Search Results for: Yet another half-baked Rays stadium plan emerges

Friday roundup: Hamilton County spends $30m on Bengals parking land, Oakland Coliseum may get second life as soccer venue

access_time personNeil deMause

Note to reporters seeking help with your research into sports economics issues: I’m more than happy to talk with journalists from all over the political spectrum, as the great stadium swindle is, as has been discussed here time and again, one that neither Republicans nor Democrats have a monopoly on. But if you’re asking for my assistance, maybe don’t include a link to a page with a report your site did saying anti-trans legislation is about “banning males from competing on female sports teams” — if you can’t keep at least one foot on the ground of factual accuracy, what you’re doing isn’t journalism.

Speaking of factual accuracy, here’s your weekly news roundup, fact-checked as well as I can do myself while my fact-checking department is, apparently, out on a long lunch or something:

  • Hamilton County may still be negotiating a lease extension with the owners of the Cincinnati Bengals, but that hasn’t stopped the county from spending $30 million to buy a parcel of land next to the Bengals stadium to use as additional parking and green space. “The Bengals have forgiven us for our [game day] payments,” explained Hamilton County Commission president Denise Driehaus. “It’s about $30 million total. That happened to be the asking price for this property. And so, in essence, the Bengals are paying for the property, and the county owns it.” That “in essence” is doing a lot of work there: From what I can tell from this report, it was back in 2018 Bengals management first agreed to hand over the disputed game day payments, which is money the team owners wanted the county to provide to cover operational costs of holding home games, in exchange for parking — though if they were “disputed” it’s not clear that this was ever team money to begin with.
  • Remember how, just last month, the owners of the Oakland Roots and Soul soccer teams said they wanted to build a temporary stadium before maybe eventually moving to a permanent stadium at Howard Terminal? Forget all that, they were just pulling our legs, now they want to remain at the Oakland Coliseum for “a longer stay.” Guess resident opossums are only an existential threat to baseball teams, not soccer teams?
  • Your occasional reminder that when the Los Angeles Dodgers owners do renovations to their stadium, they spend their own money on it. That likely has something to do with the fact that they have some of the highest attendance numbers and highest ticket prices in baseball, so they benefit the most from upgrades — though it does raise the question of whether, if less popular teams are asking to be subsidized for renovations that won’t pay for themselves, if that’s really about needing renovations or just wanting an excuse to ask for taxpayer money.
  • Chicago Bears president Kevin Warren has upgraded from “steadfast” to “adamant” that his team will break ground on a new stadium in 2025. I do not think that word means what you think it means.
  • The St. Petersburg city council has approved funding for the repair of … Al Lang Stadium! The Tampa Bay Rowdies, who play at Al Lang, are owned by Rays owner Stu Sternberg, so at least St. Pete officials can’t be said to be holding a grudge.
  • The Super Bowl’s coming to New Orleans, everyone get ready to benefit from that cushy NFL spending that will provide … $12/hour jobs to assemble the stage for the $10 million halftime show? Well then.
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St. Pete to Rays: Actually, there’s no deadline for us to fix your stadium roof, read your damn lease

access_time personNeil deMause

If you’re wondering what’s going on with repairs to the Tropicana Field roof, Tampa Bay Rays execs are waiting on the city of St. Petersburg to tell them when work will begin. Team co-president Matt Silverman wrote to city officials on December 30 declaring that a “partial 2026 season in Tropicana Field would present massive logistical and revenue challenge” and “it is therefore critical that the rebuild start in earnest as soon as possible.” City manager Rob Gerdes has now responded, and it looks like Rays management didn’t read their fine print too clearly:

We look forward to cooperating to attempt to achieve the mutual goal of making Tropicana Field suitable for Major League Baseball games by opening day of the 2026 season. However … the Use Agreement requires the City of St. Petersburg to diligently pursue repairs to Tropicana Field, but it does not establish a deadline for completing those repairs.

It’s true! According to the “force majeure” clause in the Rays’ use agreement, the city only needs to begin repairs within three months of damage that has made the building unplayable, which it has done. There’s no set date for it to finish, though — and the only consequence is that for any amount of time the Rays are homeless, their lease gets extended by an equal amount of time, which is surely no skin off the nose of St. Petersburg.

It’s kind of hilarious that Rays owner Stu Sternberg is falling victim to sloppy wording of a stadium agreement, which is usually city lawyers’ signature move. (To be fair, Sternberg didn’t hire the lawyers who wrote up this use agreement, former Rays owner Vince Naimoli did; still, you’d think he and his execs would have at least read it.) With Sternberg and the city still at loggerheads over whether the Rays owner will accept the offer of $1 billion in public money for a new stadium or demand even more, we’ll likely see more of this brinksmanship in the coming weeks and months and … years? There’s nothing stopping the city from dragging its heels for years, honestly. It’ll almost certainly be resolved before then by either negotiations or lawsuit, but it’s still fun to watch in the meantime.

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Bostonians call spending $100m to convert public park for pro soccer “appalling and criminal”

access_time personNeil deMause

The projected public cost of tearing down a public high school soccer stadium and turning it into a home for the women’s soccer team BOS Nation F.C. (which public high school students will get to use when the NWSL team is on the road) has now reached $100 million, out of a total cost of at least $200 million. And lots of Boston residents are hopping mad, as exhibited at 9-hour city council hearing yesterday:

“Boston students deserve a renovated White Stadium – they deserve a public White Stadium, not a private sports and entertainment complex built to enable private profits,” said Jean McGuire, resident of Roxbury and longtime civil rights advocate. “It’s clear that this entire process is being driven by the needs of private investments, not the needs of Boston students. The process has been launched, the state reviews having been conducted, and community members’ concerns about public access and transportation impacts are being ignored, all in a mad rush to next March for White Stadium in order to be a soccer team’s desired opening day.”…

Stevan Kirschbaum, a former BPS bus driver, described the White Stadium plan as “appalling and criminal.”

“We should be chaining ourselves to those trees – this is a criminal rush to judgment.”

And at least one elected official is none too pleased by the soaring price tag:

“We have now said we can come up with $100 million,” [city councillor Erin] Murphy said. “Just like any responsible person, anyone who runs their home budget, at some point you have to say, that’s great but I can’t afford it, so I’m going to have to say no.”

As reported previously, the team owners will “keep the bulk of revenue from matches” aside from 10% of in-stadium ad revenues and 3% of concessions revenues, as well as $400,000 a year in rent and a $1-per-ticket surcharge — the math on which suggests that it would require the average ticket buyer to spend around $1,000 per game on concessions for the city to break even. Boston public school students will get the benefit of a nicer stadium — when they’re allowed to use it — though it’s not clear what benefit they’ll get from such upgrades as a new beer garden.

The parks group the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, which has filed a lawsuit to block the stadium plan, has estimated that a scaled-down high school facility would cost the city just $29 million. Council Ben Weber said of the lawsuit at yesterday’s hearing, “I hear a lot of rhetoric, I don’t hear much about solutions” — maybe proposing a scaled-down stadium isn’t a solution to BOS Nation F.C.’s owner, venture capital CEO and daughter of a Celtics co-owner Jennifer Epstein, but that all depends on how you define the problem.

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The Bengals stadium talks have descended into dadaist poetry

access_time personNeil deMause

Negotiations between Cincinnati Bengals execs and Hamilton County on a lease extension continue, and as a bunch of emails that emerged last week reveal, they’ve been at times contentious: “It is very clear that we are talking past each other” is one typical missive. Yesterday Hamilton County commissioner Alicia Reece chimed in on the dispute, and uh:

“Our people can get in that room, come back with some changes to this lease, and have a win-win so we can present this to the taxpayers,” Reece said. “Will that be easy? No. If I’m them, I’m hugging the zero down. I’m hugging to give me all the resources. I’m hugging them. I would tell you what’s wrong with this lease. This is a good deal, but the taxpayers did speak. They did vote to have two stadiums, but they never voted for this. And this is what they’re angry about.”

Is “the zero down” a mortgage thing? A football thing? Are the people hugging it taxpayers or Bengals negotiatiors? WKRC-TV included video of Reece’s statements, and the actual transcript (transcribed by me) is only marginally clearer:

“Our people can get in a room, come back with some changes to this lease, and have a win-win and be able to present this to the taxpayers. Now, will that be easy? No. Because if I’m them, I’m hugging to the zero down. I’m hugging to give me all the resources. I’m hugging this lease. I would tell you, ‘What’s wrong with this lease? This is a good deal!’ But the taxpayers did speak. They did go to have two stadiums, but they never voted for this.” (She holds up a sheaf of papers, presumably the proposed lease.) “And this is what they’re angry about.”

With all the focus on the vibes, there’s been little revealed to the public about what’s actually being discussed for a lease extension, which is on the table because the Bengals’ historically sweetheart lease is expiring in June of next year, and the team needs to decide by this June whether to extend it by two years. (The team can extend it for four more two-year periods after that if it wants.) Reece has previously indicated her interest in putting a billion-dollar roof on the team’s stadium and maybe paying for it with state money or NFL money or who knows what. The last proposal from the Bengals negotiators that I can find is one from 2023 where the county would spend $300 million on renovations in exchange for a five-year lease extension, which at $60 million a year would be easily a new record for most expensive lease extension — and would only kick the can down the road until the year 2031. Hugging to the zero down is looking better and better.

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Have Chiefs/Royals stadium talks torpedoed K.C. border war “truce”? An investimagation

access_time personNeil deMause

There was a lot going on yesterday, but Kansas City’s NPR station still had time to get out a big think piece — reprinted from local nonprofit news outlet The Beacon — on what the Chiefs and Royals stadium battles mean for the region’s eternal economic border war between Missouri and Kansas. How did KCUR and The Beacon do? Let’s drop in and see:

The two states had for years engaged in a bloodletting competition to lure businesses to their side of the Kansas City region — handing out lucrative incentives to move a corporate headquarters just a few miles across the state line.

These deals brought no new jobs to the region. They sacrificed millions in taxes that could have gone to hire more teachers, pave more roads or invest in public safety. They did nothing to improve the regional economy.

It was, as many called it, a race to the bottom.

So far, so good, though Kansas City is hardly alone in this regard.

Suddenly, that race came to a halt. In 2019, the governors in both states recognized the futility of these battles and agreed to stop the poaching. Since then, most economic development officials in the region say, the truce has worked.

Sort of? The 2019 truce only applied to payroll tax kickbacks, and even then was seen as fragile given that it was “binding” only until one state or the other chose to walk away, as reported at the time by oh hey look it’s KCUR!

A recent study conducted by Brookings Metro underscores why the states shouldn’t waste those resources. The study found that the Kansas City region’s economic output is almost evenly split on both sides of the state line, an anomaly among other multistate regions.

What’s more, the metro’s total GDP significantly boosts each state’s economy. Of Missouri’s total GDP, nearly a fourth comes from the Kansas City metro. Kansas, in turn, gets more than a third of its total from our region.

This is where the article starts to get weird: Kansas and Missouri shouldn’t be throwing public money to lure businesses back and forth across the state line because … the K.C. metro area is evenly split between the two states? Notably, that’s not even what the linked Brookings study says about the K.C. border war, which is the more lucid argument that “both states attempted to move jobs and businesses in the Kansas City metro area to their side of the state line, resulting in zero net new jobs for the region—at taxpayers’ expense.”

But if a place like Wyandotte County has a chance to use incentives to attract a business, why shouldn’t it? In fact, even with the truce, the county and its neighbors across the region still strike deals with businesses in nearby cities and counties.

Uhhhh, because it results in zero net new jobs for the region, at taxpayers’ expense? Also, what happened to “the truce has worked”? Can we get a fact-checker in here?

The difference today, said Greg Kindle, CEO of Wyandotte Economic Development Council, is those businesses are the first to broach the idea of a move. And even then, they aren’t, he said, asking for anything more than what the county typically gives to qualifying businesses.

Consider Mies Family Foods, a family-run business that will be moving from Missouri back to Kansas, where it got its start. Earlier this year, Mies was looking for a larger site and turned to Wyandotte County because that’s where the owners live.

The county offered Mies its standard 50 percent tax abatement. That, coupled with an attractive site near Interstates 70 and 635, was enough to convince Mies to make a $15.6 million investment and bring 51 employees to Kansas. When the abatement ends, the property will generate $200,000 a year in taxes.

“You look at that and say, does that qualify as a border war?” Kindle said. “Well, they had a connection to Kansas and wanted to move.”

Oh, okay, the county is handing out tax breaks to everyone, including companies owned by people who would want to move to your state regardless and are just happy to pocket the cash as a bonus. That’s … better? Kindle seems to be trying to go with “better,” I think?

If you’re wondering why The Beacon chose to ask the head of the local public-private pro-business advocacy group about whether giving public money to local businesses is a good idea, you clearly weren’t the editor of this piece, because that’s the only kind of source heard from here: People quoted include the CEO of K.C.’s regional business marketing arm, the CEO of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, the aforementioned Wyandotte economic development council CEO, a Kansas state official who voted to spend $28 million on the 2026 World Cup even though it’ll be held in Missouri, the CEO of K.C.’s World Cup bid group, and one of the Brookings authors. Any other experts in or critics of interstate bidding wars or the economics thereof didn’t get a call for comment, so we’re left viewing the end (?) of this truce (?) through a lens of “actually, it’s all fine, probably.”

As for the Chiefs and the Royals, though they’re the hook for the headline, they don’t make that much of an appearance in the article itself, though it does note that “on balance, the subsidies offered to major league sports franchises rarely, if ever, deliver that boost.” That’s followed, however, by a digression about how stadium employees would likely live in both states either way — true enough, but kind of beside the point if the whole issue is that paying to move businesses back and forth across state lines is a net zero for the region as a whole — and then this:

And the region, certainly, does not want to lose either the Royals or the Chiefs. [Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce Joe] Reardon said that even if one or both teams move to Kansas, the truce will remain because the region will have kept its prized teams.

You heard it here first: Without tax kickbacks, the Chiefs and Royals could move to Greensboro or someplace, according to the head of the organization dedicated to obtaining tax kickbacks for its members. Great journalism, everybody — who needs meddling billionaires when we have reporters who’ve been trained to follow their lead on who is and isn’t worth talking to?

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Friday roundup: City sues Browns over Brook Park vaporstadium, Broncos go all Bears on suburban move threats

access_time personNeil deMause

Weeks keep happening, and we keep making it to the end of them! (Well, most of us.) If you ever need a break from the general state of everything, you might want to check out this other project I’m involved in, where you can immerse yourself in great live music of the recent past to gird yourself for the present. Or just experience whatever exactly this is.

Back now, all musicked up? Good, because there’s some news waiting for you and it’s not going to stay hot forever:

  • As promised, the city of Cleveland officially sued the Cleveland Browns under Ohio’s Art Modell Law this week to force team owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam to offer the team for sale to local owners before trying to move it to the suburb of Brook Park. The Haslams already preemptively sued to block the Modell Law, so now this will be in the hands of the courts, though it’s also in the hands of the state legislature that is being asked for maybe $1.2 billion to help build a Brook Park dome, hey guys, I think I came up with a way to save a bunch on lawyers’ fees!
  • Denver Broncos co-owner Greg Penner said Wednesday that “We haven’t ruled out anything at this point” in terms of a new or renovated stadium to replace or upgrade their 24-year-old one, adding, “We’re still looking at options on the current site, around Denver.” If that sounds suspiciously like “We’re kicking the tires of local governments to see what our leverage is,” congratulations, you’ve passed Chicago Bears 101!
  • Speaking of the Bears, Illinois house speaker Chris Welch said he might consider having the state pay for some infrastructure costs of a new NFL stadium, so long as the team owners build one at the Michael Reese Hospital site that they first rejected before saying they might reconsider. Fox 32 Chicago further reports that “Governor JB Pritzker is open to talks with the Bears regarding the Michael Reese site” (according to “sources); if the Bears execs’ plan is really “keep throwing things at various walls until we see what sticks,” this might be just the opening they’ve been hoping for — now, how to define an entire stadium as “infrastructure”?
  • The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal … I probably shouldn’t even finish this sentence, but in the interest of the completeness: Mr. Bowtie says that Tampa Bay Rays owner Stu Sternberg needs to find a way to get a stadium built in his current city or else sell the team, and that the situation is “not identical” to the Athletics moving out of Oakland, because Tampa-St. Pete is a large market and the Rays have a stadium offer in hand while the A’s … well, they’re just different, okay? This is probably just Rosenthal going off for his own reasons, but he does spend a bunch of time discussing how MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is taking a “different approach” with the Rays than the A’s, so there’s some chance the consummate baseball insider is sending a message on behalf of MLB leadership, in which case maybe Sternberg will take the hint and stand down from his “Thanks for the billion dollars, what else you got?” gambit.
  • Retiring Miami Mayor Francis Suarez gave a farewell speech in which he stood before the under-construction Inter Miami stadium — as well as an American flag and two John Deere tractors, because Florida — and declared the “the best sports deal in America.” Mmm, maybe not quite that actually, but we have some lovely parting gifts.
  • Remember that time San Diego almost had a floating ballpark? Wait, that was never really going to happen? Shh, it makes a great story.
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Tempe officials called arena opponents “CAVE people” when they thought no one was listening

access_time personNeil deMause

Tempe Mayor Corey Woods and the city council have not been coming out looking good after their failed campaign to give Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo about $500 million in tax breaks for a new arena: After Tempe residents resoundingly voted down the plan, the state attorney general found the city officials had illegally conducted private meetings with a consultant that it paid $32,258 to investigate arena opponents. And now that it’s been ruled those meetings should have been public, recordings of them are subject to public records requests, and the results have really made Woods and the councilmembers not look good:

The Tempe City Council assumed it was protected from prying ears when it went into a closed-door meeting on Dec. 15, 2022. According to the minutes from the meeting, councilmembers needed secrecy to discuss “their personal observations of Tempe residents conveying support” for a new arena for the Arizona Coyotes. What the councilmembers and Mayor Corey Woods actually said was a bit more colorful than that.

According to an audio recording of the meeting, the officials used their shroud of secrecy to disparage arena opponents. Citizens who campaigned against the arena were “cave people,” while arena opposition ringleader Ron Tapscott was a “crazy uncle.”

Further down, the Phoenix New Times reveals it was actually the consultant, Troy Corder of Strategy 48, who called opponents of the plan “folks who just like to yell at each other” and “cave people” — something New Times described as a “belittling acronym,” though it didn’t explain for what. (“Citizens Against Virtually Everything,” presumably.) Still, Vice Mayor Jennifer Adams then responded by saying, “Yes, exactly,” though, so she deserves credit for the phrase as well.

This, apparently, is how elected officials talk when they think no one can hear them. There were two other illegal closed meetings that weren’t recorded — the one that turned up was only recorded because a fill-in clerk wanted a way to check her notes — so unless someone else present decided to take advantage of Arizona’s status as a one-party consent state, we’ll probably just have to imagine what was said there.

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Joint Sixers-Flyers arena declared “win, win, win, win,” but for who exactly and at what cost?

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s Tuesday morning, and here’s what we know about the plans for a joint Philadelphia 76ers–Flyers arena in South Philly:

  • Sixers owners Harris Blitzer and Flyers owners Comcast Spectacor have entered into a “binding agreement” to go halfsies on a new arena to replace the Wells Fargo Center, which Comcast owns (and recently renovated) and Sixers rent. The new arena, which doesn’t yet have an announced price tag, is planned to open in 2031.
  • The two companies will also work together on the “revitalization” of the Market East site near Chinatown that the Sixers had previously targeted for a new arena of their own.
  • Comcast will buy a minority stake in the Sixers, and will get full ownership of the naming rights to the new arena.
  • The Flyers owners will join the Sixers owners in seeking a WNBA team to play in the new arena.
  • Mayor Cherelle Parker called this development a “win, win, win, win for Philadelphia” and a “curveball that none of us saw coming” and “exciting” and “unprecedented” and “a celebration for the city” and said as the city’s “CEO, I don’t have the luxury of wallowing in this 180.”
  • Parker said the city will still spend $20 million on affordable housing initiatives in Chinatown, though it sounds like the $50 million in community benefits promised by Harris as part of his original arena deal is now kaput.

All this still leaves a lot of questions: What will the “revitalization” at Market East look like, and will it still be eligible for the property tax breaks that were approved for the previously planned arena? What will the previously announced arena district in South Philly look like, when will it be built, and will Comcast and Harris seek any tax breaks or public infrastructure money for that? Who’s paying who for what in all these new cross-ownership deals, and how certain is it that any of these new plans will come to fruition? (City councilmember Mark Squilla, who played a key role in approving the now-suddenly-dead Market East arena plan, said when asked how he knows the new arena will actually happen, “I mean, you don’t. I mean, they say their commitment is there, there’s a little trust building that needs to be done.”)

In an editorial late yesterday afternoon, the Philadelphia Inquirer called the last four years spent on the Market East arena plans “a giant waste of time and money for everyone.” That’s not quite true: It was clearly time and money well spent for the Sixers owners, who were able to use the threat of their own arena to get Comcast to the table to work out this new deal. Whether it can now really be a “win, win, win, win” for the city, Sixers, Flyers, and whoever else Parker had in mind is going to depend on a lot of details that are currently unknown; once the excited press conferences die down and we start seeing financial details, we’ll know better who exactly got played here, and for what.

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D-Backs owners want sales tax kickback to fund stadium renovations, confused lawmakers think this is free money

access_time personNeil deMause

One giant sports subsidy proposal leaves, one enters: Two Arizona Republican legislators and a spokesperson for Gov. Katie Hobbs all say that Diamondbacks representatives have approached them about kicking back city, state, and county sales tax receipts from Chase Field to pay for future renovations of the stadium. And state representative Justin Wilmeth says that’s just fine by him, because:

“I have no problem with that. If you don’t want to go to a DBacks game, then you’re not going to pay for it.”

Nooooooooo. No, no, no, no, no. That is not how taxes work at all. Fans at Diamondbacks games will be charged exactly the same amount in taxes whether local government hands it over to D-Backs owner Ken Kendrick or keeps it to spend on things that the 7,431,343 Arizonas not named Ken Kendrick need; the only difference is in where the money goes. Pretending that adding up how much money is collected in sales taxes and writing a check for that amount is “fans paying for the stadium” is pure Casino Nightism, and should be responded to by taxpayers hastily gathering up their money and glaring at Felix in horror.

As for how much money Kendrick wants, nobody’s saying:

It was unclear what portion of the 5.6% state sales tax was proposed to be placed in a fund for the team, how much money was projected to be collected, or how long the redevelopment fund would be active.

We can calculate, or at least guesstimate, the most that could be provided to Kendrick this way, though. The combined Phoenix sales tax rate is 8.6%. The Diamondbacks have an estimated $314 million a year in revenue; Forbes no longer breaks that out by type of revenue, but back when Financial World did, venue revenues were typically about 10-20% of overall revenues. That means kicking back sales tax receipts from sales of stuff at D-Backs games could provide $30-60 million a year in funding, enough to easily pay off, say, a $500 million renovation. [CORRECTION: Aaaugh, I skipped a step in the math! Taking 10-20% of $314 million a year in revenue and applying the 8.6% tax rate is, as reader Brad correctly points out below, a total of $2.7 million to $5.6 million a year, which is only enough to pay off about $40 million to $80 million in renovation costs. I sincerely regret the error.]

None of this has gotten as far as legislation yet, and we also still don’t know if D-Backs execs are working on other public funding sources as well. It looks like Kendrick and Co. are trying to take advantage of Arizona’s new super-conservative state legislative leadership to finally land the stadium money they’ve been angling for for years; yes, some conservatives oppose tax kickbacks for sports teams because it’s public spending, but both Kendrick and his wife have worked to fund local Republican campaigns, and from the sound of things legislators are looking to return the favor, with public tax dollars.

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Sixers abandon Chinatown arena plan, pivot to sharing South Philly venue with Flyers

access_time personNeil deMause

This was not on anybody’s bingo card: Officials with the Philadelphia 76ers revealed to Philadelphia city council members yesterday that they were turning their back on the planned arena adjacent to the city’s Chinatown that they had spent the last four years getting approved. Instead, the Sixers will be throwing in with their hated landlords, the Flyers-owning Comcast, on something at the teams’ current South Philly site, though what exactly and when remains a little unclear this morning:

After the Sixers announced their desire to leave South Philadelphia, Comcast Spectacor began aggressively courting them to stay in the stadium district. As part of their campaign, they revealed an ambitious and sprawling proposal for a $2.5 billion complete redevelopment of the area that would add thousands of apartments, restaurants, and more entertainment options.

And, with an “eventually” that is doing a lot of work:

Ryan Boyer, president of the Philadelphia Building & Construction Trades Council, told NBC10’s Lauren Mayk that instead, the team plans to demolish Wells Fargo Center and will eventually build a new arena in South Philadelphia for the Sixers and Flyers.

If the plan is for one combined arena in South Philly, this could end up a win-win all around: Philly taxpayers get out of the $96 million to 273 million in property tax breaks the city was planning to give Sixers owners Josh Harris and David Adelman for their new Market East arena, Chinatown residents escape the threat of arena-related redevelopment displacing part of their neighborhood, and the Sixers owners, Comcast, and the city as a whole escapes the likelihood of two competing arenas eventually driving one to shut down from lack of business. (Former Philly mayoral candidate and local power broker Sam Katz had previously said a second competing arena was “never privately financeable,” though it’s worth noting he was consulting for Comcast when he said that.) Major emphasis on “could,” though: One unnamed councilmember told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the Sixers still plan to move ahead with “some of” the Market East development, so there Harris and Adelman could yet end up having his tax breaks and eating them too. And when Comcast first announced plans for that arena district last March, the company hedged on whether it would require public money, which should have everyone on the lookout for an additional city funding ask.

For the moment, though, the only clear loser here is Comcast, which is looking at (maybe) having to demolish and replace an arena that it just spent $300 million on renovating, plus (definitely) going halfsies with its former tenants on ownership in order to keep them from setting up their own shingle. The obvious question is whether Harris and Adelman planned this all along: Was the entire Chinatown arena plan just for leverage to get Comcast to agree to new terms in South Philly? Did they fully intend to move, but were lured back by a sweeter offer from the Flyers owners? Or, as is so often the case, did they push ahead with new arena plans not knowing or caring how it would work out, but figuring that having another option in their pocket could only be to their benefit?

Whichever way, Philadelphia city officials who spent the last four years working with the Sixers owners on what turned out to be just a stalking horse are feeling played, because they were. At-large councilmember Jimmy Harrity has been especially vocal, telling the Inquirer that “I’m so livid right now I don’t even know what to do” and “I feel as though I was used as a pawn”; he told NBC Philadelphia, meanwhile, that “I feel completely bamboozled” and that he’s upset that city schools won’t get the proceeds from new taxes that the arena would bring — which doesn’t make any sense since the tax breaks the Sixers arena would have gotten were going to come out of the schools budget, but cut the man some slack, he’s bamboozled.

Chinatown activists, meanwhile, are ecstatic, saying in a statement that “the nightmare of a Center City Sixers arena will not haunt our city any more” and thanking citizens and elected officials who opposed the deal. In the end, though, it seems like public opposition to the plan was less important than corporate bigfooting — as we saw, for example, when Madison Square Garden’s owners killed the plan for a Manhattan New York Jets stadium, sometimes when elephants fight, the grass ends up being spared.

There are reports that Mayor Cherelle Parker plans to hold a press conference today at 11 am to address the unfolding situation, which hopefully will at least have better production values than her last one. For now, it looks like Philadelphia may have dodged a bullet, but let’s hold off on that assessment until the shooting stops.

 

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