Happy May 26, the last day for stadium legislation to be introduced in the Nevada legislature, unless of course they wait till tomorrow. I’ll be keeping an eye out for any bills popping up, but in the meantime there’s lots of other news to occupy us:
- MLB commissioner Rob Manfred may have paid a visit to Milwaukee to threaten the future of the Brewers if elected officials don’t cough up $360 million in stadium upgrade funds, but that didn’t sway the Milwaukee County Board, which voted unanimously last night to oppose using county money for the Brewers. “I just think about parks, I think about transit. We are $20 million in deficit in transit,” said County Supervisor Sequanna Taylor. “I’m not saying it’s not something that’s needed, but something that’s needed for people to get to work, to get to school, to get to their doctor’s appointments, and we don’t have the funding for even that.”
- Where are the Arizona Coyotes headed now that their Tempe arena dreams have been killed dead by voters? Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont wants it to be Hartford, and the Sacramento Bee wants it to be Sacramento, and a bookie thinks it could be Houston or Kansas City or Salt Lake City, and Bleacher Report thinks it could also be Quebec City or Atlanta. The New York Post says the NHL wouldn’t let the Coyotes move since that would cost it expansion fees, which, the NHL isn’t going to expand to seven cities at once anyway, guys, plus they would then get Arizona back in play as an expansion target. Coyotes Twitter, meanwhile, thinks the team should move to Scottsdale, even though Scottsdale already has plenty of coyotes.
- Speaking of commissioners, NBA commissioner Adam Silver made an attempt to kill every arena bird with one stone this week, telling Nola.com that “every NBA team, regardless of location and market size, needs a model, state-of-the-art arena to compete in the league.” New Orleans Pelicans owner Gayle Benson is seeking publicly funded arena renovations in exchange for a five-year lease extension, because her $3.65 million a year in state subsidies just for the team existing aren’t enough, so presumably that’s what Silver was talking about, but just in case: Every NBA city, you’re now on notice.
- With the Tidewater Landing project on hold, USL team Rhode Island F.C. will officially play its first season in a temporary stadium somewhere — which while maybe not ideal for the team or fans, does at least prove that you don’t actually have to spend $80 million on a stadium to get a USL team, since eventually every human in America will have their own USL team.
- Broomfield, Colorado is closing its 16-year-old arena and likely tearing it down after it turned out spending $60 million on an arena for minor-league hockey and basketball (and, when those teams folded, roller derby) and some mid-size concerts was not, in fact, a path to riches. Who’da thunk it?
- Outgoing Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder apparently once suggested that traffic problems to a proposed Virginia stadium be solved by building a “Tesla tunnel,” i.e., one of those things that Elon Musk pretends is a subway but it’s just a one-lane car tunnel. This is not the most horrific thing Dan Snyder has done, but it’s impressively close.