Category: New Mexico United

Albuquerque voters will be deciding this fall on whether to spend $50 million on a new stadium for the New Mexico United USL team, after the city council voted 7-2 to put it on the November ballot. (KOAT-TV called it “a unanimous decision,” which will come as some surprise to councilmembers Trudy Jones and Brook Bassan, who both voted no.) Public comments at last night’s council meeting were entirely in support of the stadium project, or were mostly in support but comments pre-submitted were largely against, depending on which TV station report you believe, are reporters even watching the same hearings, man?

As discussed here previously, $50 million would shatter the record for biggest public subsidy ever for a USL team. Mayor Tim Keller, however, calls it a reasonable price tag because “an Albuquerque multi-use stadium will be an asset that New Mexico can be proud of, creating opportunities for affordable family fun for decades to come” — which, it’s true, doesn’t actually say why city taxpayers should be on the hook for $50 million worth of bond payments on a $60-70 million stadium, but only some sort of hater of affordable family fun would nitpick a thing like that.

The stadium bond bill is here, and includes a community benefits agreement to build a community healthcare facility and “micro-unit incubator for artists and small business merchants” and a local hiring program, but nothing about whether NM United owner Peter Trevisani would pay rent or property taxes or any other kind of revenue sharing to the city to pay off the $50 million in bonds. If it’s true that Trevisani won’t kick in anything (aside from maybe a few million to top off any additional stadium costs over what the city and state would pay), the bond payments would otherwise come entirely out of Albuquerque’s gross receipts tax, a kind of sales tax on both goods and services that has drawn criticism for already being unsustainably high.

All this for a soccer team that is already in place in Albuquerque, in a league that has announced plans to expand from its current 31 teams to 60-70 teams, so it’s not really in a position to be picky about what kinds of stadiums they play in. This should be quite the interesting ballot campaign.

 

New Mexico United execs held a public Zoom meeting on Tuesday night to discuss its planned $65-70 million new stadium, virtually all of which would be funded with public money. According to the Daily Lobo:

At the meeting, public concerns included the potential capacity of the stadium, the historic status of the Barelas neighborhood, getting the surrounding community involved and how much the team will be willing to contribute on top of the city’s bond sales. [team owner Peter] Trevisani said listening to the community would be a priority and confirmed that the team would contribute if needed.

“If it’s an issue of getting from $60 million to $70 million, the team will step in, and we will have skin in the game,” Trevisani said.

Aw, how generous of him!

The issue of how much city taxpayers should spend on a new soccer-specific stadium is shaping up to be the big question surrounding the stadium plans, as it should be: This would be easily the priciest USL stadium subsidy ever. (I’m still trying to tally the final numbers for Louisville City F.C.‘s stadium, but it likely wasn’t much over $30 million, and nothing else comes close.) Which is why it’s interesting that as soon as the public price tag started becoming clear, the city stopped asking residents about it:

[A 2019 survey] asked respondents if they supported using public funds to build either the multipurpose arena or soccer stadium.

Half – 50% – said they supported the public investment, while 38% said they opposed it. …

But the city did not include a separate question about using public money for a new venue in the 2020 survey as it had just the previous year.

That’s still a pretty good level of support for public funding of a United stadium, though it’s important to note that nobody has ever asked if $60-70 million is the right amount of public funds to spend on one. (Albuquerque residents are overwhelmingly in favor of a new soccer stadium if you don’t ask them who should pay for it; the city has not surveyed locals on whether they feel the same way about a pony.) I’m going to be part of a panel discussion on KUNM-FM from 8-9 am Mountain Time this morning, along with Trevisani and some local elected and unelected officials; this should be interesting.

Also on Friday, I wrote about how the USL and MLS are increasingly looking set to go head-to-head as competing U.S. soccer leagues, and noted that “cities would be absolutely insane to offer any stadium subsidies just to land a pro soccer team, since every municipality of any size is going to get one now regardless.” I included a link to Portland, Maine’s just-released plans to maybe subsidize a USL stadium there as an example of such insanity — but if I had waited one more day, I could have included Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller’s announced plans to spend a much bigger buttload of money on a stadium for the USL’s New Mexico United:

The Mayor will send a resolution on Monday to City Council to get a bond proposal placed on the November ballot — on which he will also be on seeking re-election — for a new, publicly funded downtown soccer stadium with New Mexico United, a privately owned team, as the primary tenant.

The publicly financed project could cost an estimated $70 million before land acquisition costs.

Spending $70 million plus land acquisition sounds like a lot for a minor-league soccer stadium, and it is. But it’s would also maybe not be the actual public cost: The public bond, which will be presented to the Albuquerque city council on Monday and if approved would go before voters in November, would only be for $50 million; there’s about $9 million in state money that’s been approved (though state officials didn’t approve United owner Peter Trevisani’s $40 million state funding request), and also Keller implied there could be other public spending as well, though he was pretty handwavy about the whole thing:

JOURNAL: What will the total funding be? State and City funds?

KELLER: “For most of it, but we’re open to a private/public partnership. We’re (the city) gonna make sure and fund the minimum amount required for a stadium. But if there’s additional extras — how big it is and how nice it is, that’ll depend on other funds or matching funds from other governments and possibly other folks involved in the stadium who may or may not be with the team (other possible private entities).”

All this for a team that already plays in Albuquerque, at the local baseball stadium, and which isn’t even committing to outfit its new stadium with giant soccer robots like initial renderings promised. Yes, it would be nice for United fans to be able to watch soccer in a stadium designed for soccer, but that isn’t really a core function of municipal government, especially when Trevisani would be the one reaping the rewards of any increased ticket demand. Mayor Keller’s justification for the project seems so far to have been limited to shouting “You all have earned a stadium!” from the back of a pickup truck during a team tailgate party; hopefully he’ll provide more details at Monday’s council hearing, though driving a pickup truck into the council chambers and repeating Saturday’s performance would actually be far more entertaining.

New Mexico United owner Peter Trevisani is back on the hustings pushing for a new stadium for his USL team, with the hustings in this case a phone call with the local TV station talking about “public-private partnerships” and how those giant soccer robot renderings weren’t really his idea after all:

If there’s one thing that’s given a boost to the stadium-building industry in the U.S., it’s the rapid growth of pro soccer, which is metastasizing franchises in a spree that’s somewhere between Ponzi scheme and dot-com bubble. While Major League Soccer is now up to 30 franchises, the second-tier United Soccer League already has 35 teams and plans for five more, and all those clubs have got to play games somewhere, and they would just die if it had to be in some old college football stadium or something, so, what are you going to do about this, city officials?

In the case of Albuquerque, home to the USL’s New Mexico United, the answer is apparently pay for a study of where to build a stadium before figuring out how to pay for one:

Mayor Tim Keller’s administration announced Friday it’s recommending a firm called the “Creative Arts Agency Icon” (CAAICON) to do a feasibility study for a proposed future multi-purpose soccer stadium…

The city hopes the feasibility study once and for all takes the guess work out of where to build the long-hyped venue.

“What I really want is a good answer, meaning here’s how much it will cost, here’s the available land, here’s how traffic could work, because we also know that if it is near a neighborhood or it is near businesses, they have an important role too,” Mayor Keller said at a news conference Friday. “Right now, everyone’s just discussing hypotheticals.”

Knowing how much a stadium would cost before setting out to build one is an important step, admittedly. So is how much the feasibility study would cost (KRQE reports that the city hasn’t agreed on a price yet with CAAICON, the entertainment industry behemoth founded by Michael Ovitz), and how much would be spent on a stadium or by whom — KQRE notes there’s “no clear estimate” on cost but that “in the past, state lawmakers have discussed the project as a possible public-private partnership.”

The idea of public funding for a new New Mexico United stadium has been kicking around since late last year, when the numbers being thrown around were $30 million in state money toward a $100 million stadium. Just before the pandemic hit, United’s owners stoked the fires with some crazy-ass stadium renderings featuring a giant robot Muffler Man kicking a soccer ball, and suggested incorporating art galleries into the stadium, because that’s a synergy whose time must surely be ripe.

What no one is much talking about is why New Mexicans are being asked to pay to build a new stadium for their two-year-old soccer team. Right now the club plays at the Albuquerque Isotopes‘ minor-league baseball stadium, which is less than ideal, but also not really the city’s problem — if Peter Trevisani, the investment fund manager, art installation funder, and CrossFit enthusiast who owns the soccer team, figured he needed a soccer-only stadium to make it work, maybe he should have thought of that before plunking down the $7 million franchise fee. (Though admittedly, potentially getting use of a $100 million stadium by just paying $7 million for the team plus some undetermined slice of stadium costs is exactly the kind of arbitrage you’d expect from an investment fund manager.)

Anyway, some local officials seem to think that a new soccer stadium is just what New Mexico needs to heal its now 12.7% unemployment rate. Here’s Democratic state representative Moe Maestas:

“There’s no better thing that a government can do in tough economic times than build things, you know, roads, bridges, sewer. I see this as similar in terms of being a public good.”

And here’s Trevisani himself back in June, shortly after he managed to get himself to the governor’s “economic recovery council”:

“I think one of the things that can help keep our economy going and can help be a catalyst for our economy and also build a bridge to a more normalized environment that we all want to get back to are public projects, and the stadium certainly would fall in is one of them,” Trevisani said.

A government-built soccer stadium is certainly a public project, and public spending is certainly one way to dig yourself out of an economic hole caused by feedback loops of nobody spending money because nobody has money because nobody is spending money. But there are all kinds of things the government can be spending money on, and unlike roads and bridges and sewer lines that can be used by everyone for free, a soccer stadium would be operated by a private sports franchise that would charge admission to get in. Also, I think soccer is just maybe less of an essential public good than not having raw sewage in the streets? I guess that’s the kind of thinking that’s keeping me off of the New Mexico economic recovery council — that, and not being one of the businessmen set to profit from New Mexico’s economic recovery spending. I knew there was synergy at work here somewhere.