Friday roundup: D.C.NFL stadium comes with nine-figure Metro cost, Mets owner likely to win casino on city parking lots

I had a nice talk yesterday with Chris Francis of Straight Arrow News (owned by the union-busting Joe Ricketts, sigh) about ballooning hidden public costs of sports stadiums and arenas, and the resulting article is up this morning. Key quote: “I think the team owners and the officials who work with them have realized that it sounds worse to give a check, a taxpayer check, to the team for the stadium than to say, okay, we’re not going to give you that, but we will give you money for infrastructure. We will give you tax breaks. We will give you a break on land costs.” We were talking about the Denver Broncos at the time, but really it goes for all modern sports subsidy deals: All the real costs come in the fine print.

Speaking of the fine print, let’s see what it holds this week:

• When Washington, D.C. agreed to pay $1 billion in cash and $6 billion or so in future rent breaks to Commanders owner Josh Harris for a new stadium, did everyone forget to mention it would come with a major expansion of the Metro station near the stadium site and perhaps a new station nearby as well? That could cost “in the ballpark of hundreds of millions of dollars,” says councilmember Charles Allen, but “we cannot afford not to do it.” Remember when Allen was saying “D.C. has a responsibility to scrutinize the proposal & demand a better & fair deal” with a “billion-dollar industry”? Yeah, neither does he.
• New York Mets owner Steve Cohen is set to be awarded a casino license for the city-owned Citi Field parking lots he controls, after it turned out the state senator opposing it was the most disliked woman in Albany. There’s no public money involved, only public land, and that was effectively given away when then-mayor Mike Bloomberg gave Cohen a 99-year lease on the property as part of his stadium deal, but if you want to be annoyed at a multibillionaire sports team owner getting his way over community opposition, don’t let me stop you.
• The main opposition group to next month’s referendum on giving the San Antonio Spurs around $150 million worth of future tax money toward a new arena is splitting its recommendations, urging a no vote on Prop B (which would provide the arena money) but remaining neutral on Prop A, which would devote tax money to redoing the area around the old arena to attract more rodeo events. COPS/Metro wants to see the county’s money from hotel and rental car taxes spent on “a range of community projects” guided by a citizen committee; it’s not entirely clear what happens to the arena plans if Prop A passes and Prop B does not, but that’s looking like a possibility.
• The Cleveland Browns owners have started moving dirt at their new stadium site even before figuring out how it will all be paid for. All the kids are doing it!
• The Athletics have filed for $523 million worth of construction permits in Las Vegas; getting those still won’t guarantee that the vaporarmadillo comes to pass, but it’s edging closer to decision time.
• Heywood Sanders has elaborated on why the $2.6 billion plan to expand the Los Angeles Convention Center in advance of the 2028 Olympics is a terrible idea, saying in a Q&A with Torched’s Alissa Walker that other similar centers are seeing attendance drop even when they expand, and are having to offer discounted rates to lure a dwindling number of events. Key quote from Walker: “[Bangs head on desk].”
• The organizers of the New York Marathon claim that it and other running events add almost a billion dollars a year to the city economy; it doesn’t look like they even bothered to hired a consultant to write a report justifying the number, but Crain’s New York Business published it anyway, this is fine.