That was a busy week, considering it’s the middle of August and everybody is supposed to be on vacation (but not to Sicily, probably). In fact, be honest: You’re not even reading this, are you? Or if you are, you’re just scrolling back through old posts in September sometime, catching up on what you missed. If so, can you let me know how it all turned out? That would save me a lot of time, thanks.
- After the Buffalo News reported that the Bills owners were seeking $1.5 billion in state money, $1.1 billion of it for a new football stadium, and a team spokesperson said the $1.1 billion stadium price tag was “pure fiction,” and then the News said the owners were seeking $1.4 billion, all of it for a new football stadium, now the Associated Press says that the stadium price tag is indeed $1.4 billion, but the taxpayer share is “up for discussion.” I think maybe let’s just go with the technical term for this range of prices, which is “a megabuttload.”
- The Bridgeport city council, faced with a dispute with the Islanders minor-league team where the city said the team owed it $750,000 in back rent and the team said the city owed it $837,596 for back repairs and maintenance, have compromised on the city spending $28 million on arena upgrades in exchange for a ten-year lease extension. That doesn’t sound like a very good compromise at all, but at least $2.8 million a year as a lease extension price is a hell of a lot better than the $19 million a year Cleveland is considering for the Guardians.
- Fresh arena renderings for the Calgary Flames! If people being waited on at small outdoor tables doesn’t convince you that Calgary needs to spend $300 million on this thing, I don’t know what will.
- If you’re wondering what’s happening to the stadium in the cornfield that MLB built for last night’s Game in a Cornfield Inspired By an Old Movie That Apparently Still Needs the Publicity, the bleachers and lights and locker rooms are getting disassembled, but the field itself will stay put and be used by Little League or high school games, maybe, which the field next door already was, but seriously, there’s got to be some synergy here, right? Right?
- This is a couple of months old, but I missed it at the time: Economist J.C. Bradbury followed up his paper finding that the Atlanta Braves stadium had no measurable impact on sales-tax receipts in Cobb County with one finding that it had no measurable impact on property values. Synergy!
- Nobody wants to host the Olympics anymore, because it’s too damn expensive. Hey, didn’t I say that already?
- The Tampa Bay Rays stadium may be built on a burial ground, that would explain a lot, really.
