Thanks for your patience while I’ve been traveling this week (and watching Mets playoff games at 3 am), though honestly it’s been a pretty slow news week as well. Not completely dead, though, so let’s get to the weekly roundup:
- The Houston city council is refinancing its bonds for the Astros and Texans stadiums and Rockets arena, which will let it spend an additional $150 million on renovations. The Houston Chronicle says the money is expected to be allocated as part of lease negotiations — the Texans’ is up in 2031, the Rockets’ is up in 2033, and the Astros’ not until 2050 — but also that the bond money is expected to “be split between the three venues evenly,” so maybe the city plans to set aside $50 million for each team, then see what it can get in lease extensions for that? The Houston Business Journal also reports that the Astros and Rockets leases require “renovations to maintain the first-class status of the venues” — the Astros can terminate their lease in 2035 if the additional spending isn’t made, though there’s no estimate provided of how much maintaining “first-class status” is expected to cost. Friends don’t let friends sign state-of-the-art clauses, let’s just leave it at that.
- The city of Oakland has rearranged the payment schedule for the African American Sports and Entertainment Group to supply $105 million for the city’s half of the Oakland Coliseum, and the Oakland police union wants answers, calling the change in timetable “strange and weird.” Apparently the new payment schedule also still needs to be approved by the city council before it’s final, so I’m going to go ahead and say that the whole thing is strange, though “weird” will have to wait until we have further information.
- Destruction from Hurricane Helene is expected to cut into hotel tax revenues earmarked for paying off the Tampa Bay Rays‘ new $1.3 billion stadium, though it’s too soon to predict by how much. Sports economist Geoffrey Propheter notes that if bond buyers balk at purchasing bonds because the tax revenues don’t seem sufficient, Pinellas County could have to allocate more public money to reassure them and keep interest rates from soaring, this should be fun.
- If the prospective owners who want to get an expansion franchise in Portland, Oregon are successful, and if they then are able to build a stadium where they want, it could have the side benefit of shoring up the approach ramps to a neighboring bridge so they don’t collapse in an earthquake. Neither the earthquake nor the expansion team appears imminent, but this is still news, apparently, so consider yourself informed.
If there’s anything else up, it can get discussed in the comments, or else wait till Monday when I’m back on a normal schedule. See you then!
So AASEG spokesperson Ray Bobbitt can say “with certainty” that the city of Oakland will “probably” receive $95 million on May 30th. They’ve got a long way to dig before I regard them as incompetent as previous site proprietor John Fisher, but this does not inspire confidence.
And of course Fox wants to get ahold of the police union first.
No surprise that the police union (and Fox) are mad about black businessmen buying the Oakland Coliseum.
Have the aaseg paid Fisher for his piece? If they default and ownership reverts to Fisher and the city could become a disaster for the city.
Yes, that half of the deal apparently closed a couple weeks ago. In a way, I can’t blame them for paying off Fisher first; it’s better to settle transactions with a cash-poor weirdo like that let him stick around with the possibility he might attempt to alter the terms of the deal.
Was there at least a discussion of perhaps using the savings from the refinancing elsewhere, e.g, tax cut, or is it just assumed that it has to go into stadia?
How about stadium improvements after the current bonds are paid off, in what, 2040?
Houston should just give up and let ’em all move to Nashville. Everyone’s moving to Nashville. And Portland. Houston will be an unimportant backwater town without sports teams.
Houston will be a total backwater for everyone….except the trillion dollar oil field service industry.
A total side note re: Portland, but I would encourage everyone to read the longform piece about “The Big One” in the New Yorker from about a decade or so ago. It still resonates with me as someone who has family there, and used to travel up there every year pre-covid.
The opening grafs of the piece are an absolute clinic in pace-and-hook.
That was by Kathryn Schulz, right? I had never read her before, and two paragraphs into that article she had already become one of my favorite New Yorker writers.
I grew up there, and remember a few minor tremors. That article is nightmarish!
On conference call with reporters, David Forst is asked about the emotions of the past month or so and says he’s gone almost a week without crying.
https://x.com/susanslusser/status/1842264894886060080
(insert .gif wiping eyes with stacks of Franklins)
So NHL starts on Tuesday. Does the Utah hockey team have a name and place to play?
They are playing at the Delta Center. Some of the seats do not have a view of the whole ice but that has not had any impact on ticket sales so far. Anecdotal reports from the people who stat there during preseason is that they enjoyed it anyway.
The plans to renovate it to fix that problem are underway. IIRC, that will done in two years. And even without those seats, they would sell a lot more tickets than the Coyotes could in Arizona. And unlike the situation in Arizona, the owner of the team owns the building.
The team said from *day one* that they would not have a nickname name this year. Instead, they went through several rounds of public voting on the name and are now developing the branding based on that. They did not want to rush that process.
The name will be in place next season. It will be announced sometime this season, probably. The colors they have as Utah HC will be their colors, so they did decide on that much.
This has all been explained and planned. This “har har, what losers! Don’t even have a name!” joke just shows the ignorance of those who repeat it.
If the now-Commanders had elected to remain simply the Washington Football Team, I may have become a fan for life.
Hurricane Milton possibly a Category 4 hitting western Florida mid-week. That’s genuinely scary, and the potential loss of life outweighs all else. By this time next week, there may be a much bigger set of problems than just hotel tax revenues to pay for Sternberg’s handout.