Okay, that’s done, Friday roundup, let’s get to it:
- Axios has more on the question of how Donald Trump could intervene in the Washington Commanders stadium brouhaha, concluding that “the federal government breaks leases all the time” and “Trump could muscle in a new agreement, cutting out the city,” plus that he could appoint his own members to the stadium’s design commission. The biggest hammer remains Congress, which has the power to override D.C. council decisions if it wants — but the likelihood of it mustering 60 votes in the Senate to do so before the council gets around to voting on the deal in September seems pretty remote. Axios does report (no sources given beyond “what I’m hearing”) that “Commanders executives stepped up their lobbying on Tuesday, telling D.C. Council members that Trump’s involvement could introduce volatility that the team and Mayor Muriel Bowser would like to avoid,” and that part certainly makes sense: Trump is the ultimate loose cannon, so if Commanders lobbyists think they can scare D.C. councilmembers by threatening to release the kraken, you know they’re going to do so.
- Also on the Commanders front, the group Homes Not Stadiums is urging D.C. residents to show up to the council’s planned July 29 public hearing on the deal and demand, well, homes and not stadiums. (Group treasurer Adam Eidinger says he expects more than 500 people to ultimately sign up to testify, so everyone may be there a while.) At the same time, the civic group the Committee of 100 says the stadium deal should be renegotiated to not give so damn much money to team owner Josh Harris while no property taxes go to the city, now there’s an idea.
- Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb says if the Cleveland Browns leave town, he may ask owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam to help pay to demolish their old stadium, on the grounds of being “good corporate citizens,” ha, that’s a good one. Meanwhile, consultants hired by Cleveland predict that the city would lose $41 million in economic activity from the Browns leaving, while those hired by the Haslams say letting the team leave would actually create a gain for the city of $11 million a year in spending for downtown Cleveland — you really do have to wonder how many of these consultants just copy their old reports and change the conclusion from “net gain” to “net loss.”
- And also in Ohio, the Columbus Blue Jackets could demand arena subsidies under the state’s sweeping new sports subsidy law along with the Browns and Cincinnati Bengals, this is going just swimmingly.
- Minneapolis mayoral candidates are against spending public money on a Timberwolves arena, but some would be fine with property tax breaks, that’s not real money, right, Oscar?
- The MLB All-Star Game is coming to Atlanta, and that’s going to mean lots of articles about how great it is for the Atlanta economy, even by outlets that already reported that the numbers were so bogus that MLB wouldn’t stand by them.
- Athletics owner John Fisher secretly bought a $29 million mansion in Las Vegas, maybe he should have saved some of that money to spend on a stadium?
Committee of 100 sounds both ominous and unwieldy.
I’d prefer the kraken these days!
At least the number of poor people it can kill is limited by the reach of its tentacles.
Great point
Your reporting is fantastic!
Actually, many years ago Frank R., peerless leader of the Tiger Stadium Fan Club, figured out how they get these figures as to the economic impact of an event or a new structure: they throw a dart at a dart board and whatever number it hits, they add “million dollars.”
We’ve seen this here in Detroit. The Super Bowl was going to bring in $100 million in revenue…or $250 million…or $200 million…and so forth. Curiously enough, I am unaware of anyone from the media who went over the issue afterwards and tried to assess the actual economic impact.
A fallback position was that well, maybe the financial benefits are indeterminate but it would make Detroit a showplace, people would see it’s a great place to do business, and we’d recoup the investment that way.
I checked some US and foreign media sites after the game and the consensus was, “great party, friendly and hospitable folks, the city’s a pit.”