This has been a week, for a lot of reasons as well as my trip yesterday to an unseasonably hot Philadelphia to talk with city council staff and community members about the 76ers‘ much-unloved arena plans, so I’m declaring editorial privilege to go straight to an abbreviated news roundup:
- Jackson County legislator Manny Abarca, having failed to get a Kansas City Chiefs and Royals stadium sales tax subsidy passed by attacking county executive Frank White, is now proposing not one, but two bills to just give the money to the Chiefs instead: One would extend the current 0.375% sales tax surcharge for 40 years, the other would extend it at only 0.1875% for only 30 years. Unfortunately, this is probably illegal since voters just turned down a very similar tax plan, but props to Abarca for realizing that people in Kansas City care a lot more about the Chiefs, Bobby Witt Jr. and the Royals’ new socks notwithstanding.
- We still don’t know what Bally’s plans to build at the former Tropicana Las Vegas site next to the stadium Oakland A’s owner John Fisher wants to build, and Fisher still doesn’t know where he’ll come up with the money, hiring an investment banker to see if someone wants to buy a share of the team for $500 million.
- Cincinnati Enquirer opinion writers write: The Bengals owners should be ashamed for demanding more stadium money after sucking up public money for decades; also, maybe the owners paying 40% of their own renovation costs would be enough, “most taxpayers could live with that.” I shoulda been a sports columnist, no need for research or fact-checking there!
- RFK Stadium is finally getting demolished, to be replaced by maybe a Washington Commanders stadium, once somebody can work out who’d pay for it — details!
- Front Office Sports already deserves our disdain, but the headline “Bears’ $4.7 Billion Stadium Pitch Caught in a Game of Political Football” breaks new ground in labored sports puns, well done.
That’s all I have in me today — if I missed anything, feel free to bring it up in comments. Have a good weekend, and try to stay cool!
Is it really “a game of political football” when pretty much every political entity is on the same team, saying, “nah, not really interested in the Bears stadium proposal.”
Bears’ $4.7 Billion Stadium Pitch Sacked for 15-Yard Loss
Why did it take 5 years to decide to demolish RFK? There was no use for it. They were never going to renovate it for anything. They should have had a memorabilia company strip out seats and anything else with value to collectors a long time ago.
Heck I don’t even know why they put out the fire a couple of years ago. They should have let it burn down and save themselves the trouble.
The seats and turnstiles are sold online.
It took a while to tear it down because there isn’t a definite plan for what to do with the site so there was no urgency. Congress only recently agreed to let DC redevelop it.
I think they also hoped to squeeze some more events out of it, but Covid put a big dent in the available events for two years.
Also, they had to convince everyone in the area that they could knock it down safely.
They still have to maintain it and provide security while its still standing. If they tear it down they don’t have to maintain it. Just put grass and leave it as a park.