Friday roundup: “Unbelievable” Utah Olympics projections, Cavs crony capitalism, and stadium vapordistricts

It’s Friday, I’ve been testing negative for two days, time to see what we all missed this week while we were busy making other plans:

  • Second Winter Olympics could spark $6.6B in economic output for Utah, new report finds” reported a headline at KSL-TV, and “could” and “output” are doing an awful lot of work there. (Number of actual economists consulted for the KSL story: zero.) “These numbers are just so unbelievable,” said Salt Lake City Olympic committee COO Brett Hopkins, and yep, can’t argue with that!
  • The guy who negotiated massive tax kickbacks for Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert for the city is getting hired by Gilbert as the team’s CFO, this is fine.
  • The owners of Racing Louisville and Louisville City FC promised to build a new development around their new soccer stadium after it opened in 2019 with the help of city funding, but haven’t actually done so. “There’s good soccer going on, and I was for soccer,” city councilmember Robin Engel said at a hearing last month. “You know, we throw these TIFs around anymore these days like it’s chump change.”
  • Boston Magazine has a good oral history of how the 1999 All-Star Game hosted at Fenway Park helped save the ballpark from a planned demolition and replacement by a fake replica, though it kind of elides the main point, which is “Save Fenway Park activists put up a huge stink and then the new guy who bought the Red Sox decided he liked Fenway anyway. Also Save Fenway isn’t “defunct” as the article says, but the group’s Erika Tarlin does get a decent amount of screen time.
  • Whoever ends up the new mayor of Arlington Heights this fall, it’ll likely be someone who supports building a Chicago Bears stadium there, keep that in mind the next time you ask why people don’t just vote elected officials out of office when they back stadium deals.
  • If you always wanted a restroom sign from Pawtucket’s soon-to-be-demolished McCoy Stadium, now’s your chance.

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20 comments on “Friday roundup: “Unbelievable” Utah Olympics projections, Cavs crony capitalism, and stadium vapordistricts

  1. I thought this was odd in the article about Arlington Heights: “The position (mayor) is supposed to be part time, with a salary of $8,500”.

    I found another there’s another position that’s the village manager, Randy Recklaus, who runs things on a daily basis who gets paid $281k. They’re the one doing the main negotiations with the Bears apparently.

  2. The marlins ballpark in Miami opened a little over a decade ago. The plan called for public parks (never built), a walkway from downtown (never built), public transportation (there already was a metro rail train station about a mile away and that still remains the best option), and lots of economic development which …. Uhhhh…

    For the most part, the businesses around the stadium are the same ones that were there before, and certainly it doesn’t appear that games are bringing more people to them. And because of attendance figures, I would argue that some revenue that the locals hoped to get by having people park on their lawn is not there.

    To be fair, there has been some amount of development nearby but that because Miami is being built up. Not because of the stadium.

    1. Salt Lake City can look forward to the same result for their billion dollars. The arena entertainment convention district will bring transit to downtown SLC!!! Except last tome I checked, there are already 7 light rail stations and a Frontrunner station within a block of Smith’s playpen.

    2. Would love to see the plans for the walkway to Downtown Miami. That’s 2 miles away!

      1. It’s been too long, and I can’t find the reference. But David Samson talked about it, and Jeffrey Luria mentioned it along the way.

        There were pictures as I recall. It was a palm tree lined walkway that extended from the stadium and went east.

        It seemed really far-fetched that they would assume people would walk in the heat or the rain for a couple of miles. But it was a “selling point”

  3. “These numbers are just so unbelievable,” said Salt Lake City Olympic committee COO Brett Hopkins

    —–

    It’s quite an accomplishment to publish projections that are so absurd that the guy whose job it is to bring another Olympics to town says the projections are unbelievable.

  4. Modesto Nuts are offering a data point for what MLB demands to keep even a single-A team in town, in this case $32 million:

    https://www.turlockjournal.com/sports/pro-sports/modesto-nuts-say-goodbye-conclusion-2024-season/

  5. Be healthy, Neil. I’ve been citing your great work for years, now. And actually getting through to a very small handful of people.

    You can’t die of COVID, or anything else. We need you!

  6. On the Cleveland story, I know Mark Griffin personally. When the whole county is was bathed in corruption he was one of the people leading the charge for reform. I would vouch for his integrity.
    As far as GIlbert’s development goes, that land has been sitting empty for decades. After seeing what he did in Detroit, Cleveland needs to let him do whatever he wants.

    1. By “what he did in Detroit” you mean soaking up hundreds of millions of dollars of public money and providing no tangible public benefits?

      https://www.fieldofschemes.com/2017/04/28/12406/detroits-renaissance-has-enriched-its-billionaire-sports-owners-while-rest-of-city-suffers/

      1. Have you been to Detroit recently? It was the ugliest city in North America a few years ago. Its cleaned up significantly. As far as Gilbert goes:

        https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/business/dan-gilbert-will-invest-500-million-to-help-revitalize-detroit.html

        https://michiganadvance.com/2023/12/17/rick-haglund-will-billionaire-dan-gilbert-lead-michigan-in-developing-long-awaited-transit/

        1. I have! Detroit has a long history of sinking public money into big “redevelopment” projects that do nothing to benefit the city as a whole. It’s definitely gotten “cleaned up” in terms of seizing a bunch of housing from residents and giving it to white gentrifiers, but I’m not sure that’s an improvement for existing residents either.

          1. 11 years ago the city was bankrupt and 40% of the city did not have street lights. I took my ex-wife to the Auto Show and she was like “I get depressed walking around this city” and she grew up in Karachi.

            This past year was the first time in decades that the population went up. If you didn’t have people like Gilbert pouring money into the city there was no way that you would have seen a turnaround.

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