The Chicago Sun-Times has a long explainer up about Justin Ishbia’s proposed White Sox stadium, and while it gets off to a shaky start — “Why do the White Sox want a new stadium?” “The team is under lease at the state-owned Rate Field only through 2029” nonresponsive, move to strike — it eventually gets around to talking about some of the wide-open funding questions about the project:
The ballpark itself would be privately financed, a source with direct knowledge of the planning told the Chicago Sun-Times. But there would be an ask for public funding for local infrastructure, including for nearby roads, bridges and potentially a new Metra station, though details haven’t been finalized.
That’s a potentially large but, since “infrastructure” has in other stadium deals been defined so expansively that stairs and even building foundations were included. That’s not to say that Ishbia necessarily has a similar ask in mind, but “details haven’t been finalized” isn’t exactly reassuring in that regard. And there’s also the question of how much the developer/Sox minority owner/future Sox majority owner maybe will get in goodies from Amtrak: The land swap for the site still involves several moving parts whose details also haven’t been finalized.
On the other hand, the White Sox moving would also free up the site of their current stadium, which is owned by the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority. Crain’s Chicago Business looks at this possibility, and concludes with a definite maybe:
The sprawling, highway-adjacent property could become one of the city’s largest redevelopment opportunities if the Sox relocate. The site could languish as a symbol of South Side disinvestment and drain tax dollars to maintain it, or perhaps transform into a mixed-use district that failed to materialize around the stadium over the past three decades.
One of those, surely! It seems like this would be a good time for local officials to start getting some appraisals of what all these parcels of land are worth — and how much all those roads and bridges might cost — so that it’s not left to the last minute. Ishbia may not be ready to finalize his end of the details, but there’s no harm in local government setting out to determine what it would take to make this work out for taxpayers.
But wait I was told he would do it with federal grants and loans and not fleece the taxpayers.
The other side of the river is where the Fire stadium is being built. The city council recently approved $425 million of spending on “not stadium”. Ishbia will probably be looking for a similar amount.
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/finance-committee-vote-tif-funds-chicago-fire-stadium-infrastructure/
Wonder why the White Sox are not (yet) using Indiana as leverage.
1) While Bears fans might drive to Indiana for a Sunday game, nobody thinks Sox fans would travel there and back after work on a weeknight.
2) The timing is off. If the Sox wait until the Bears move to Indiana, they’ll have Chicago officials spooking about “losing” a second team. If they wait and the Bears stay in Illinois, Indiana will have stadium money burning a hole in its pocket looking for something to spend it on.
Exactly what happened in Kansas City. Once the Chiefs got Kansas to fund their new stadium the politicians panicked. Both the Democratic city politicians and the Republican state pols put aside their differences to give the Royals everything they asked for.
The KC public official panic scenario is concerning if the Bears should leave. Also, the fact that the House passed and Gov. JB expressed support for a “megaprojects” bill that would let developers of stadium-size projects ($200 million to $2 billion) negotiate what they pay in property taxes for up to 40 years, and which also had financing mechanisms to back borrowing with revenue from sales and income taxes generated inside a stadium/megaproject district that could be quite large.
But moving the Sox to NW Indiana would be a terrible idea; even with a stadium in the middle of a city of 2.5 million people, the team does not draw well when the Sox are no good.
Hopefully, local officials would see a move across the state line as an empty threat, but then again, local press has already been pointing out that Ishbia has connections to Nashville (owns a soccer team there, went to Vandy law school), so probably the threat of a move will be out there. Reinsdorf did go schlepping for state money a few years back when the Sox were absolute trash, saying he wanted another sweetheart deal to make sure a future owner wouldn’t move the team after he dies/sells.
Buying the White Sox and moving them from Chicago to Nashville would be the fastest way imaginable for Ishbia to get himself on the cover of Big Dumb Corporate Idiot magazine. (Unless MLB really goes to an NFL-style full TV revenue sharing model, which seems unlikely.) Not that that would stop him from hinting about it to scare Chicago polls, though, you’re 100% right about that.
Not saying it would be a good idea to move, but the threat would almost certainly be at least be implied (and Nashville would almost certainly abet the gamesmanship with the offer of a free or reduced-price stadium). In fact, the Bears move to Indiana, Sox relocation rumors will manifest out of thin air. And even the Rickettses said they would look for locations in the suburbs if they couldn’t get help from the Emanuel administration, a bluff that was wildly incredible (uncredible?) even by the standards of your standard stadium bluff.
There was some recent anxiety when Dave Stewart was rumored to be kicking the tires on the Sox on behalf of a group from Nashville.
The current crop of Nashville city officials are fairly anti-stadium subsidy, having been elected in the wake of the crazy-pricey Titans deal. So it’s unlikely they’d be too quick to throw money at the White Sox, at least not for a few years yet. Nashville has largely dropped off the expansion radar, largely for this reason.
Is the land swap to move the Amtrak facility out to where the Sox stadium is currently? Rather than an opportunity for new development, wouldn’t the best use of the Sports Facilities Authority land be to host rail facilities that currently occupy more valuable land downtown?
It’s near the current White Sox stadium site, not right there.
Clearing the rail yards downtown makes some sense from a maximum use value perspective, but then going and using it for a baseball stadium that’ll be empty 280 days a year kind of takes away from that.