Utah state legislators are pushing ahead with plans to build both an NHL arena and an MLB stadium, despite not having teams in either sport. And also despite not quite having figured out how to pay for either of them:
- The Utah state house passed a bill to spend up to $900 million on a baseball stadium and surrounding entertainment district, provided a team arrives. However, earlier plans to fund the project with a statewide hike in hotel taxes was dropped amid opposition from rural legislators (and hotel operators), leaving the stadium bonds to be paid off, according to the bill, by statewide car rental taxes, kickbacks from sales and property taxes on the site (hello, mega-TIF!), and a whole lot of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
- The Utah state senate passed a bill to spend around another $500 million (estimated at $1 billion over 30 years, which would fund around half a billion in bonds) to create a different sports and entertainment district for the Jazz and an as-yet-nonexistent hockey team. The money would, according to the bill, allow Salt Lake City to both impose a citywide sales tax hike and also kick back the share of existing state sales taxes designated for building prisons, generating ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in new revenue.
The two legislative bodies now swap bills, and will have to figure out how to pay for both at the same time. Dan McCay, sponsor of the senate hockey arena bill, said he didn’t want to stack the tax hikes on top of each other for the same people, “so that those become unlivable environments for those who are paying the tax”; if local residents visit both sports venues, though, their tax money will be getting funneled to both projects, plus of course everyone in the city will be dealing with the budget hole created by having taxes kicked back that could otherwise be used to pay for other things.
There’s a whole lot still to be worked out here, even before figuring out whether Salt Lake City would even get teams and what kind of leases they would demand — as we’ve seen before, lease opt-outs and state-of-the-art clauses can end up forcing cities to throw a lot of good money after bad. But the general dimensions of the plan are in place: around $1.4 billion in tax money to be set aside as a lure to get major-league hockey and baseball teams. Normally I’d call that a staggering amount of money for elected officials to give preliminary approval to all in one day, but what with the way things are going in other states, it’s going to take more than $1.4 billion to stagger anybody.
Well, I think this is time that Utah folks start getting nostalgic for the dual use stadiums of the 60s and 70s, but with a creative twist, to save a few $.
Its high time for our country’s first dual use baseball/hockey ballpark/arena. “Parkrena” [copyrighted].
Certainly it will be a frankenstein-esque sports facility, but that will be part of the “I can’t look away from the carwreck as I drive by” alure. Folks will fly in from all around the nation to see this!
Been there, done that with Tropicana Field/Thunderdome in St. Pete, no?
Utah resident here. A couple of quick notes that only make this situation more puzzling/infuriating:
– the arena is the more likely of the two to pass. With SLC expected to get the Winter Olympics in 2034, the rhetoric has been that they “need” a new venue to host ice hockey. (In 2002, ice hockey events were held at the Maverik Center in West Valley City and Peaks Ice Arena in Provo, both of which are still around).
– the arena would raise the city sales tax rate to 8.25%. What’s unclear is that the sales tax already applies to hotel rooms in SLC, so if the ballpark plan was modified to only be a hotel tax in the city, would it be double dipping from the same pool? Or would it be 2 new taxes placed on city hotels? The answer isn’t clear.
– the ballpark bill also doesn’t include any funding for (presumably) additional transit costs. The new ballpark would be on the Trax Green Line (which is good!) but in order to shuttle far more humans, would need to run more often. Ditto for the Frontrunner, which is the north-south commuter train that’d allow for would-be ballpark goers to connect at the North Temple Station. So that’s another complication.
– the ballpark is part of a larger “Power District” development where the landowner, Rocky Mountain Power, is building a new HQ and all of the “urban renewal” crap that pols love to trumpet in the historically very polluted and neglected neighborhoods west of downtown. Everyone involved swears that the development will happen regardless of the ballpark’s fate, but RMP hasn’t said what they’d do with that part of the land instead if the funding falls through. But we swear, this isn’t just a huge boondoggle for the state’s largest utility!
– the state legislative session ends this week, so they don’t have much time to figure this all out. In classic Utah fashion, they unveiled these bills at the last minute to ram them through with minimal oversight. They weren’t expecting such vehement push back from the hotels and resorts in Southern Utah and the Wasatch Back regions, which was dumb on their part. As I noted ages ago in these humble parts, the Utah legislature has a huge urban/rural divide and were never gonna get the support for any kind of stadium funding scheme that’d require the entire state to pay for it.
Anyways, I’m part of a group that’s been lobbying the state to provide the funding that’d end the years-long wait kids with disabilities and their families have to endure to receive in-home Medicaid services. We were told by a state House floor leader that this would be a “socks and underwear Christmas” this legislative session and not to expect any major spending on anything. Glad to see that’s changed!
Just curious is there as much of a focus on all the other companies getting a hand outs from the state? Goldman Sachs alone has gotten $60 million:
https://business.utah.gov/business-incentives/companies/
Sure there is — if you want a site devoted to that, goodjobsfirst.org is a good resource.
Micron and Facebook have each gotten over $150m:
https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/index.php?parent=&statesum=&fedsum=&major_industry_sum=&hq_id_sum=&company_op=starts&company=&major_industry%5B%5D=&hq_id=&free_text=&subsidy_level=&subsidy_op=%3E&subsidy=&face_loan_op=%3E&face_loan=&subsidy_type%5B%5D=&sub_year%5B%5D=&state=UT&program%5B%5D=&city=&county=&federal=
I guess that leaves just enough for socks and underwear…..
You get a sports and entertainment district! And *you* get a sports and entertainment district! And *you* get a sports and entertainment district…
Absolutely asinine to allocate public money for a Billionaire sports team owner who can afford to pay for a new stadium themselves…not sure what adjectives apply for allocating public money for a new stadium for a Nonexistent team…and what is the over/under betting line that if/when a stadium gets built, and if/when a team is awarded to SLC, that a Billionaire owner states “Yeah, I see the stadium…but it’s like 5 years old now…and besides that, I don’t like it. I want a New new stadium!”
I think the thing is, these guys CAN all “afford” to pay for stadiums or upgrades or whatever. But why would you when the fact sports have an outsized presence and influence in society compels elected officials to throw public money at you?
If stadiums really WERE a good deal, they WOULD do the funding and reap the benefits. (That’s probably the thesis statement right there.) But they don’t, except in very rare cases.
Because we keep throwing money at them. Because heaven forbid your team move and leave you as a non-major-league city. (Even though cities that have lost teams have somehow managed to still provide the same quality of life for residents.)
To paraphrase the Bard, “The fault is not in our billionaire owners, but in ourselves.”
Spend a billion dollars on an arena for a 2 week hockey tournament that might occur 10 years from now?
Kansas City built an NBA standard arena 15 years ago and that attracted the Kansas City Kings to come back, right?
Writing a 4686 line law full of garbage will attract what?
What does a hockey arena for a nonexistent hockey team have to do with rental cars? Maybe plowing and maintaining I-80 through Parleys Canyon or operating Frontrunner, but not a goofy attempt to attract a hockey team that who will care about?
Kansas City is lucky they didn’t get an NBA team 15 years ago. If they did, they’d be on the hook for another new arena now.
The NHL ready Centre Videotron in Quebec City is nearly 9 years old and all they’ll have to show for it is the distinct honour of shelling out $7M for a Los Angeles Kings preseason game this fall.
Oregon resident here. Trust me, if Utah proceeds with this vast subsidy of billionaires, there will be many in the Portland area who point to it and say that is what is wrong with…Portland.
If they lineup a new arena, Utah could get an NHL team as early as next year, depending on what happens in Arizona.
Or certainly get to the front of the line for expansion. It’s unlikely that Ryan Smith went public with his plan without the NHL’s approval.
I don’t know about MLB. Their next expansion is probably further away.
While the revenue piece of these two puzzles would need to be solved, I am still wondering where Salt Lake City expects to find the water to run these arenas. i guess we can tap… The Colorado River? The Great Salt Lake?