Author: Neil deMause

Friday roundup: Rays may have bot-lobbied for stadium funds, OR gov says not rubber-stamping Blazers cash is “playing politics”

access_time personNeil deMause

We’ve run off the end of April, and — spoiler alert — neither the Chicago Bears nor Tampa Bay Rays stadium situations have yet been resolved as team owners had hoped. Sportswriters often like to portray a slow approval process as dysfunction, but it can equally well be the opposite: Taking your time and driving a hard bargain are good negotiating tools, and when billions of dollars in tax money are at stake, rushing to get something approved just because the local billionaire is impatient is a great way to end up with unexpected costs. It’s still very much unknown whether residents of Illinois and Florida will end up with better stadium deals as a result of legislators taking their time, but it’s hard to imagine it’ll end up being any worse than if they’d just signed off on whatever they were presented with without reading it.

Anyway, lots of news did happen this week, even in Tampa Bay and Chicago, so let’s get to it:

  • Hillsborough County Commissioner Joshua Wostal claims that somebody sent more than 2,000 bot-written emails from a single IP address in Los Angeles urging county commissioners to hurry up and approve the Rays’ stadium deal. Wostal says he doesn’t want to move forward with any stadium plan until the Rays owners provide documentation of where they’ll get the money to finance their part of the deal, which would include more than $1 billion for the stadium plus possibly billions more for surrounding development (some of which would be recouped by tax and land breaks), though the team hasn’t actually committed to what exactly it will build; a Rays statement said only that it would provide financing details “at the appropriate time as is standard with similar public-private partnerships,” which must be ownerese for “maybe after we’ve cashed your check.”
  • Bears executives held a meeting with NFL officials this week, in which everyone agreed that the best stadium options are either in Arlington Heights or Indiana. The assembled dignitaries then warned Illinois legislators that if a stadium bill to the Bears owners’ liking isn’t approved ASAP, the team and league could meet again.
  • Count Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek among the hurry-up-and-rubber-stampers: After signing a bill to provide $365 million in state money for Portland Trail Blazers renovations, she chided city and county officials for not swiftly approving their own $235 million, saying, “This is not a time to play politics. This is a time to get it done.” (“Playing politics,” in this case, includes things like not wanting to sign a nondisclosure agreement before entering into arena funding talks.)
  • The Cleveland Browns held a groundbreaking for their new Brook Park stadium, even as legal questions remain about the state unclaimed funds money that is supposed to pay $600 million toward the project. Everyone involved is still moving full steam ahead, though: Browns owner Jimmy Haslam said that “we’re not attorneys, OK?” but after talking to actual attorneys “we do think it’ll be resolved,” while Gov. Mike DeWine reassured everyone that if this public funding plan fails, the state could always go back to his plan to raise sports gambling taxes and give the proceeds to sports teams that everyone hated. No one is saying exactly what will happen if the state — and the city of Brook Park, which is still negotiating its own $245 million in stadium spending — can’t come up with the money after stadium construction is already underway, probably because nobody wants to admit that “let the Haslams figure out how to find the rest of the money” is still an option for fear of risking the benefits of moving the Browns from Ohio to Ohio.
  • But if (greater) Cleveland doesn’t get a new stadium, how will it host a Super Bowl? Don’t worry, it probably won’t get one anyway unless it builds more hotels, says NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who pointedly did not mention this during the runup to the stadium funding vote.
  • MLS has a prospective Las Vegas bidder for the Vancouver Whitecaps: a group led by Grant Gustavson, the 30-year-old son of Kentucky’s wealthiest billionaire. This doesn’t necessarily mean the Whitecaps will move if they don’t get a new arena deal in Vancouver — Vegas doesn’t have a soccer arena at all (though Gustavson said he’s ready to “privately finance” one, without providing details) and is getting dangerously close to a market glut of sports teams — but it’ll likely light a fire under officials in British Columbia, who already started scrambling the jets once the league announced its Vegas move threat earlier this week.
  • Team owner insists he needs state money for a new stadium, state says no you can’t have any, team owner finds an existing stadium to play in. Happy endings all around in the CT United F.C. story, unless you’re team owner Andre Swanston, who now has to settle for just selling tickets to watch soccer matches instead of getting $127 million in state aid to help boost his team’s bottom line.
  • Would this Comiskey Park–inspired stadium design be a better place for Chicago White Sox fans to watch a game? Undoubtedly, since it would bring back that ballpark’s close-to-the-action upper deck. Would it make more money for the White Sox owners? Probably not, because it would be missing the wall of luxury suites that are to blame for the current stadium’s unloved distant upper deck: Extra-nosebleedy cheap seats in modern stadiums are a feature, not a bug. Maybe work on reducing soaring income inequality that has created such a soaring market for high-priced tickets, and then we can get back to stadium design that actually works for everyone.
  • How did the economic impact go from the NFL Draft that Pittsburgh canceled school for? Not so hot, according to one restaurant worker who fought through draft-related bus rerouting only to have her hours cut because fewer customers than usual showed up. (Economists are shocked, shocked!) The city tourism agency responded with a statement that really the NFL Draft was less about bringing in new spending than “positioning Pittsburgh as a modern, globally relevant city well beyond the weekend.”
  • In related news, New Jersey transit officials are recommending that state residents work from home during World Cup matches to avoid the transit nightmare caused by rerouting trains to take fans to matches since they won’t be allowed to drive there. This could be good news for New Jersey restaurants, maybe, unless everyone just makes their own lunches those days, see why economic impact of sporting events is harder to calculate than just adding up all the fans and declaring “> ? > profit”?
  • No, the Athletics aren’t going to change their name to the “Las Vegas Black Fire” just because they listed that as a location in a job listing, it’s just the name of a co-working space in Vegas. Thanks to SF Gate for clearing this up, maybe everyone should have done a little more research before firing up the AI jersey designs.
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Illinois senate to “take time” on Bears stadium tax break bill, but will that save taxpayers money or cost them more?

access_time personNeil deMause

Gov. JB Pritzker’s hurry-up offense notwithstanding, Illinois state senate leaders appear to be in no rush to act on the megaprojects tax break bill that Chicago Bears execs say they need by the end of May in order not to follow through on threats to move to Indiana. Even the bill’s lead senate sponsor, Bill Cunningham, said yesterday that “we’re going to take our time with this” and “getting it right is more important than getting it done quickly.” Cunningham didn’t specify what “getting it right” would look like, but he did say he’ll look at the 9% amusement tax surcharge that Bears officials say needs to be removed before they’ll accept an Arlington Heights stadium plan.

A bit about that amusement tax: When I first reported on it Monday, I assumed that it would be a tax on tickets to stadium events, something I noted that economists say would “almost entirely end up coming out of team owners’ pockets.” Further reporting, however, indicates that it would actually be a sales tax surcharge on restaurants, bars, and venues in the surrounding stadium district, not on anything at the stadium itself. (The bill itself describes a “visitor investment surcharge upon all admission and charges from transactions at places of business located within the STAR bond district,” which is actually a different thing from a megaprojects district, but Bears execs are still acting like it would apply to them.)

Why does it matter which particular fan spending gets taxed? As economist J.C. Bradbury explains in his upcoming book on sports subsidy deals “This One Will Be Different,” taxing tickets is effectively the same as raising ticket prices, something that largely ends up coming out of team owners’ pockets because it prevents them from keeping as much of the proceeds for themselves as they would otherwise. Taxing sales in the surrounding area, though, captures lots of spending that may have nothing to do with the stadium itself, and so risks siphoning off tax revenue that could otherwise go to pay for government services.

And at the risk of getting out over my economic skis — this part isn’t from Bradbury — there’s also a significant difference in the way ticket price setting works from how local sports bars choose what to charge for drinks. Ticket sales have virtually no marginal cost: If you sell an extra 10,000 seats, you don’t have to produce more football for those additional fans. (Though you may end up hiring a few more game-day ushers and concession workers.) This means that team owners already set prices at whatever will maximize their ticket revenue, and since the addition of a ticket tax won’t change that price point, they’ll have to eat the ticket tax in order to keep the overall price the same.

Sales of things like meals in a stadium district, meanwhile, do have marginal costs, since you have to pay for ingredients, chefs, servers, and so on. This makes the economic calculus different, since dining establishments might be willing to charge more in total to cover a tax surcharge, even if it means driving away some customers, to keep their margins intact. So unlike a ticket tax, a stadium district sales tax surcharge— though it’s still arguably better than siphoning off revenue from existing taxes, as in a tax increment district — is far less of a soak-the-owners measure.

Anyway, all this may be moot, as it looks like the senate may just strip the amusement tax provision. Cunningham even suggested that it could all be a sort of typo, and that it was really “intended for a downstate STAR bonds project” elsewhere in the bill — which would be a major oopsie by the state house if true, but legislators have done dumber things.

Bears leadership, meanwhile, has remained unspecific about exactly what it wants to see (and not see) in a bill, releasing a statement that said only that “additional amendments are necessary to make the Arlington Heights site feasible for our stadium project.” This almost certainly means removing the amusement tax, and likely adding in state infrastructure spending as well, something that could add close to $1 billion more to a potential $2 billion in “megaproject” property tax breaks. Plus it would make all development projects valued at more than $100 million eligible for tax breaks, potentially costing local Illinois governments billions more in the future. At least the senate is going to take its time figuring this out — though if “take our time” turns out to mostly mean figuring out how to strip any state house amendments that the Bears owners don’t like and adding in new ones that they do, it might not end up being such a good thing for Illinois taxpayers.

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Garber to Vancouver: Sell stadium land to Whitecaps for cheap or we’ll shoot this team, really this time

access_time personNeil deMause

Back in December, amid threats by MLS to move the Vancouver Whitecaps if they didn’t get a new stadium, the city of Vancouver agreed to a memorandum of understanding to open talks on the team owners building one in exchange for getting a cut-rate price on public land. Those talks must not be going well, because MLS owners have now gone and held a committee meeting on moving the Whitecaps, then leaked word about it to The Athletic:

A special committee of Major League Soccer owners met earlier this month to discuss and evaluate the future of the Vancouver Whitecaps, including the possibility of relocation, sources briefed on the conversations told The Athletic.

A move to Las Vegas was the chief option discussed at the meeting, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. MLS has had discussions with a group looking to bring a team to the market, the sources said.

This is slightly off-brand for MLS, which in recent years has largely focused on handing out expansion teams like candy: six new teams in the last six years, 12 in the last 12. (MLS commissioner Don Garber said in 2024 that the latest new team, San Diego F.C., would be “the end of expansion for a period of time until we’re ready to expand again” but then also said “we would strongly consider expanding beyond the 30 teams that we have now” if “there’s a good market for us to expand in and that market makes sense with the right owner and the right stadium plan,” so who the hell knows what if anything he really meant there.) And this, the Athletic reports, could represent a stumbling block to moving the Whitecaps, as MLS owners would want to get a cut of any sale price in lieu of an expansion fee — likely meaning a relocation fee on top of whatever the current Whitecaps owners would get, which would cut into how much cash they would take home from a sale.

Whether a move threat is realistic, though, is almost beside the point if you just want to use it to shake down an existing host city for stadium dollars, which appears to be goal #1 here. Whether it’ll work is unclear: Some panicked Whitecaps fans are already blaming NIMBYs and local government for the team’s presumed imminent demise, while others counter, “that’s not true at all, it’s mainly down to greed.” It’s still unclear how Vancouver elected officials will respond to the Las Vegas threat, not to mention whether MLS owners would actually pull the trigger on a move to an increasingly crowded small sports market if they don’t get what they want; stay tuned.

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Pritzker to Illinois: Rewrite stadium bill to give Bears owners what they want, forget what I said before about holding the line

access_time personNeil deMause

Elsewhere in arbitrary deadlines, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is suddenly all about meeting them now that Chicago Bears execs have threatened to move the team to Indiana. In response to team officials wanting even more concessions in the state megaprojects bill that could already give them $2 billion in tax breaks, the governor said Friday:

“I can tell you that there is a need for speed here. We need to move somewhat expeditiously. I realize the Senate has some to work to do and there will be amendments, no doubt about it,” Pritzker said.

Pritzker didn’t totally hold a gun to his own head and threaten to shoot: He also noted that there’s no way to be sure that the Bears would go ahead and move to Indiana just because they don’t get everything they want in an Illinois stadium subsidy bill. Though the governor then added, “Having said that, if there is not true progress that gets made, if it isn’t obvious to people that the Senate is moving in the right direction, I think that will make it challenging,” which is absolutely trying to light a fire under the state legislature to give the bad man what he wants or he may take your team away.

One of the main stumbling blocks is a 9% amusement tax added in the Illinois House version of the bill, which Bears officials are vehemently opposed to. As well you might think they would be: As covered here previously, ticket taxes almost entirely end up coming out of team owners’ pockets, so this would force Bears owner George McCaskey to cover a larger share of any stadium construction cost.*  Pritzker now thinks this would be a bad thing, or at least a thing that would make it “challenging” to get Bears officials to agree to a deal, despite insisting that “the Bears want to be in Illinois.” Remember when Pritzker was insisting that Illinois wouldn’t even consider helping build a new stadium until McCaskey first paid off the remaining debt on Soldier Field? He sure doesn’t want you to!

*CORRECTION: The entertainment tax is apparently a sales tax surcharge on the surrounding district, not the stadium itself, which would be far less of a hit to the Bears owners’ wallets; I’ll explain in greater detail in a later post. Sorry for the error, I was unable to find the legislation language and was going by unclear media reports.

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Rays execs to county: Vote on stadium now, figure out details later

access_time personNeil deMause

Tampa Bay Rays officials responded Friday to Hillsborough County leaders saying they won’t be able to meet team execs’ June 1 deadline for approving a stadium deal, and the message is: The clock is still ticking.

“We understand the government parties’ concern regarding the timeline for completing the project agreements,” the team’s memo read. “At the same time, maintaining momentum is essential to keeping the project on track to open for the 2029 season, which is critical for the success of the project in Tampa Bay.

“Accordingly, we would like to continue working together toward a May vote on the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding), with the shared goal of completing the definitive agreements as soon as reasonably possible thereafter. Based on in-depth discussions with potential ballpark contractors, we remain confident that the project schedule can be maintained.”

Voting on a stadium deal in May and “completing the definitive agreements” is a bold suggestion, since Hillsborough County and the city of Tampa would essentially be buying a pig in a poke. (Side note: Did you know that “pig in a poke” may come from the same metaphor as “let the cat out of the bag”? I did not until today!) If there’s one principle above all else in negotiating any kind of financial, it’s to never sign anything until everything in the contract is agreed on. Why are Rays officials in such a hurry, anyway?

In a letter to commissioners last week, Rays CEO Ken Babby described the deadline as an essential component that if not met, jeopardizes state funding that the deal is “economically infeasible” without.

Oh, right, they want to get this deal signed off on before Gov. Ron DeSantis leaves office at the end of the year. That would normally be seen as leverage the city and county could use to ask Rays owner Patrick Zalupski to lower his subsidy demands. Instead, Zalupski is doubling down by telling the county: You are running out of time to deliver this money.

There’s been no reply yet from county officials. Next on the negotiating agenda is a Tampa City Council workshop next Tuesday evening at the Tampa Convention Center (UPDATE: now at City Hall, or maybe old City Hall) to discuss its piece of the stadium plan, after which the standoff may well continue. It will then be Zalupski’s turn to escalate, but without any hostages to shoot or any Indiana to threaten to move to, he may have to choose between offering concessions and continuing his game of chicken and hoping city and county officials blink.

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Friday roundup: County tells Rays no stadium approval by June 1, Blazers and Wild get pushback on subsidy demands as well

access_time personNeil deMause

Welcome to any new readers who are joining us for the first time this week in the wake of all the news craziness about the Kansas City Royals and Chicago Bears stadium deals. It’s Friday, which means it’s time for a speed run through stadium and arena news items that were otherwise overlooked this week. But first, one city has seen developments in its stadium wrangle that deserve attention at a bit more length:

One of the standard ploys in the sports stadium demand playbook is what in Chapter 4 of Field of Schemes we called the “two-minute warning”: Setting a deadline, arbitrary if necessary, and using it to get elected officials scrambling to determine how to fund a new sports venue with public dollars without taking time to think about whether to do so. But playing chicken, obviously, comes with the risk that your opponent won’t blink first, and that’s what appears to be happening to Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski, who has been informed that Hillsborough County will not be meeting his June 1 deadline for signing off on a stadium deal that could total anywhere from $2 billion to a lot more in public costs:

That deadline, the team has said, is necessary not only for the ballpark to open in time for the 2029 Major League Baseball season, but for the deal to be feasible at all.

On Thursday, the county attorney’s office informed the team that meeting such a deadline is improbable, according to a memorandum obtained by the Tampa Bay Times.

A timeline, the memo reads, “cannot be reasonably considered” until all involved parties reach an agreement on the terms. After a preliminary agreement is reached, “it would likely take at least 60-90 days” to negotiate the deal’s development and funding obligations.

That’s perfectly reasonable, given that the county’s memorandum of understanding for the stadium still includes a lot of open questions and there is no MOU yet at all for the rest of the development that Zalupski says he wants to build atop what’s currently Hillsborough College’s Dale Mabry campus. But it also messes with Zalupski’s timetable — not just that he wants to open a new stadium by spring 2029 (probably overly optimistic anyway, given that stadiums take three years to build and he’d have to tear down part of the college campus before he could begin construction) but that he desperately wants to get the deal approved this legislative session, before his pal Ron DeSantis is term-limited out of the governor’s office at the end of 2026.

Tampa Bay Rays CEO Ken Babby has already warned the county that “we would have no choice but to evaluate alternatives” if the June 1 deadline isn’t met, but Zalupski’s options are limited there: He’s not likely to be able to negotiate and push through a stadium plan in another city (Orlando has a big sign! Greensboro exists!) by June 1, so he’s going to be left having to work out a deal without the hammer of having Florida’s governor in his corner.

One alternative would be for the Rays owner to walk back some of his demands in Tampa. Leading Rays stadium deal critic county commissioner Joshua Wostal has said he’d consider approving just $268 million in hotel tax money, saying, “Start acting like a serious bidder. The offer is out there.” Of course, $268 million is a whole hell of a lot less than the $1 billion in city and county money that Zalupski wants, but maybe he’d be happy to take his $1 billion or so in state-gifted tax-exempt land and run with it, and give up on shaking down Tampa and Hillsborough County quite so hard? The only way to find out is to ask, and kudos to Hillsborough County officials for seemingly understanding that it’s both their right and their responsibility to haggle, and not being bullied into rushing into a deal.

Anyway, sorry for the Tampa-specific digression, on to the bullet points now:

  • Also in no hurry to rubber-stamp a rushed sports venue deal: The Portland city council, whose members are balking at signing a nondisclosure agreement to engage in Trail Blazers arena funding talks or sign a letter to the NBA supporting an arena deal. “If you want the public to support using public money to remodel a stadium, then you need to make the case to them in public about why using those funds is better than some alternative,” councilmember Mitch Green wrote on Bluesky. Blazers owner and renowned cheapskate Tom Dundon has already landed $365 million in state money toward arena renovations, but it looks like the remaining $235 million in city and county money could be a slightly harder lift.
  • And in yet another pushback to a sports subsidy demand, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has said that while he personally would be fine with giving the Wild $200 million in state money for arena renovations, “it’s going to be a tough lift in a non-budget year to be able to get that done.” Okay, that sounds less like “no” and more like “come talk to us in 2027,” and given that Wild owner’s Craig Leipold’s lease doesn’t expire until 2035 he can afford to wait, but it still counts as a kind of pushback.
  • Kansas News Service has done a deeper dive into Missouri’s potential funding for a new Kansas City Royals stadium at Crown Center, and found that it could be less than advertised: Last year’s Show-Me Sports Investment Act limits state funding to whatever sales and income tax revenue a team paid in the year before a stadium deal is agreed to, and for the Royals at Kauffman Stadium in 2025 that was likely in the $15-17 million range. That would only cover around $250 million in stadium bonds, a fair bit less than the “at least $350 million” to $900 million numbers that have previously been floated. If the state coughs up less, it could bring the public stadium subsidy down to $1.3 billion — unless the city’s $600 million that has yet to be negotiated turns out to be more than $600 million counting things like a repair fund, in which case it’d be more again. It’s becoming ever clearer that this whole thing is barely penciled out, let alone inked, but headline writers gonna headline write.
  • Whenever a sports team owner or elected official points to the Atlanta Braves‘ Battery stadium district as an example of a sports development project paying for itself, I make a point of linking to Kennesaw State University economist J.C. Bradbury’s paper on how no it di’n’t. But even academics know that nobody likes to read academic papers, so Bradbury has penned an essay for The Conversation — titled “Sorry, Tampa Bay, mixed‑use districts don’t reverse the dismal economics of sports venues” — that lays out exactly what did and didn’t happen in Cobb County, Georgia: The Braves owners are bringing in an extra $97 million a year from the Battery, while the county is running a loss of about $15 million a year. If it seems crazy that this sea of red ink is being held up as the kind of success story that other cities should emulate, such is the magical power of being a sports team owner in a country where journalism has long since given up fact-checking the press releases of rich dudes.
  • The wandering Athletics just released a new promo video for premium seating at their under-construction-and-they-swear-they’ll-finish-it Las Vegas stadium, and it is a hilarious supercut of what SF Gate describes as “AI-generated scenes of AI-generated people walking through the AI-generated models of what the club sections of the park might look like.” I’m not sure whether my favorite bit is how the AI fans are all wearing what appear to be A’s jerseys with the A’s logo removed or the multiple extreme closeups of wine glasses, but I can agree with Oakland sportswriter Dan Moore’s comment that “when I close my eyes and think ‘baseball’ I literally think the exact opposite of this.” SFGate further reports that they reached out to A’s officials to ask how much if any of this represented what a Vegas A’s stadium might actually look like as opposed to just AI hallucinations, but “an A’s spokesperson initially asked for a deadline extension to respond and then later came back and declined to comment,” LOLAthletics.
  • In less encouraging modern journalism news, WKYC reports “Cavaliers‘ impending playoff run already boosting business for downtown Cleveland bars,” citing precisely one owner of a bar a block from the arena who is “expecting steady traffic throughout the day,” which isn’t the same thing as “already boosting” at all. Bar owners more than one block from the arena were presumably unavailable for comment on whether they anticipated empty barstools while everyone was off watching the Cavs.
  • Friends don’t let friends who are concerned about being constantly surveilled and possibly targeted for being associated with people on New York Knicks and Rangers owner James Dolan’s enemies list go to Madison Square Garden.
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Total taxpayer subsidy for Royals stadium in Crown Center likely to be $1.4B+

access_time personNeil deMause

For some reason, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas was up at 4 am local time this morning replying to my hours-old X posts about city and state officials’ plans for a new Royals stadium on the site of Hallmark’s headquarters building on the Crown Center campus. After checking that I wasn’t still asleep and dreaming this, I took the opportunity to ask the mayor some questions that weren’t covered in yesterday’s presentation:

Sadly, either Lucas went back to sleep after that or left for work, because he hasn’t responded. (Though he did find time to post this in the meantime.) If he gets back to me with answers, I’ll update this post.

Fortunately, we do have some independent reporting to address some of the many questions about yesterday’s Royals announcement. For starters, KMBC has reported that “the Royals will convey 15 acres of land to the city for the ballpark itself,” which would make it exempt from property taxes unless the team agreed to a payments in lieu of taxes deal. And according to University of Colorado Denver property tax guru Geoffrey Propheter, a full tax exemption for this project would come to between $678 million and $1.384 billion spread over 30 years — which comes to between $428 million and $873 million in present value in foregone tax payments.

KMBC also reported that the outlay of direct public cash for stadium construction would involve the previously discussed $600 million in city tax increment financing money — it’ll be interesting to see how that’ll work when much of the surrounding Crown Center area is already in either a TIF district or a separate “Chapter 353” property tax abatement district — plus “at least $350 million” from the state. The amount of state money, according to the Show-Me Sports Investment Act passed by the Missouri legislature last year, would be based on the annual payments being no more than the team and its players and employees paid in income, sales, and other taxes in 2025; no one has calculated that number yet.

So we have $1 billion-ish in state and city spending, plus at least $400 million and possibly as much as double that that Royals owner John Sherman would get from the city letting him build a stadium on tax-free land. Let’s call it “at least $1.4 billion,” that’ll do until we get some more precise numbers.

And this just in: The Missouri Workers Center has said it intends to try to force a public ballot measure on the Royals stadium plan, exploring “all legal and political options” for doing so. Not sure what’s possible there, but at least they have the advantage that the Royals funding still has a long ways to go before it’s finalized, so at least they won’t run into the St. Louis Cardinals‘ no backsies precedent.

 

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Buckner says Bears tax break bill would also cut Illinoisans’ property taxes by lowering them before raising them, let me start over

access_time personNeil deMause

The Illinois House yesterday voted 78-32 to pass the “megaprojects” bill that Chicago Bears execs have long been seeking to provide as much as $2 billion in tax breaks for a new stadium district development in Arlington Heights. (Side note: You’ve got to love the latest rendering that features a stadium with the words “Welcome to Stadium” over the entrance.) And bill sponsor Kam Buckner has provided some explanation of how the final version of the bill would also provide his promised “property tax relief” to local residents who don’t own an NFL team:

The latest proposal would put 50% of special PILOT payments into a property tax relief fund that would then be divided 60% toward property tax rebates for homeowners in the district where the megaproject is located, and 40% into the Illinois Property Tax Relief Fund.

So the Bears would still be saving a massive amount of money by paying less in PILOTs than they normally would in property taxes, but some of those PILOTs would now be diverted into a fund to reduce the amount of property taxes that others pay. Except that normally these payments would go to the local school district, so if they instead go to refund other Illinoisans’ property taxes, then either the schools will be left without enough money — something the local teachers union is already worried about — or property taxes in the rest of the district will have to rise to compensate, which kind of defeats the purpose of providing property tax relief.

The bill still needs to be voted on by the Illinois state senate, so maybe we’ll get some clarity before then on how this property tax perpetual-motion machine is supposed to work. Or maybe Buckner can explain it better, let’s see:

“This is about making Illinois competitive, but in a way that keeps people in the center and focus of this,” Buckner said. “Just because someone builds a bridge and someone is the first person to cross that bridge, doesn’t mean that bridge is built for them.”

Nope, time to look elsewhere for clarity! Illinois senate, you’re up.

UPDATE: The Bears owners have responded to the House passage of the tax break by saying they still want more on top of this, in the form of that $855 million in state “infrastructure” money they keep talking about. You get one chance at leverage, may as well ask for everything you can.

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Arlington council approves $273m in tax money for Cowboys stadium upgrades

access_time personNeil deMause

Lost a bit amid all the Kansas City news was that down I-35 by Dallas, the Arlington city council voted 7-2 yesterday to approve $273 million in public money for upgrades to the Cowboys‘ 17-year-old stadium. In exchange, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones will extend his lease from 2040 to 2055, making this an $18.2 million per year lease subsidy, well short of the Carolina Panthers‘ $43 million a year record; on the other hand, paying the owner of the most valuable team in the NFL $18.2 million a year to keep playing in the building that remains the gold standard for stadium design can hardly be seen as too much of a bargain.

KRLD’s report says that “council members authorized the use of existing voter-approved venue taxes — a half-cent sales tax, hotel occupancy tax and rental car tax — with no impact on the city’s general fund or new taxes.” If this seems like a neat trick — raising $273 million out of thin air, magic! — it’s because it’s not true: Either extending the local tax surcharges (which aren’t “venue taxes” except inasmuch as they’re being used to pay for a venue) counts as new taxes, or it counts as old taxes that otherwise could have been used for something else.

What is true is that the Arlington council didn’t need to go to the voters to get approval of extending the taxes because that was already allowed in the original stadium deal, which is no doubt why Jones chose to go this route to help pay for his upgrades. “There’s nothing more I agree with that this is something that the voters need to have a say in this,” Arlington Mayor Jim Ross told yesterday’s council hearing. “I’m just confident that they’ve already had that say.” Too late, Arlington voters, you should have known you were approving additional stadium subsidies in perpetuity!

The total renovation cost is expected to run $1 billion, and neither Jones nor the city has revealed what they would include for s stadium that already got $350 million in upgrades for this summer’s World Cup. The Real Deal reports that team officials said the improvements would “touch every area of the stadium” and adds that they could include “enhanced security systems, traffic flow upgrades and pedestrian safety measures.” A billion dollars seems like a lot for that, unless Jones is planning on building his own Golden Dome defense system, so you have to figure there will be some added wine bars thrown in there somewhere.

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Royals want $1B+ to tear down part of Crown Center to build 85-acre stadium district

access_time personNeil deMause

We already knew that any downtown Kansas City Royals stadium was going to have to involve the Crown Center, the collection of shopping centers and retail, hotels, residences, office buildings, and an aquarium that sits adjacent to the proposed Washington Square Park stadium site — if only as the site of a tax increment financing district that Mayor Quinton Lucas has floated as a way to raise the city’s $600 million share of a $1.9 billion stadium construction cost.

But a press conference scheduled this morning with Royals owner John Sherman, Lucas, and Gov. Mike Kehoe is reportedly set to announce an even bigger role for Crown Center:

Sources told KMBC 9 that the new Royals ballpark site will move from Washington Square Park across the street to the Crown Center area.

The site will now offer the Royals 80 acres of land versus the anticipated 12 acres in the Washington Square Park location.

Buildings will be torn down, but the Crown Center retail space and hotels will remain with improvements planned.

That would indeed be a huge shift, and not just because Crown Center doesn’t have any obvious spaces big enough to fit a ballpark, so “buildings will be torn down” may be an understatement. Unlike the Washington Square Park property, the Crown Center is privately owned, by the Hall family of Hallmark fame — the “crown” in the name is the one in the Hallmark logo — so does that mean the Royals would lease it and it would continue to pay property tax? Or would the Royals or a government body buy the stadium land, and if so who would pay for it? And what of Sherman’s desire for a team-controlled ballpark district around the new stadium?

We will hopefully find out more at 10 a.m. Central. Tune back in to this post for further updates.

UPDATE 10:53 am ET: Still waiting for the press conference, but we have a press statement, which includes a smidge more detail:

A world-class ballpark, surrounding mixed-use development and reimagined headquarters for both iconic institutions at Crown Center would create more than 20,000 jobs in the construction phase alone. The 85-acre development surrounding a park-like central square with fountains…

The total project would be funded primarily by the Royals and other private investors and supplemented by public funding from the City of Kansas City and Missouri’s Show-Me Sports Investment Act.

“Total project” funded “primarily” by the Royals “and other private investors” likely means that there will be a lot of private development tacked on in the surrounding area, but the stadium itself will still mostly be paid for by taxpayers. Still nothing yet on how all the other moving parts, land costs, property taxes, etc., would work.

UPDATE 11:01 ET: Live broadcast of the press conference coming up here.

UPDATE 11:05 ET: “No new tax increases,” says Lucas, which is what elected officials say when they want to distract you from how it will siphon off existing tax money. (When they want to distract you from how it will increase taxes, they say “no impact to existing public funding.”)

UPDATE 11:18 ET: Sherman says “total investment of more than $3 billion,” no specifics on from who for what. Washington Square Park will be “part of” the “expanded” ballpark district, so sounds like the park will still be turned over to private development. Also says two-thirds private, one-third public, so that would make the total public cost either $1 billion or $1.5 billion depending on whether the $3 billion is the total cost or just the private cost. And, of course, this is before any land or tax breaks, which are still TBD.

UPDATE 11:35 ET: Hallmark chair Don Hall Jr. mostly said nothing at great length, though he did mention several times his grandfather jumping off a train. He also revealed that the Hallmark headquarters will be relocated to elsewhere in Crown Center to make way for the stadium, which would presumably put the stadium site south of E. 25th St.

UPDATE 11:39 ET: Ah, we have a map now. Looks like the stadium proper would take the place of the Hallmark HQ and the parking lot behind it, butting right up against Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church:

UPDATE 11:52 ET: Gov. Mike Kehoe: “If the Royals were not here, we’d have zero. So these tools are about keeping those income flows here. So that makes it a net positive to the state.” (That sound you just heard was a hundred economists banging their heads against their keyboards.)

UPDATE 12:06 ET: Mayor Lucas has finished his glurging without adding any actual information. Time for questions — nope, first time for a promotional video about the Royals’ inspirational history and future, skipping over their miserable present.

UPDATE 12:09 ET: Time for questions! No, wait, no time for questions, everyone’s leaving for refreshments! Who will pay what for construction, land, property taxes? Tune in next time to find out, or not!

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