Category: Myrtle Beach Pelicans

Like the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, I too would like a weight room provided by taxpayers

access_time personNeil deMause

The Myrtle Beach Pelicans were spared the might of MLB’s downsizing wrath last winter, but they did get sideswiped by another part of the majors’ forced takeover of the minors: The Pelicans’ stadium, 22-year-old I’m Not Even Going To Dignify Its Dumb Corporate Name Field, was ruled to have 210 “deficiencies” that needed to be addressed in the next two years, or else you’ll be really sorry, mister. Among the ways in which the stadium was deemed not up to official snuff:

The fixes will cost $15 million, team officials said. Problems include home and visitors’ clubhouses that are too small, the lacks of on-site weight and training rooms, and inadequate field lighting and fencing along the outfield walls and bullpens.

And even then, noted Myrtle Beach Mayor Brenda Bethune, the stadium will at best be minimally cromulent. “Even if we invest $15 million in the current stadium, that only brings it up to the bare minimum for Minor League Baseball standards,” Bethune told the Myrtle Beach Post and Courier. “And that’s not going to get us through the next 20 years. I believe that looking at an investment like this, we have to look longer term and think more generationally.”

The Post and Courier reported that Bethune “wouldn’t go as far as fully backing the construction of a new stadium,” but did say that she wanted to “explore those opportunities and keep these conversations going with developers so that we may find that perfect partner that steps up and says, ’This is where we want the stadium and here’s what we want around it and here’s the contribution that we’re willing to make to make that happen.’” That is at least partially backing the construction of a new stadium, surely.

So, okay: Yes, MLB would like its minor-league teams to have schmancier digs, with things like modern weight rooms and bigger clubhouses. And yes, a 22-year-old stadium with renovations will in ten years be a 32-year-old stadium with ten-year-old renovations. (The Myrtle Beach stadium has already gotten $3.46 million in city-funded upgrades since 2012.) But you know who else would love to get more space and a free weight room? Me, that’s who! My apartment was built in 1956, already, and most of it hasn’t been renovated in much of that time — I mean, you should see our kitchen cabinets — and while I know that other people in our building have paid out of their own pockets to redo their kitchens, really isn’t it the local government’s responsibility to “think generationally,” by which I mean provide me with a weight room? Do I have to remind city officials of all the economic impact I have?

A new stadium, observes the Post and Courier, could cost as much as $50 million. Bethune noted that a lot of new baseball stadiums are also “event spaces” and have “apartments or condos,” and that without those revenues “you’re pretty much landlocked where you are right now to do some of that.” (I do not think Bethune meant “landlocked.”) It’s always possible that the Pelicans owners will somehow agree to give up future revenues that will pay for a new or renovated stadium, or to increase their rent from its current rate of about $60,000 a year, or to otherwise pay out of their own pockets for a modernized workplace, but somehow I’m not exactly holding my breath.

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Friday roundup: Dolan vows price hikes if he loses MSG tax break, Palm Desert arena builder says city wants “handout,” and other sports owners doing the craziest things

access_time personNeil deMause

There’s a construction crew with jackhammers outside my window digging up the exact same patch of sidewalk they spent most of last year digging up, so if you think you’re getting a clever Friday roundup intro this week, you’ve got another think coming.

  • New York Knicks and Rangers owner James Dolan has warned that if whoever gets elected as New York’s new mayor this year repeals his teams’ $50-million-a-year property tax exemption for Madison Square Garden — something that isn’t actually in the mayor’s power, since it’s a state tax break, but anyway — he may have to raise ticket prices in response. This implies that Dolan is currently charging less for tickets than the market will bear out of gratitude for having some tax-break money rattling around in his pockets, which doesn’t sound like how a billionaire failson operates; the alternatives would either be that Dolan is bluffing, or that he’s so dumb that he would raise ticket prices to the point where it would lose him money out of misguided spite, either of which seems very James Dolan.
  • Officials in Palm Desert, California, say that before approving Tim Leiweke’s proposed minor-league hockey arena, they want to know who’ll pay for an estimated $5 million a year in added police and fire costs; Leiweke fired back that Palm Desert “just wants a handout and we’re not going to do that,” earning himself a dictionary entry next to this entry.
  • Major league stadium subsidy demands may have slowed somewhat during the pandemic, but minor-league schemes are making up for lost time, especially in baseball following MLB’s takeover and planned shrinkage move. Look, here’s Ryan Moore, the GM of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, declaring that without $15 million in upgrade money, his team’s stadium “won’t last another 20 years as it stands.” When was it built? 1999. Moore didn’t specify whether the building was on borrowed time because it was mistakenly built out of papier-mâché or because if it’s not renovated, he would personally blow it up.
  • Of course, here’s a Columbus Dispatch article that calls the Columbus Crew stadium built in 1999 “historic,” so maybe time is just compressed right now, probably due to time dilation from a passing black hole.
  • The Clark County Commission has approved former UNLV basketball player Jackie Robinson’s plans to build a $3 billion sports arena complex on the Las Vegas Strip, despite Vegas already having more arenas than it can shake a stick at. Now all Robinson needs is $3 billion, and he’s all set!
  • I’m still waiting for an oral history of the collapse of the European Super League, but until then we’ll have to settle for the New York Times’ blow-by-blow, which features among other things Juventus president Andrea Agnelli repeatedly promising the head of UEFA that he was about to issue a statement condemning any breakaway attempt, then shutting off his phone, which is absolutely the image we should all take away from this fiasco.
  • New Charlotte F.C. stadium renovation renderings! Unfortunately, they’re pretty dull, though there’s some fairly odd mise en scène going on. Like, what’s up with this woman waiting at a stadium bar by contorting her limbs into as pretzely a shape as she can manage?
    And then there’s this father and child, or possibly kidnapper and attempted victim?
    Either way, the city of Charlotte is clearly getting a whole lot of new places for bros to buy beer for its $25 million in funding for this project, so that’s definitely money well spent.
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