there’s a completely interlocking interleague schedule.)
Perhaps he meant the Asheville Tourists.
For the purposes of these discussions, a tourist could be anyone from outside that particular municipality who would otherwise not be spending money there if not for the team. That could include people from not very far away.
Now we have the secret formula to defeating these subsidies: pastries! I see a whole new lobbying effort taking shape.
I’ll say it again… Salt Lake City stay stop making trouble for my future NHL Houston Aeros (the soon to be formerly NHL Phoenix Coyotes).
SLC, you can talk all you want about throwing around all that money, but Toyota Center is already ice ready for our future team.
Local billionaire Tilman Fertitta is now talking out loud about the NHL, which suggests that many talks have already taken place behind closed doors.
Heck, I expect Fertitta to casually mention the purchase of a new Zamboni and show it parked in the Toyota Center garage any day now.
Houston didn’t bid in the last few rounds of expansion, as far as I can recall. Obviously, it is a huge market, and the league would love to take advantage of that, but it hasn’t found a willing partner there.
The league has talked to Fertitta a lot and never reached an acceptable deal. That’s been reported before. Friedman has reported a few times that Fertitta is not willing to pay the going price for a team.
He could do what Ryan Smith has done and announce that he wants an expansion team, but he has not.
The NHL does not really want to be the second tenant in a building owner by an NBA owner that primarily cares about basketball. It has a lot of those situations now, but they would prefer more situations Las Vegas or Minnesota where the hockey arena is primarily built for hockey.
He also drove the AHL out of town, which didn’t help.
That was Les Alexander, who was still butthurt about losing out on the Oilers in the 1990s.
Oh, I see. That explains the disconnect.
Houston is definitely on the NHL’s list of priorities but the Coyotes and Thrashers proved that enormous markets do not guarantee success for an NHL franchise, so the other owners would feel a lot better about it if there were a new arena just for the NHL team.
But if things continue to go nowhere fast in Arizona and Fertitta could somehow buy the Coyotes with the plan to move them into the Toyota Center, I think the other owners would vote for that move.
Also, the Winnipeg owner recently said the quite part out loud. He said they need to get the season ticketbase back up closer to where it was when the team moved there from Atlanta. The current situation is “not sustainable.”
The Jets leaving again would be traumatic, but it is a very small market. Perhaps if they moved to be the second team in Southern Ontario, that would soften the blow a bit.
Fertitta stated that a deal would have to work on the money side first, although he would love to improve the sports scene in Houston. “When the Aeroes were here before they relocated to Iowa, they were doing 2, 3 , 4 thousand a night, we need 16, 17 , 18 thousand a night, that’s what this building holds”. That was 5 years ago, and there still isn’t a NHL team playing in the Toyota Center. Especially after the collapse of the RSNs and surge in interest rates, the numbers haven’t worked in Houston. If Houston was a viable market for NHL hockey, there would already be a team called the Houston Coyotes.
Is Salt Lake City the new Greensboro?
It could be. I’m not saying it is. But it could be.
The only workable solution here is for the Royals to move to Nashville or Salt Lake City. Then the A’s can return to Kansas City.
Which is what JF had in mind all along. I couldn’t tell you that before. But now I can. Having a solid end date is liberating. For me anyway. Not maybe for you. Externalities.
You can only control what you can control and that is often only a middling percentage of politicians some of the time.
Charlotte, San Antonio, Tulsa, Jacksonville, Tucson, Oakland be warned.
My question is why don’t the powers that be gift or cheaply lease the Royals & Chiefs some of the vacant land that surrounds their current stadium, invite them to design a Cobb County-esque entertainment zone, promise an LRT system within the decade, then add over time other development in the area that would include residential, business etc? You’ve got 2 very functional stadiums there, why move one downtown where it would suck money from that local economy?
Each team/owner wants to do their own thing? Your ide makes perfect sense, except KC killed their light rail proposal long ago.
Because the city could instead update the zoning to allow for all that, levy a high land tax but minimal property tax, and get the same end result but without any public subsidy.
Most stadiums are surrounded by parking lots – even within a large city like Chicago (both Reinsdorf stadiums) – because it’s the most tax efficient form of development.
Also, even with 2 tenants the KC sports complex is inactive most of the year; building giant parking garages to open up land for development is very expensive when that garages capacity is only needed 20~40 times a year (Chiefs games and a handful of high attendance Royals games). Additionally, surface parking is better for tailgating, and in a region with cheap land (like most Midwest cities), giant surface lots may very well be the best use of suburban land; the dense entertainment districts can go elsewhere (like in any of KC’s many wonderful pre-WII neighborhoods).
The Cobb county project works because Cobb is a wealthy county that should have dense, high rise, mixed use neighborhoods, baseball stadium or not. The mistake is assuming that a sports venue is needed as an anchor for a wealthy city to build something other than detached houses & strip malls.
Fantastic news on the A’s front….
Tony Kemp has signed with another team (the Reds, IIRC).
Finally, Fisher will be relieved of that onerus below major league average salary that has been hanging around his cheapskate neck for the past few seasons!
Rejoice Vegas! This is what you are getting. And don’t expect it to improve when it gets there, because it won’t.
Thanks for fixing the dark mode.
Tried to comment on previous article but Java error. You will always have a special place in my heart Neil!
Not a stadium deal but decent coverage: https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7125815