Author: Neil deMause

Friday roundup: Rays stadium demands include federal disaster relief money, $10/year rent while keeping all revenues

access_time personNeil deMause

On top of everything else this week, the Tampa Bay Rays management dropped their draft memorandum of understanding for a Tampa stadium deal, which sheds a little more light on what precisely they’re asking for in terms of public money. I’ve only had a chance to give it a quick read, but so has Noah Pransky of Shadow of the Stadium, so maybe combined we can hit the biggest takeaways:

  • This is just the Rays’ proposed MOU; county officials haven’t reviewed it yet.
  • Rays owner Patrick Zalupski wants it finalized by June 1, so that a stadium can be open by 2029 — probably an impossible timetable, but if it works to create a two-minute warning, sure, why not?
  • The land under the stadium itself, currently owned by the state, will be shifted to the county’s possession — so all of that previously reported between $1.1 billion and $2.5 billion in free land and property tax breaks is still in play.
  • The Rays will lease (or maybe “license”) the stadium for 35 years, for a rent of $10 a year. (No, that’s not a typo: not $10 million, $10.)
  • The stadium itself will cost at least $2.3 billion, with $251 million coming from the city of Tampa (source TBD unless I missed it) and $750 million from Hillsborough County, which will include hotel tax (TDT) money, sales tax surcharge (CIT) money, revenue from an already existing TIF district (Drew Park) around the site, and possibly federal disaster recovery block grant funds. that, notes Pransky, are “generally earmarked to rebuild housing & infrastructure that support low-to-moderate income populations.”
  • Any excess public revenue from all those tax streams will go into a future maintenance fund, so the actual amount of county funding could be much higher, a la the Atlanta Falcons‘ infamous “waterfall fund.”
  • “The Rays Stadium Entity intends to seek additional Public Funding from other available public funding sources,” so the total public subsidy could be even more much higher.
  • The Rays will impose a ticket surcharge, but that money will pay off the team’s portion of costs, not the public’s, so no help there.
  • Likewise, the “Rays Stadium Entity will retain all revenue generated pursuant to the Lease, including but not limited to revenue associated with tickets, parking, suites, signage, advertising, promotional inventory, sponsorships, concessions, merchandise, broadcasting rights, royalties, licensing fees, concession fees and other sources described in the Lease.” So the city and county will get bupkis in stadium revenues to help pay off their share, not even naming rights on a county-owned building.
  • This is all just an MOU for the stadium itself; the surrounding development appears to be waiting for a later date, so no more details on when that would be built, how much it would cost, how much in property tax breaks it would be receiving, or how on earth it could be “100 percent privately financed” but with “tax dollars from the district used to eventually pay off the tab.“

So we’re at a minimum of $2.1 billion in public costs for the entire project, and a maximum of who the hell knows, but numbers like $4 billion or even higher are certainly not out of the realm of possibility. There are certain to be lots of questions from Hillsborough County Commissioners, especially on that CIT sales tax surcharge that voters were promised wouldn’t be used for stadiums (and which residents currently oppose using for a Rays stadium) — in the MOU it’s earmarked for “on-site horizontal infrastructure,” which could mean things like roads and sewers but also building foundations. In fact, County Commissioner Joshua Wostal, who is emerging as one of the louder critics of the deal, has already called attention to a clause saying if the city and county can’t come up with the funds in the MOU, they’ll need to “use best efforts to endeavor to secure alternative financing,” something Wostal said seems to be a “poison pill” intended to “force the commissioners to vote no in what seems to be an intentional killing of the deal.” Or maybe they just hope commissioners will agree to anything, it’s happened before!

More on all that next week, surely. In the meantime, here’s the rest of this week’s news:

Share this post:

KC mayor readies bill to give Royals $600m plus public park for downtown stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

Kansas City officials are set to introduce a bill this afternoon to fund a new downtown stadium for the Royals, and while we don’t have the actual bill language, we do have a Kansas City Star report on whatever details sources close to the deal felt it was in their interest to leak, this oughta be good:

The plan is built around a specific location: Washington Square Park.

This is likely to be controversial, as Washington Square Park is a public park, and is also not really big enough to fit a modern stadium on, let alone the ballpark district Royals owner John Sherman is hoping for.

Kansas City would contribute roughly $600 million of the project, according to a copy of the proposal obtained by The Star.

So … $600 million in cash? Would the Royals pay anything for the public land they’d be using? Would they pay property taxes? Rent? A cut of stadium revenues? You’ve read the proposal (or at least a copy of it, what does that even mean in this era of digital documents?), K.C. Star, tell us the details!

Mayor Quinton Lucas is expected to unveil the plan as an ordinance during Thursday afternoon’s City Council meeting at City Hall, he confirmed to The Star. The ordinance authorizes City Manager Mario Vasquez to negotiate and execute a 30-year term sheet, lease, and development agreement with the team to build the new stadium.

This implies that the Kansas City council could be asked to pass the $600 million in public funding before the details of lease and development agreement are worked out, which would be … bad? I’m going with bad.

The planned reveal marks a key step in the drawn-out fight over the Royals, potentially the first domino in a process that, after years of twists and turns, could suddenly roll quickly.

DOMINOES DON’T ROLL

It’s not yet clear whether the Royals will jump at the deal, though Lucas said the proposal is the result of “hours and hours of extensive discussion” with the Royals.

So the ordinance would be passed before the Royals agreed to it? That also sounds bad!

Lucas told The Star that the proposal would also require a vote on Tuesday from Kansas City’s Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners in order to use the park. That board would continue to be the owner of the property, though operations “continues to be some level of discussions,” Lucas said.

Okay, that implies that the Royals would be paying neither for the land nor property taxes, though it’s certainly possible to roll those elements into any deal even on city-owned property, which would be the responsibility of Vasquez to figure out, sounds like.

That process would notably attempt to side-step a public vote on the stadium two years after Jackson County voters soundly defeated an April 2024 proposal for a separate site downtown.

It’s unclear where the $600 million would come from if not from a source that would trigger a public vote, but we’ll see.

How will the stadium project be funded? The ordinance will be introduced just two days after Kansas City officials successfully convinced voters to renew the city’s 1% earnings tax for another five years, a critical vote that loomed over ongoing Royals talks.

Ah, and that tax would be—

Lucas said Tuesday night that revenue from the earnings tax would not be used to cover any stadium costs.

Never mind.

The city will pursue a public-private partnership, with its $600 million contribution earmarked for a project that includes the stadium and team offices, acquisition and demolition of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City building that the company has vacated and a neighboring service road. That portion of the project would be split — with 60% of the funds coming from public entities, such as Kansas City and Missouri, and 40% in private funding, sources said.

So $600 million public (including state money?), $400 million private, except that the stadium would actually cost $1.9 million, plus there’s the surrounding development, “the bulk” of which would be paid for by Sherman (not counting land and tax breaks, obviously). The known unknowns are stacking up fast.

Kansas City, according to the ordinance, intends to pay for its portion of the stadium using a constellation of funds, including bonds, city appropriations and Tax Increment Financing (TIF). The city plans to reimburse itself using proceeds from the bonds, but the ordinance does not include specifics about how that would play out.

BONDS ARE NOT A FUND! Also you can’t reimburse yourself from bonds, you make payments on bonds, they don’t pay you. Come on, guys!

At the state level, the stadium would rely on a sweeping funding package Missouri lawmakers approved last summer in an attempt to keep both the Royals and Chiefs inside state lines. The law allows Missouri to pay for up to 50% of a new stadium for the team, but it’s unclear how much money the state or Jackson County will actually contribute.

This is a breaking news story. Check back for further updates once it is completely broken.

Share this post:

Rays stadium votes pushed back to May, as questions grow about sales tax surcharge

access_time personNeil deMause

While it’s way too early to say that Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski’s plans for a new stadium on the current cite of Hillsborough College’s Dale Mabry Campus are in trouble, the approval process certainly doesn’t seem to be going as smoothly as he might have hoped. The latest news is that city and county votes on spending about $1.15 billion in tax money to help build the $2.3 billion stadium, initially proposed for April 1 and 2 and then for April 15 and 16, are now targeted for May 6 and 7, with a county “workshop” and a public hearing to be held first. And even main Hillsborough County Commission stadium proponent Ken Hagan says that those dates could be pushed back further:

“That’s not finalized, but that is our goal,” he said on WDAE, adding that he has told county staff “that every effort needs to be made to meet that timeline.”

“Time is of the essence,” Hagan said.

Part of the holdup is that there’s nothing yet to actually vote on: Zalupski, the city, and the county are still hashing out a term sheet that will determine who will pay for what, as well as presumably the Rays’ lease terms on the sprawling 130-acre development site. (The cost of providing rent- and property-tax-free land to the project has previously been estimated at between $1.1 billion and $2.5 billion, on top of the public’s share of construction costs.) But questions also remain about using a 0.5% sales tax surcharge called the Community Investment Tax to provide $437 million toward the stadium, given that the 2024 ballot measure that approved the tax hike required it to be used for “infrastructure for transportation and public works, public safety, public facilities, public utilities and public schools,” none of which exactly describes a privately controlled sports stadium. (The previous version of the CIT, passed by voters in 1996, specifically allowed for use on “a community stadium,” which ended up being the Buccaneers‘ new home.)

The CIT is also limited in a couple of ways in how much money it can raise, as Tampa Bay Times columnist John Hill noted yesterday: It only runs for 15 years, and it is capped at committing 70% of future revenues to paying off any bonds. That’s not going to hamstring any stadium spending by itself — the tax brings in around $200 million a year, way more than enough to pay off $437 million in bonds — but it does leave Zalupski angling for a decent-sized cut of a pool of money that also has to pay for roads, bridges, sidewalks, fire services, sewers, and so on. The county previously identified $2.6 billion worth of those projects to be funded by the CIT, which (depending on interest rates and how fast tax receipts increase) could well eat up all the available funds, meaning diverting CIT dollars to a stadium would require cutting back on actual public infrastructure.

Given all this, waiting until early May — or even late May — to vote so that city and county officials can know what the hell they’re voting on is pretty reasonable due diligence. But in a world where team owners and their elected official friends often see taking time to talk about stadium funding before voting on it to be unacceptable, it’s noteworthy that the Tampa city council and Hillsborough County Commission seem to be eager to take their time. Next week’s public workshop and hearing will be interesting not just to see what the Rays reveal about their stadium dreams, but to find what sort of questions councilmembers and commissioners ask, and what those say about their willingness to rubber-stamp what would be one of the biggest sports project subsidies in history.

Share this post:

And the winner for dumbest stadium-related op-ed of 2026 is…

access_time personNeil deMause

I really didn’t want to dignify this op-ed by Hillsborough County Commissioner Chris Boles arguing that it’s too soon to “declare this [Tampa Bay Rays] deal a home run or a strikeout” with a response, especially given that J.C. Bradbury already provided the perfect one. But taking as a given that this is a dumb opinion piece designed mostly to ward off criticism of a massive public expense for a private stadium by saying, “What if it isn’t, maybe?”, let’s focus on just one section of the word salad:

We live in an era of “hot takes”, where being first to complain is often valued more than being right. But a multi-billion-dollar redevelopment project that could redefine Drew Park and the Dale Mabry Sports Corridor for the next half-century deserves more than a knee-jerk reaction. Let your elected officials and financial analysts do their due diligence, but demand that it be rigorous, transparent and grounded.

Yes, absolutely, let’s demand a rigorous, transparent, and grounded analysis of the full costs of the proposed Rays deal! Perhaps by a property tax expert who is skilled in estimating the future cost of handing over public land and tax breaks, because he used to work for a city government doing just that, and later wrote a whole book about it. And why look, if it isn’t Geoffrey Propheter, who ran the numbers more than two months ago and found that the public costs of land and tax breaks for the Rays project would be between $1.1 billion and $2.5 billion, on top of the $1.15 billion in cash Hillsborough County would be handing over. Boles would like to suggest that the economic benefits of the project could make up for that — he warns against ignoring “the ‘waterfall’ of revenue streams that can, if properly structured, insulate taxpayers from long-term risk” — but coming up with enough money to cover between $2.25 billion and $3.65 billion in public costs would require multiple Niagaras worth of new revenues, something no stadium-anchored mixed-use project in history has ever generated, no matter how properly structured.

And even Boles seems to have recognized that writing an entire op-ed around the idea of “What is money, really?” wasn’t going to go very far, because he’s padded it out with an absolute fusillade of baseball metaphors, each one making less sense than the next:

  • “The crack of the bat is usually a sound of pure optimism, but in the case of the Tampa Bay Rays’ stadium deal, it has triggered a frantic scramble in the bleachers.”
  • “Jumping to conclusions before the final details are inked is a classic ‘foul ball,’ and this commissioner would encourage everyone to return to the dugout”
  • “In this case, the devil is most certainly in the details, and we should all head back to the dugout because, in the end, we are all on the same team.”
  • “Until the final box score is in, let’s keep our eyes on the ball and wait for the full data set to cross the plate.”

I am, frankly, in awe. I can’t wait for more numbers to come in, to see if Boles takes a swing at them and launches them into the bleachers to trigger a frantic — sorry, what’s that you say, the city and county could end up voting on this deal next week? Maybe it’s actually time to get out of the dugout, or Hillsborough County could end up looking at strike three without ever getting into the batter’s box.

Share this post:

Bears to Illinois (via ESPN): Give us $2B so we don’t have to move to Indiana

access_time personNeil deMause

ESPN football writer Adam Schefter, who loves his unnamed NFL sources, was back at it yesterday with this tweet about the Chicago Bears and their stadium situation:

None of this really needed to be cited to NFL insiders, since Bears exec Kevin Warren already said basically the same thing last week. (Though it did get Schefter’s name in the national media a lot as a “senior NFL Insider,” if that floats his boat.) What does any of it actually mean, though, if anything?

Most sports team move threats, historically, are bluffs. That’s not because team owners are pathological liars — not all of them, anyway — but because threats are so easy to levy, there’s virtually no cost to them: If you hint that your team is going to move without a new stadium, and then come back the next year and repeat the exact same threat, it’s not like anybody’s going to call you on it. And better yet, if you can get local elected officials to issue relocation warnings by proxy, no one can even connect you with the threat in the first place.

In the Bears case, all this “Illinois is on the clock or else we’ll move the team to Indiana” should make one thing eminently clear: Bears owner George McCaskey would rather not move his team to Indiana. If he did, he’d already have accepted that state’s $4 billion-ish stadium subsidy offer, because there’s no way Illinois is ever going to match it. If Bears leadership is still dangling the hope of reconciliation before the Illinois legislature, it can only because he is hoping state officials will enrich their offer for an Arlington Heights stadium, and he can stay in his preferred state while getting Illinois taxpayers to cover part of his new stadium bill.

(Another thought: It’s possible that part of the message NFL officials mean to send via Schefter is that a new stadium in Chicago is 100% off the table — even if Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson wants to insist otherwise — and so Chicago-area legislators should get over their upset at the Bears leaving the city proper and rally around legislation to at least keep the team in the state.)

How much money will Illinois have to come up with to turn McCaskey’s head? That’s unknown: He clearly wants the state to pass the “megaprojects” bill that could give him up to $2 billion in property tax breaks; it remains to be seen whether he’ll also hold out for the $855 million in infrastructure spending that Bears management previously floated. If McCaskey doesn’t get what he wants by the time the Illinois legislature adjourns in May, he’ll have to decide whether to take Indiana’s offer or send Warren to pull a David Samson and go back with one more “this time, we’re really moving if you do give us what you want” threat. Playing chicken is hard — though when the choice is between which multibillion-dollar check to accept, maybe not all that hard.

Share this post:

Commanders try to hide ginormous stadium parking garages by drawing them as shorter and translucent

access_time personNeil deMause

What to do when your stadium plan includes two ginormous ugly parking garages, and you don’t want anyone to notice this fact before approving $6.6 billion in subsidies for it? If you’re Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris, you simply direct your rendering artists to make the garages translucent:

What caught fans’ eye was that the parking deck nearest to the Anacostia River — but poking into the stadium view — looked translucent in the concept sketches (see below), masking its real-world impact.

[National Capital Planning Commission] Commissioners requested fuller renderings of that. “I have rarely, if ever, seen a beautiful parking facility,” said NCPC chair Will Scharf.

We spend so much time LOLing at the dumbness of vaportecture renderings here that it’s easy to forget that they serve a purpose: to show the planned project in the best possible light so those with the checkbooks will ooh and aah over it. And often that light is literal, as with the Commanders stadium, which in the above images glows with a spooky inner luminescence while the rest of D.C. is cast into darkness, except for the Capitol dome and Washington Monument, which are a blazing white but also don’t appear to be drawn to scale anyway, given that in reality the Capitol is over half as tall as the monument, as well as significantly closer. The boldest choice, though, is certainly that translucent parking garage, which indeed makes the stadium look better but also raises immediate questions like “Why do the garages look so short if they’re actually going to be two-thirds the height of the stadium?’ and “What translucent construction material will they use?” and “Will the garage be limited to translucent fans driving translucent cars?”

The National Capital Planning Commission still signed off on the Commanders stadium designs, but only because the garages are being developed separately and will be submitted to the commission at a later date. At least one commissioner, Tammy Stidham, a National Park Service lands and planning director, was puzzled by this, asking: “Help me understand why we’re not seeing the development of those [garages] with the stadium package. They don’t have independent utility. They would not be there if you were not building a stadium.”

In fact, the garages wouldn’t be there if Harris weren’t building a huge mixed-use development around a stadium — without that, he could just leave open-air lots like RFK Stadium used on the site, but then he would be missing out on the billions in tax and land breaks that he’s set to receive for the rest of the development. So the garages are pretty key, and “make them shorter and more spread out” doesn’t work if the rest of the land is to be used for other Harris-enriching activities. One local resident suggested instead scaling back on parking and increasing the capacity of the local Metro station or adding a new one, neither of which are bad ideas but both of which would add tremendous public costs to what’s already set to be the biggest public cost ever for a privately used sports stadium. Many, many questions that should be answered before the money is signed off on … well, at least before the stadiums are approved … hrm. Before the sun burns out, is that too much to ask?

Share this post:

Friday roundup: Has Cleveland’s mayor actually found a way to make Guardians and Cavs owners help pay for own repair costs?

access_time personNeil deMause

No time for a lengthy roundup intro today, I’m too busy catching up with the latest problems resulting from sending Microsoft Outlook into space. Plenty of juicy bullet points, though, you can dig into those right now:

  • Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb is proposing establishing sales tax surcharge of up to 5% in and around the Guardians‘ stadium and Cavaliers‘ arena to help fund what could be $400 million in ongoing repairs and upgrades at the venues, expenses the city’s sports authority is required to cover under the teams’ leases but which it has no money for. Cleveland.com describes this as “Cavs and Guardians fans footing the bill,” but actually a lot of this could fall on the team owners, as fans are unlikely to put up with higher prices on tickets (or, to a somewhat lesser degree, hot dogs or souvenirs) just because taxes went up. One catch: Any “New Community Authority” would require any property owners to agree to join and be subject to the tax; the stadium and arena are owned by the sports authority, though, so it’s at least possible Bibb could force this on the teams over their objections. Lots of team prepare for such backdoor funding attempts by inserting “no ticket tax surcharge” clauses into their leases — I’m not spotting any in the Cavs and Guardians leases on an initial look, but feel free to search for yourselves.
  • NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell turned up the heat on the Chicago Bears stadium situation on Tuesday, declaring: “They need to find a solution for a stadium. … I think it’s really important that they come to a resolution on this relatively soon. … This is an important time to get this resolved sooner rather than later.” Okay, that’s less “heat” than “typical commissioner whingeing,” no reason to report on this as upping the pressure in any real oh come on, NBC Chicago.
  • Predatory lending tycoon Tom Dundon has been approved as the new owner of the Portland Trail Blazers, and he was not pleased at all that one of the first questions he got was why he hasn’t committed any of his own money toward an arena renovation that the team is seeking $600 million in public subsidies for. “No one’s ever told me I didn’t have skin in the game before,” snapped Dundon. “We don’t know each other very well. So, look, we’re going to negotiate and do a market deal.” Easy for him to say since he’s already landed the first $365 million in state funding, but at least maybe this will give local legislators a bit more backbone as they negotiating the remaining $235 million — especially since minority owner and venture capital succubus Sheel Tyle declared, “I don’t want people to be concerned or scared. We are committed to Portland, 100 percent. Full stop.” Somebody please alert Ron Wyden.
  • The Maryland legislature has killed legislation for the 2026 session to spend $217 million in public money on a stadium to host new Baltimore men’s and women’s soccer teams, partly because there’s community opposition to building it atop a public golf course that was the site of some of the first integration of the city’s public facilities. “When we introduced the legislation, the purpose was not to get it funded,” bill sponsor state Sen. Antonio Hayes told the Baltimore Banner, “the purpose was to keep the conversation going” — so you can rest assured we’ll hear about this again in the 2027 session.
  • Denver Broncos owner Greg Penner says he won’t be able to meet an “ambitious” 2031 target date for opening a new stadium without help from “a lot of key partners at the city level [and] at state level.” In particular, Penner still needs to finish acquiring land for the stadium — he said if the new stadium isn’t ready by 2031 he could just extend his lease at the old one, so it’s not clear why anyone would feel pressured by this deadline other than him, but this is just how team owners roll.
  • The Missouri legislature is considering cutting $2 million from its stadium maintenance budget and redirecting it to a fire department program in retaliation for the Kansas City Chiefs announcing they’ll move to Kansas in 2031 — though in the meantime, it would also reduce maintenance spending on the Royals stadium as well, assuming the Royals stick around.
  • World Cup participant countries typically get tax exemptions during their teams’ time spent in the host nation, but because Trump administration is only extending that courtesy to nations that have signed specific double-taxation agreements with the U.S., “It’s going to cost most non-European countries a lot of money to go to the World Cup” this summer, says tax consultant Oriana Morrison. And that’s before visiting fans pony up for the inflated cost of train tickets to the games in Massachusetts. Props to both the federal and local governments for finding ways to claw back some of the costs of hosting the World Cup, I guess, though taking it from the pockets of Haitians seems just slightly cruel and unusual.
  • Inglewood is spending $8.5 million to “revitalize” its downtown so that it’s more lively in advance of the 2027 Super Bowl and 2028 Summer Olympics, hey wait, weren’t Super Bowls and Olympics supposed to revitalize their surroundings? U.S. news media, we await your corrections.
Share this post:

Buccaneers owners say if Rays are set to get public stadium money, it’s time they should too

access_time personNeil deMause

The Hillsborough County Commission voted yesterday to ask the county attorney whether paying almost half a billion dollars toward a Tampa Bay Rays stadium with a county sales tax that voters were promised wouldn’t be used for stadiums would be legal, and an answer is expected back by the commission’s next meeting on April 15. The commission also rejected a motion by Commissioner Joshua Wostal to release all internal documents on the proposed Rays project, instead voting to hold a public “workshop” once the details of a deal are finalized.

Meanwhile, though, Tampa area officials have another potential billion-dollar-plus fish to fry, as Buccaneers owners the Glazer family have decided this is a perfect time to remind the city and county that they would like a freshened-up stadium too, and would like public dollars to make it so:

[Tampa] Sports Authority CEO Eric Hart said at a board meeting Tuesday that the Bucs requested a meeting to get started.

Board member Tony Muniz asked if Hart had a ballpark estimate of how much public funding the Bucs may be seeking, though he guessed it would be in the hundreds of millions.

“It’s a significant number on these stadiums,” Hart said. “What that number looks like, I don’t know.”

Hart then pointed to other teams like the Tennessee Titans and Buffalo Bills whose owners have gotten public money in excess of $1 billion for new stadiums, as well as the Jacksonville Jaguars, where owner Shad Khan is getting $775 million in taxpayer money toward $1.4 billion in renovations, as examples. “Look around the country and you can see what’s happening around in these arenas and the kind of money it’s taken to keep them state-of-the-art,” Hart said. “They’re significant, but they’re also big economic engines.” (Citation needed.)

There’s a deadline coming up of sorts for the Bucs, who must decide by the end of January 2027 whether to extend their lease for five more years beyond its current termination date of the end of the 2027 season. That’s really more pressure on the Glazers than on Tampa, since if they don’t extend their lease they’ll have nowhere to play in 2028 — it’s not like they’d be able to get a state-of-the-art stadium built elsewhere in a year and a half — but feel free to start the betting pool now for the date of the first article describing this as a looming deadline for Tampa area officials to “resolve the Bucs’ stadium issues.”

Tampa City Council chair and Sports Authority board member Alan Clendenin, at least, seemed to take the news of fresh Bucs stadium demands in stride:

“We’re talking about a baseball stadium and substantially more activation and enormous footprint of other economic development opportunities that didn’t exist,” Clendenin said. “And we actually have a team established in the Tampa Bay area, not one that’s threatening to leave.”

Clendenin said the sports authority sits in the “captain’s seat” and should maintain RayJay to keep it competitive. But he said the agency is not in the same position it was when it was first negotiating with the Glazers and the Bucs.

“You also don’t have to bend over and take it like the first deal,” he said to laughs Tuesday.

That’s promising in terms of at least one local elected seeming to have determined that the city has some leverage here, at least as much as any statement saying maybe this stadium deal will be better than a rape can be considered promising.

Anyway, this should all be a lesson that if you give public money to one local sports billionaire, the others will be quick to … I was going to say “me too,” but maybe in light of Clendenin’s metaphor that’s not the best.

Share this post:

Eagles owner says decision on where team plays won’t be made on “a geographical basis”

access_time personNeil deMause

When the Philadelphia Eagles broke ground on their new publicly funded stadium 25 years ago, team owner Jeffrey Lurie exulted, “For the first time in the 68-year history of the Philadelphia Eagles franchise, we will have our own stadium. No longer will we be a secondary tenant.” Having your own place loses its luster once the new car smell is gone, though, so of course Lurie has spent the last year or so pondering when it’ll be time to get a new one. And with his 30-year lease expiring after 2032, Lurie seems to have decided that that time is soon, and the best way to get a really shiny one with lots of other people money is to get a good old-fashioned move threat going:

Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said Wednesday in his annual news conference at the league meetings that he “would hope in the next year or two, we’ll have some more definitive approach to where we’re going.”

Where we’re going? Are you threatening to move the Eagles, Jeff?

“It’s a long process. When we researched Lincoln Financial Field, it probably took us… 2-3 years of exploratory research,” Lurie said. “Now, our exploratory research is very much on looking at stadiums around the world and domestically. Is there anything we can learn from Nashville and Buffalo? Is there anything we can learn from the renovations in Madrid and Barcelona? It’s really important. We want to maximize fan amenities and attract the best possible environment for Philadelphia. And to do that, you’ve really got to do the exploratory research. Don’t rush into it. This is a big decision. Where’s the team going to be?”

And what will be the basis of this decision, pray tell?

“Whatever’s best for the fans,” Lurie said. “We’re not really (going) on a geographical basis. It’s whatever’s best for the fans. I can’t tell you where (Cleveland’s new stadium) is, Barcelona is, I don’t know. It’s just, honestly, the bottom line is whatever is best for the fans.”

It’s just a little weird that Lurie keeps referencing F.C. Barcelona‘s renovation of one of the most famous soccer stadiums in the world, which is of course in Barcelona, but I guess geography isn’t everyone’s thing.

Lurie didn’t actually say whether he would move the Eagles out of Philadelphia proper — and he did mention that extending his current lease beyond 2032 is possible, so he’s not entirely in hardball threat mode. But it’s still hard to believe he didn’t at least intend to drop a move outside of Philly as a hint. And NJ.com picked right up on it, asserting that “moving to New Jersey or Delaware remains a possibility,” citing no sources at all.

It should be no surprise that Lurie at least wants to plant the idea of a possible move outside Philadelphia proper in local officials’ heads, especially after the Kansas City Chiefs and Chicago Bears owners’ stadium subsidy demands got shot down until they created interstate bidding wars — as did, closer to home, the Philadelphia 76ers‘ dalliance with New Jersey. If his next public statement is “Delaware? I haven’t even heard of that, is it a place? Do they like football there?” then we’ll know the game’s truly afoot.

Share this post:

Hillsborough official says Rays stadium will fail unless it uses tax money Hillsborough officials said wouldn’t be used for stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

The Hillsborough County Commission has a hearing today on the proposed Tampa Bay Rays stadium, and while this won’t be the final vote on the project — those are a couple of weeks away at least — it could involve one of the most important ones. That’s because one commissioner, Gwen Myers, is introducing a motion to ask the county attorney’s office if $467 million from the county’s 0.5% sales tax surcharge can be used toward the stadium, despite promises when it was passed that it would not be:

Voters approved extending the tax, which renews in December 2026 and runs into 2041, by a narrow margin after most of the current commissioners said it should be off-limits to new sports stadiums.

Commissioner Ken Hagan, who first introduced the tax as a potential funding source in February through a framework document prepared by his office, has said talks would fail without it.

“This agreement does not happen without the (tax),” he said. “It just doesn’t.”

(That’d be Ken Hagan, seen here in one of the totally impartial images on his reelection website.)

[Ed. note: It looks like Hagan actually made the “agreement does not happen without” the tax comment back in February, though the TB Times didn’t mention that in its report this week. Thanks to the Facebook commenter who pointed this out.)

At least three of the seven commission members — Myers, Joshua Wostal, and Chris Boles, all of whom argued in the run-up to the sales tax referendum that it couldn’t be used for stadiums — have raised questions about using Community Investment Tax money for the Rays, meaning this thing has a chance of passage if it can muster just one more vote. At that point, it would be up to the county attorney to determine not so much whether the county commissioners can call a backsies — it doesn’t appear from here like their comments during the 2024 ballot measure were legally binding — as whether the referendum language that the money could be used to “fund infrastructure for transportation and public works, public safety, public facilities, public utilities and public schools” would allow for a publicly owned, but privately used, baseball stadium.

Over on the Tampa city side, meanwhile, city council chair Alan Clendenin says there are still a pile of t’s to be crossed and i’s to be dotted in the rest of the deal as well:

Clendenin, who is a member of the Tampa Sports Authority, said at the agency’s meeting Tuesday that “it’s not even put to pencil at this point.” The city and county have forecast possible votes on an agreement April 15 and 16, respectively.

“It’s still all in flux. They’re still negotiating everything,” Clendenin said. “There’s still some very consequential items to be resolved.”

Clendenin didn’t go into detail about everything that’s still up in the air, but did say “we’re probably 80% there.” One item the council is still waiting on is an economic impact analysis due later this week from AECOM, an engineering consultant that has a pretty bad record on projecting economic impact — including being asked to determine the annual impact of a Buffalo Bills stadium and just adding up all the money spent on Bills games currently, even though none of that would be new if the team moved across the street, and not all of it would be lost if the team moved away and locals spent their entertainment dollars on something else. But the council is going to at least wait for their clown document before voting to fund a stadium, so yay due diligence or something?

Clendenin also said the city is waiting to see if the state legislature will approve state money for transportation work around the stadium. And both the subhead and the photo caption on Colleen Wright’s story in the Tampa Bay Times say that there are questions whether an upcoming vote on a memorandum of understanding with the team would be legally binding or not, though it looks like this information was cut from the story itself, hey, Tampa Bay Times, you know it doesn’t cost more to run more words on the internet, right?

Add it all up, and Rays owner Patrick Zalupski still has a bunch more hurdles to get past before he can tap $2.25 billion in public subsidies for a new $2.3 billion stadium on the site of a public community college campus. Which, put that way, he absolutely should have to, but “elected officials want to think for a minute before approving billions of dollars for billionaire” is genuine news these days, sorry for the universe we live in.

Share this post: