It was a slow week for stadium and arena news — even money-grubbing plutocrats and their elected-official pals like to go on vacation in the summer — but there are still a few more items of note that didn’t make it to posts of their own:
- Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan, who is currently waiting out state decisions on both the Penn Station redevelopment that could try to relocate the Garden and the arena’s never-ending $50 million–plus-a-year [CORRECTION: currently $43 million a year and rising] property tax break, has been sprinkling campaign donations around the state legislative races. Gothamist asked the ten state senate candidates Dolan’s PAC has funded what their thoughts were on the tax break, and four said they want to keep giving MSG tax money, one said they didn’t, and five didn’t deign to answer. Given that bills to repeal the exemption have never even gotten a committee hearing, that should probably be no surprise, but $400,000 in campaign ads never hurts to shore up the positions that elected officials are already taking.
- Washington Commanders president Jason Wright said “I think we’ll still be able to hit our timeline” for a new stadium, without actually saying what that timeline is, that’s one way for no one to be able to prove you wrong. The Commanders’ currently lease has another five years to run, but as we’ve seen many times before, leases can almost always be extended, so basically Wright is saying here that “we still want a new stadium, hopefully once people forget what an ass my boss is.”
- Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said last fall that he wants a new arena to replace the team’s 20-year-old one, but then this week Stars CEO Brad Alberts said “it’s a great place to play for a long time” but “it needs a renovation.” Is this good cop/bad cop, pivoting to a more politically palatable plan, something else? Once, we had government beat writers who could (sometimes) explain what’s going on, but this was reported by a guy who mostly seems to know about railroads, so he may need a little time to get up to speed on arena financing.
- Oklahoma City has approved construction of a new arena — no, no, not the new arena for the Thunder, that’s still under negotiation, this one is at the state fairgrounds for horse and livestock shows. The $102 million project is getting $77.3 million in public money, most of that from OKC’s MAPS sales-tax hike, which helped pay for the Thunder’s current arena and may help pay for a new one; as Robert Moses found, having your own revenue stream targeted for stuff you want to build is a great way to get to build stuff.
- The owners of the New Jersey Jackals indy-league baseball team have announced they’re moving out of Yogi Berra Stadium in Montclair, which is weird since that stadium always seemed to be the only reason the Jackals existed in the first place. Though here comes a potential bid from Paterson for the Jackals to play at their rehabilitated Negro League ballpark, Hinchliffe Stadium, so maybe the Jackals owners are just trying to see if they can take advantage of the decimation of the minors to shop around the local stadium glut for a better deal.