I had a birthday this week, and nothing says “Yes, you’ve been writing this blog since you were 32 years old and you’re apparently going to have to keep at it well into old age, you got a problem with that?” than becoming a Field of Schemes supporter! There are both one-time and recurring payment options, many of which give you the chance to get one of just ten remaining copies of this Vaportecture art print before they’re gone forever, so act now!
Or just keep on reading and commenting, honestly, that at least makes me feel like this entire project has been worth something, even if the central problem it has detailed shows no sign of slowing down. I remain inspired by the Straight Dope‘s tagline “Fighting Ignorance Since 1973 (It’s Taking Longer Than We Thought),” though the fact that the Straight Dope stopped publishing in 2018 without declaring victory over ignorance is sobering, admittedly.
Anyway, onward!
- Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has heard the NWSL expansion Denver Summit owners’ threat to pursue a “parallel path” in unspecified neighboring cities at the same time as trying to win over a city council not crazy about handing them maybe $170 million in cash and tax breaks, and he knows just how to respond: by offering to do whatever it takes to get Summit co-owner (and Broncos co-owner, and wife of billionaire George Lucas) Mellody Hobson to build in his city. “Over my dead body will I let the Broncos stadium leave Denver,” said Johnston on Wednesday. “Over my dead body am I going to let the Summit stadium leave Denver. We want that site to be here.” Noooooo, that’s not at all how you haggle, you’re doing it all wrong! It remains to be seen whether the Denver city council will take up Johnston on his “dead body” offer.
- Residents of Kansas’s Johnson County are “seething” over the possibility of the Kansas City Royals building a stadium there, according to the Kansas City Star, though the Star also reports that a poll found 53% of residents support the idea and 40% oppose it. But also 40% of respondents said the Royals should stay put at Kauffman Stadium vs. 26% who wanted them to move to Kansas, a good seethe is so hard to find these days.
- How did New York Mets owner Steve Cohen take his plans to build a casino next to his stadium from distant longshot to likely winner? One part, two local anti-casino activists write in the New York Daily News, involved hiring two community board members (one now the councilmember-elect for the district) as consultants, while also holding fundraisers for the local state assemblymember. The main reason for Cohen’s success may still be that the state senator who was his main opponent also turned out to be the most disliked person in Albany, but throwing money around to local officials couldn’t have hurt, either.
- Buffalo Bills fans appear to have given up and bought the hated personal seat licenses required to get tickets at the new publicly funded stadium scheduled to open next year, with nearly 90% of the PSLs reportedly having sold. All of the $250 million in proceeds so far will go toward paying Bills owner and superyacht captain Terry Pegula’s $1 billion in stadium expenses, none of it toward paying New York state and Erie County taxpayers’ $1 billion in stadium expenses, because standard business practice something something.
- It’s still not clear where Athletics owner John Fisher will find the $1.4 billion he needs to build an entire ballpark in Las Vegas, but he’s certainly building something: Construction crews started pouring concrete for the lower deck this week. There’s been no word when he’ll hit the $100 million spending mark that will allow him to access $380 million in public money, let alone what he’ll do once that money runs out as well, but if nothing else Fisher is committing to the bit.
- The owners of Sacramento Republic F.C. have only just started building their new soccer stadium, and they’re already seeking permission to expand it from 12,000 to 20,000 seats, just in case they ever want to.
- Asked how new Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski is doing at coming up with plans for a new stadium, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred somehow managed to say, “With respect to the go-forward issue, Patrick and his group are hard at work getting the lay of the land in the Tampa Bay region to find out what their options are.” Language is always evolving, and Manfred is truly an inspiration in breaking new ground about where it will go in the future, or as he would say, the go-forward time.
Kinda funny that the mayor is talking about a team “leaving” when it hasn’t even arrived yet.
I originally had a line in there about that, but three snarky jokes in one item was too much even for me.
Incorrect link for the Sacramento Republic F.C. article.
Thanks, fixed.
Johnston is a scumbag who also circumvented a public vote on an extension of a contract with Flock (surveillance cameras) by lowering the contract a couple dollars below the minimum amount needed to require approval by the city council.
Happy birthday. Thanks for continuing the good fight
Hear hear! Happy birthday!
If they are pouring concrete in Vegas, then they are definitely building it. When it was just clearing land, it was still up in the air. It’s not like partway through the process they can change it from a stadium to something else.
Doesn’t mean it’s going to happen in the projected time frame. Vegas is no stranger to stalled projects with aging concrete exposed to the elements.
It now seems virtually certain that the plan is to spend the $100 million to trigger the $380 million in state money, then tout that capital base to try to secure the rest of the financing. Really, that was probably Fisher’s bright idea all along. Good luck; have fun with that, given the economic outlook going into 2026!
Isn’t most of the state “money” in the form of tax credits on the stadium site itself, though?
It’s still ‘useable’ for someone with Fisher’s family wealth, but it’s not like once he proves he has spent $100m the state sends him a check for $380m.
Playing devil’s advocate (literally) here a bit, but… if everyone’s favourite failson actually wanted to do it, he could use the approximately $500m he has “committed” to float a construction mortgage and let the team’s future revenues pay off the debt.
This assumes MLB would allow him to go to the extraordinary length of paying for some of his own building, but it is certainly possible.
I doubt he’ll even consider it, as you suggest. He just seems to think people will be so enamoured with the notion of of being his “partner” they will fall all over themselves to be a part of this action.
I completely disagree with him on that, but I guess we’ll see.
It’s exactly that once he proves he has spent $100m the state sends him a check for $380m. There’s another $100m and change in tax breaks, but that’s later.
Interesting. I recall public info on this suggesting that practically all of the tax breaks were just refunds on property and other taxes (as they accrue) and that he would be “waiting” for some of those for years. (IE: the “special tax district” to refund all stadium related taxes to Fisher, the $180m in transferrable tax credits etc)
So, are you saying that the state (or really the stadium authority) is going to be the one ‘waiting’ for the revenues to come in and they just pay Fisher based on the dubious projections they have already made?
If someone offers me a transferrable tax credit and then agrees to pay me the full commutable value of that tax credit, they haven’t really given me a tax credit at all. They have just paid me.
Slight correction: It’s up to $200m in cash (funded by county bonds, funded by future tax proceeds) plus $180m in transferrable tax credits (which can be resold to anyone with $180m in tax liability). But that’s still $380m that Fisher can access immediately.
https://www.fieldofschemes.com/2023/05/27/20012/vegas-as-stadium-could-cost-public-500m-counting-property-tax-breaks-and-hidden-renovation-fund/
You’re confusing tax breaks with tax-funded bonds. In the latter case, yes, it’s the government sitting around waiting for the tax revenues to come in.
Valencia’s Nou Mestalla says hi.
Neil, do you even remember the combination baseball/soccer stadium that was supposed to be built in 1999 in Williams Township, Pa. for the Lehigh Valley Steam soccer team and Lehigh Valley Black Diamonds baseball team?
I am almost certain they poured concrete on that one, but it never got completed and was eventually torn back down.
I did not remember that one at all, despite being an Atlantic League fan at the time. But you are 100% correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehigh_Valley_Multi-Purpose_Sport_Complex
Pretty sure the ruins of the beginnings of the lower deck of a baseball stadium is still lurking in central Sacramento as well. Last time I looked at it on Google maps it appeared to be turning itself into an unnatural water feature.
Which is something, I guess.
Yup, Arco Park: https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/field-of-dreams-sacramento-arco-park-mlb/
Thanks, yeah, not really ‘central’ as I remembered it… up near where the second of the Kings THREE arenas was…
Instead of spending $500 million on a MLB stadium St. Petersburg is fixing its broken storm water, water and wastewater systems. Instead of giving a MLB team owner a $800 million property for $130 million, taxpayers will keep their land and reap the benefits of redevelopment. It’s great to have taxpayers first.
Neil also remember ‘Edelman Field’ for the ‘Loudon Hounds’ in Northern VA that also broke ground, poured concrete?
What about Noah’s Arc on I-68 west of Cumberland?
Or the suicide stubs off I-95 for the cancelled I-70 extension from the highway to nowhere in West Bmore?
Oooo, yeah.
If we are extending this topic to cover “ramps to nowhere” I can think of at least a half dozen cities that have them… and have left them uncompleted for years or even decades.
Some have even given up and demolished them.
I do think that Ian’s hypothesis above is the most likely one: Fisher is gambling that once the first half a billion dollars is spent, someone — private investors, government entities, fairy godmothers — will come up with the rest. If and when that doesn’t happen, he could talk his family into bailing him out, or could just abandon the project, but those are the only options. And I don’t think we — or even he — can predict which way it will go down.
The Fisher family fortunes are in Gap stock, and to fund the ballpark, even after the first $500 million, they would have to either sell so much Gap stock that it would tank the stock price, or borrow a billion dollars using the stock as collateral.
I think it will eventually get done with the rest of the money supplied by the state and county, or casino companies, or by a loan from MLB with the franchise as collateral.
Slight possibility that the franchise would be sold to new owners with the wherewithal to finance the ballpark.
MLB has been pretty persnickety about debt-to-equity ratios, so I don’t know if they’d loan Fisher the money, even to do an executive committee member a solid.
And while there are certainly other would-be owners who *could* finance the ballpark, would any of them want to? “Buy the A’s, win the right to set a billion dollars on fire and watch it burn!”
Agreed, M. I don’t see anyone coming to the rescue.
Even if you were much wealthier than Fisher, why would you want to step in and finish his failed project in Vegas, only to be stuck with a very expensive stadium in a very small market that suddenly has a glut of pro sports teams?
Fisher’s stupidity is no-one else’s problem.
I don’t think MLB is all that keen on ‘investing’ into Vegas. The whole point of this move was that $450-500m in Oakland was not ‘enough’. So off we go to a place where it will cost 3x as much to put up a stadium and there are less than half the potential fans available (and way fewer tv viewers).
If Fisher has to sell (a majority of shares) the A’s, I have my doubts they will be the Las Vegas Athletics.
I don’t know where they would go, but there is no there there in Vegas – even MLB has admitted as much (calling the market “iffy” for baseball). They only agreed to try it because Fisher had backed himself into a corner, and because it wasn’t on anyone’s expansion radar (so it doesn’t eat up possible expansion sites).
He may need his family’s permission to sell or borrow against GAP shares (or be required to sell to family members first). MLB will be paying him revenue sharing more or less forever as a result of this move, so I doubt they are going to be keen to advance money for a stadium.
It’s possible that some version of his stadium build works out “somehow”, but in every way that matters both he and MLB will be worse off in Vegas than they were in Oakland. And it looks good on them from where I sit.
Another option that I could see coming about (though it may not be the most likely) is that Fisher reaches his funding limit long before he even gets to $1Bn and appeals to MLB and Vegas to allow a smaller and much less grandiose stadium, probably without a roof (which could save $1bn).
I don’t think either MLB or the PA will like that (Vegas may not either), but I have seen it happen in many other construction projects. Once you start filling the hole with money you can’t stop. But you sometimes can transform the “fabulous” vision/armadillo into something that looks more like an MLB version of Sahlen field in Buffalo, or a larger Legends stadium.
He probably can’t get away with building a 20,000 seat stadium or smaller. But a 25-28k facility? Given the A’s historic attendance, how would the league reject that capacity?
Sports leagues do have more tools to pressure owners than municipalities (or other kinds of fraternal businesses/cartels), but in the end if they have approved the move and a stadium above the minimum required capacity has been built on the site specified, on what grounds would either MLB or Vegas refuse to allow play there?
Even if (after lawsuits start flying) they ultimately can “require” a roof and air conditioning, I don’t see anything that could stop Fisher from building a giant quonset roof like the new Rangers facility has.
The recession stalled a much more expensive project (now the the Fountainbleu) for over a decade. It literally was about 70% finished and it just sat there changing hands several times until it was finally finished by the Kochs.
More recently a $500 million hotel project stalled after 8 months of construction.
The idea that just cuz you’ve started something means it’s all in the bag doesn’t really apply to Vegas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Las_Vegas