And so we come to the end of another programming week, one that at least managed to avoid having anyone propose building a new privately used stadium in a public park — oh, wait!
- Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas has revealed that Royals owner John Sherman is considering other downtown stadium sites after there was so much opposition to his plan to build one atop the Crossroads neighborhood, and naturally one site is on top of a public park, that will go over so much better. Also, Washington Square Park and the adjacent site that would be used for the stadium only total 11.6 acres, which isn’t really enough for a modern MLB stadium and certainly not for one plus a whole entertainment district like Sherman wants. (The Crossroads site would have been 17.3 acres.) Can’t wait to see how the eventual renderings avoid explaining this!
- Oakland A’s owner John Fisher’s financing plan for a Las Vegas stadium is “rounding third and heading home,” according to Nevada authority chair and unregistered A’s lobbyist Steve Hill, which is another way of saying it may not be ready until early December. Yesterday’s stadium authority meeting did include a bunch of lease details, like Fisher committing to keep the team in Vegas for 30 years but having the option to extend it to 99 years if he wants, and Fisher having the option to buy the stadium for its appraised value at the end of each lease term, and if there’s anything Nevada taxpayers get out of the lease other than $600 million in debt and tax expenditures, the news coverage didn’t mention it.
- Cleveland.com has noticed that $461 million in city spending on Browns stadium renovations over 30 years isn’t the same as $461 million now, good work, gang. (Their estimate of the present value of Mayor Justin Bibb’s offer is about $234 million, mine was $240 million, reasonable people can disagree.) They also note that it’s not clear in Bibb’s plan who would sell the stadium bonds — Bibb’s office sent a terse text: “City will not bond. Some other public entity” — or how they would be paid off if alcohol or cigarette taxes fell short — Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam didn’t text “Not us. Taxpayers somehow,” but they really didn’t have to.
- Speaking of the Browns, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has entered the chat.
- The California state legislature is auditing the Los Angeles Angels lease extension that was approved in 2019 by Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu while he was in the midst of negotiating a new stadium deal in exchange for (allegedly) demanding $1 million in campaign contributions. There was previously some talk on the Anaheim city council about voiding the lease on the grounds that the whole deal was covered in slime; we’ll see where this audit leads, if anywhere.
- WUSA-TV reported this week that the Washington Wizards and Capitals arena renovation deal with D.C. still hasn’t been finalized despite passing a July deadline, and I’m still waiting for any other news outlets to think this is worthwhile news and not just haggling over the fine print, but keep one eye on it nonetheless.
- The Dodger Stadium gondola project lives! No matter how dumb an idea it is!
- This has nothing to do with stadiums, but if you think I’m going to pass up an article that begins “Billionaire Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio has allegedly been stealing sand from an exclusive Southern California beach,” you don’t know this site at all.
Fun fact the proposed Royal stadium location in Washington Square Park is also the location of the Korean War Veterans Memorial. Nothing says the forgotten war like building a memorial in 2011 and then demolishing it in like 2027. 16 years is enough remembrance right?
Also the space they want to do it in is way too small for a modern stadium with all the required income streams. There isn’t even space for parking (well there is but it’s already has private parking garages on it and the current owners are unlikely to want to share the revenue stream with the Royals).
MASH was on tv for only 11 seasons.
In that article about Attanasio: “The plaintiff in this case wants Attanasio fined — up to $30,000, plus a daily fine of up to $15,000 for each violation”.
That doesn’t sound like much of a punishment for someone worth $700 million.
In other news on how difficult math is. Anaheim (a city of 350,000 people) has housing real estate worth one TRILLION dollars. Simple math tells us if every resident has their own house that’s still an average of over $2.8 million per house (although statistics say there are about 100,000 multi and single family dwellings in Anaheim meaning an average of $10 million per dwelling. Math is just so hard these days I guess. But you gotta call them out on this, though these days it seems like shooting fish in a barrel
https://www.sfgate.com/la/article/anaheim-trillion-dollar-home-value-19655233.php
“Can’t wait to see how the eventual renderings avoid explaining this!”
If it were privately financed, you’d be gushing about what a great plan this is, so just stick to criticizing the funding part (which we don’t know yet, but will almost certainly be publicly financed). If the financing part is so bad there’s no need to make up arguments against it (oh no a park no one uses because of the poor layout might be lost, and we might have to move the Korean War memorial to somewhere people might actually see it!)
You’re new here, I take it?
LOL
Can concrete get cancer in Kansas? Maybe that’s a good reason for the Royals to move to Kansas. Like Goodland, never heard of concrete cancer in Goodland, Kansas.
“we might have to move the Korean War memorial to somewhere people might actually see it!”
So, KC is one gigantic DMZ ?
It is a border town, after all…
Maybe the owners of the Chiefs and Royals will propose a DMZ between Kansas and Missouri in which they can build their new stadia and get taxpayers in both states to foot the bill.
War memorials routinely fail to present both sides of the issue in a balanced and neutral way.
And sometimes they get in the way of professional sports (this is not the first time, of course. RIP Soldier Field mk i)
This is who we are now.
Umm 100% it will have public financing, otherwise it would not be listed on this website. Furthermore the “park” is shared by the Korean War Veterans Memorial. But who cares right? As long as the billionaire gets what he wants.
As a Saturday afternoon followup, how long until sports owners everywhere want what the highest valued sports team has?
But gee, Real Madrid has ….
https://www.fastcompany.com/91148809/real-madrid-built-the-most-advanced-stadium-in-the-world-then-taylor-swift-showed-up
Unless things have changed recently I believe the Dallas cowboys are the most valuable franchise not Real Madrid. In fact Real Madrid was 11th in value at $6b while the cowboys were highest at $9b. Even the new stadium renovations won’t add $3b to the Real Madrid valuation
The linked article says Real is the most valuable soccer team in the world, not the most valuable sports franchise.
Also “Real Madrid’s stadium is a failure because concerts are loud and lots of people go to them” is a pretty dumb take, though I guess a somewhat clever way to get Taylor Swift into a Fast Company headline.
It sounds like the stadium is a failure for concerts, but for football it is supposed to be great. They play 25 to 30 home football games each season and revenues from football games are much higher than previously. I could see where concerts would be different since the noise volume is higher for much longer. Be interesting to see what happens as Perez (Real Madrid president) almost always gets what he wants
As a long time Royals fan, this is why I haven’t been enjoying the remarkably competitive season the team has been having.
Also, I love the KC Star doing some initial PR heavy lifting for the team by continuing to drop the unhoused issue at the site. The logic of the whole thing is exquisitely dumb.
What’s baffling about the A’s supposed move to my hometown is how so-called smart businessmen and politicians won’t admit when they are wrong. Fisher is broke and hapless, so much so even his family members won’t provide him the money he needs for his portion. He needs time to try to secure private investment, but who would want to deal with him? It appears no bank will touch him. No one has yet sufficiently addressed parking. How is a 30k capacity stadium for a sport played primarily in the summer in a city whose temps exceed 110 degrees regularly during that time going to make enough money to cover expenses?
Can someone with half-a-brain at MLB interject? We know it’s not going to be Manfred.
I started thinking a couple weeks ago that if Vegas falls through, Manfred will be out of a job not too many years after.
Retiring. I shall not seek, nor will I accept, a new contract.
Unless something changes. There are always possible situations that can possibly arise in these situations. You can never rule out anything, except when you can rule out some things. And I have.
For now the situation will continue to be the situation in it’s present state unless and until it cannot go on in current state.
The Vegas taxpayers really need to hold their politicians’ feet to the fire to make sure this low-life chiseler doesn’t take the keys to the city. They’ve done fine without MLB.