Category: Pawtucket USL team

Friday roundup: Jays plan $¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in SkyDome renovations, figure it out yourself, journalism can’t help you

access_time personNeil deMause

Happy Friday! I don’t know about you, but for me this was a great week: I got a new coffee mug, and also it’s now almost over! The week, I mean, not the mug. You’re smart, you probably figured that out already.

And now, how’s about some news:

  • The Toronto Blue Jays owners are planning $230 million in renovations to the stadium formerly known as SkyDome but now named for the team’s corporate owners, or maybe it’s $300 million in renovations, what is money, anyway, especially Canadian money? The CBC’s report says that the redo will include saying “goodbye to the nosebleeds,” as the top 500 level deck will be “completely removed and replaced with non-ticketed spaces,” and oh, here’s a rendering with the 500 level still very much visible, hmm. The stadium is owned by the Jays after Ontario built it and took a huge bath on it, so presumably the renovations will be funded by the team, though Jays president Mark Shapiro called this just a “medium-term solution,” so there’ll still be plenty of time to demand a new stadium later, don’t worry.
  • WPRI in Providence breaks down why Pawtucket’s new USL soccer stadium will cost taxpayers $60 milllion and not $45.5 million like its developers claim, which is helpful and all, except when you add up all the numbers it actually looks more like $80 million? ($46.2 million in state tax breaks, $10 million from the city, plus $27 million in additional money redirected from state infrastructure spending — yup, that’d be more than $80 million.) The fog of stadium wars is soupy indeed.
  • If the Philadelphia 76ers owners succeed in building their own Center City arena and no longer renting from the Flyers, “The companies that would benefit are Live Nation and AEG, because they would have two buildings in Philly to play off each other, so the rent expense would go down,” former Spectrum manager Ed Rubinstein tells Venues Now. “That’s the reason why we never wanted another arena built.” This would be the Sixers owners’ problem, on the one hand, but also Philly taxpayers’ problem if the idea of giving the Sixers arena a giant tax break would be to help the local economy when it would only end up shuffling concert spending around from one part of town to another.
  • There are new Tennessee Smokies stadium renderings, and — oh, come on, you’re not even trying! I get that the plans need to be downscaled some because the stadium is over budget, but at least you can afford some clip art fireworks or people playing random sports. Show some self-respect.
  • Somebody dug up this consulting report that everyone’s favorite economist-for-team-hire Andy Zimbalist did on mixed martial arts — okay, sure — and I must report that previous reporting that Zimbalist earns $225 an hour for his services is out of date: His “customary rate,” he wrote in the 2017 document, is actually $850 an hour. And that’s before any surcharges Zimbalist now imposes for supply-chain issues. Please draw your own conclusions as to whether that rate could be an incentive to report the findings that your client is hoping for, or at least look really hard for them.
  • Your occasional reminder that sports team owners don’t have a monopoly on getting billions of dollars in public money for no damn reason: Here’s a report on Kansas giving Panasonic $800 million in subsidies for a battery factory in exchange for a commitment of zero new jobs, and here’s Bernie Sanders talking about how a new bipartisan bill to compete with China on electronics somehow involves giving $76 billion to microchip companies. The New York Times called the latter “a remarkable and rare consensus in a polarized Congress,” which is both true and all too telling about what our elected representatives (and major newspapers) can agree on.
  • “It’s morally corrupt that new arenas for professional teams worth billions of dollars are majorly publicly funded — especially when the tax dollars could be going to other areas in the city in actual need of the money,” writes Norman Transcript sports reporter intern Clemente Almanza of devoting public dollars to a new Oklahoma City Thunder arena like the team’s owners want, “but” — you knew there was a “but” coming — “that comes with the territory of having a franchise. 18 of the 29 NBA arenas are owned by a government multiplicity” — he’s an intern, he can’t be expected to own a dictionary — and “losing the Thunder would cause catastrophic levels of damage that the state would never recover.” Um, you don’t want to recover the damage … hey, Norman Transcript, don’t you have any copy editors? No? I guess “let the intern sit down and keyboard out a column on why a new arena is necessary” is just how journalism goes these days — that coffee mug gets righter and righter every day.
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Rhode Island’s $80m subsidy for minor-league soccer stadium is okayed by governor and five pals he appointed

access_time personNeil deMause

When we last left off with Rhode Island’s plan to bring a USL soccer team to Pawtucket, the stadium was wildly over budget, and Gov. Dan McKee and Mayor Donald Grebien were proposing to fill the gap by taking money that was budgeted for infrastructure for the surrounding development and putting it into the stadium instead. (The missing infrastructure money would be replaced by [waves hands in air, tries to distract taxpayers by promising them an ice cream cone when it’s all over].) So how’s that going?

The proposed and embattled Pawtucket minor league soccer stadium and adjacent development was approved Monday night by the Rhode Island Commerce board by the narrowest of votes — 6-5 with the chair, Governor Dan McKee, voting in the affirmative, breaking the tie and giving the project the green light.

Wow, a 6-5 vote of the … Rhode Island Commerce board? What the crap kind of weird government structure are these little New England states getting up to now?

The Rhode Island Commerce Corporation works with public, private and nonprofit partners to create the conditions for businesses in all sectors to thrive and to improve the quality of life for our citizens by promoting the state’s long-term economic health and prosperity. We offer business assistance, access to funding and red tape reduction for companies of all sizes.

It’s a quasi-public development agency, in other words, with the power to spend public funds but none of the accountability, as has become common in most states and major cities. (Rhode Island Commerce’s board is entirely appointed by the governor.) Still, it’s pretty alarming to see that a $27 million public subsidy for a pro soccer team on top of the $46.2 million in state tax kickbacks and $10 million from Pawtucket was decided by a bunch of retired politicians and Chamber of Commerce and union execs — if Karl Wadensten, CEO of VIBCO Vibrators (not that kind of vibrators, though when the ad copy reads “stop jerking your hoist” it’s hard to be 100% sure) had voted no instead of abstained, this could have gone a completely different way.

Pouring more than $80 million in public money into a $124 million minor-league soccer stadium, plus whatever it will now cost for the infrastructure for the rest of the project, doesn’t sound like a great idea, and economists quickly told the Boston Globe as much, with Holy Cross’s Victor Matheson calling it “a terrible idea” while Kennesaw State’s J.C. Bradbury noted, “Everyone knows it’s a joke.” (“For once, I am not the most negative economist in the story,” added Bradbury on Twitter.) The Globe described this as “Some economists aren’t sold” and immediately countered with USL “senior vice president of club expansion and real estate” Dan Holman, who had this to say in response:

Economists tend to look at things in a silo, Holman said, while a soccer fan would be able to see the whole pitch.

“The economic impact is huge,” Holman said, “but it’s the community impact as well.”

There are several followup questions that the Globe reporter could have asked — “What is that even supposed to mean?” and “You do know that Victor Matheson is a goddamn soccer referee in his spare time, right?” come to mind — but that would not serve journalistic balance, so the article ends there.

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Pawtucket mayor wants to fill $30m USL stadium funding hole by creating $20m stadium-district funding hole

access_time personNeil deMause

As previously noted here briefly, Pawtucket’s new USL soccer stadium is wildly over budget and Mayor Don Grebien says the only way to make it happen is to add $30 million in funding to the $46.2 million Rhode Island is already providing for the project. And now Grebien has a novel idea for how to do it: Redirect $20 million that was supposed to go for infrastructure to support the surrounding development and pour it into stadium construction instead.

Gov. Dan McKee, Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien and developer Fortuitous Partners want to shift most of the public financing for infrastructure, shops and housing around the stadium to the soccer ground itself.

But they need approval from the Commerce Corporation Board of Directors, and after nearly three hours of discussing the plan Tuesday, the board members, all appointed by prior governors, had reservations…

“We are kicking that can down the road,” said Commerce board member Michael McNally, referring to the non-stadium elements of the project. “I am all for this project. It needs to happen…. But we need to know how big the issue is. I am afraid we will end up with the stadium and nothing else.”

Yeah, having a stadium and nothing else would be a problem, since the whole justification for subsidizing a $40 million soccer stadium with $46.2 million in state money was to get developers to add a $360 million mixed-use development as well. (Whether this makes any sense — whether developers interested in a mixed-use development on the site really would have balked without a pricey soccer stadium for an as-yet-nonexistent minor-league team in use maybe 20-25 days a year as the centerpiece — is another story, but that was the stated rationale, anyway.) This is maybe more accurately described not as “kicking the can down the road” but as “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” but whatever the metaphor, it would leave the project with the same budget hole, just for a different part of the project.

The current plan appears to be to go back to the state legislature for more money to fill that new hole. Larry Berman, the spokesperson for House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi (but misidentified in the Providence Journal as “House speaker Larry Berman,” congrats on the promotion, Larry!), said, “After reviewing all the details, Speaker Shekarchi will consider additional resources that may be needed for Tidewater Landing next year,” which is less than a promise but still far from a hard no.

In addition to the $20 million state money shuffle, there’s also an additional $10 million that the city of Pawtucket would be putting in to cover the whole $30 million added cost. Grebien claims this isn’t really a cost because the team will pay $10 million in property taxes on the stadium, which initially was going to be tax-exempt; the Journal points out, however, that the deal with developers Fortuitous to have them pay property taxes included a $15 million tax break, so maybe that should be a cost too? Given that the latest reports are that the cost of the $40 million stadium has gone up from $84 million to $124 million, maybe the best thing is just to treat all numbers as at least partly fictitious anyway, and accept that the only thing we know is that the USL developers want moar.

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Friday roundup: Commanders stadium subsidy dies (for now), Brewers stadium subsidy enters

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s Friday already! Lots to get to, so let’s get to it:

  • The Virginia bill to provide $300 million toward a new Washington Commanders stadium is officially dead, after its state senate sponsor pulled it following comments by team defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio calling last year’s Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol a “dust-up.” A D.C. city councilmember also claims that a majority of that council is opposed to a stadium on the RFK Stadium site, both because they don’t want to end up paying for it “no matter what promises the Commanders make” otherwise and also because of Del Rio’s remarks. This is the kind of dead that you can recover from, mind you — Commanders execs issued a statement saying they’ll continue to work on finding a stadium site, and Sen. Richard Saslaw said in throwing in the towel on his bill that “There were just so many things out there that a lot of people are saying, ‘Saslaw, this thing needs to wait’” — so expect to see this revived in a year or two when either Dan Snyder has finally given up and sold the team, when people have forgotten about Jan. 6 amid the monkeypox pandemic, or when at least Del Rio has been fired either for his loose lips or for being bad at his job.
  • A Milwaukee County supervisor wants to develop part of the Brewers parking lots into an entertainment “Beer District” — like the Bucks’ “Deer District,” get it? — with the resulting increased property taxes kicked back to the team for future stadium improvements. Brewers president of business operations Rick Schlesinger replied: “Could the real estate here be part of a solution? Sure. Do I know what that would look like? No.” That’s clear as mud, then, but it does seem like “develop a bunch of public land and give the proceeds to the Brewers” is on the table, at least, so keep an eye on this one.
  • The Sycamore Institute, a seven-year-old “nonpartisan” think tank that is not to be confused with the think tank of the same name at American University in D.C. that formed four years later but somehow grabbed the better domain name, issued a report this week totaling up $1.8 billion in sports subsidies the state has proposed for the Tennessee Titans, Nashville Predators, Tennessee Smokies, and Chattanooga Lookouts, and concluded that that’s a lot of money and such public spending rarely pays off. There’s not much in the report that’ll be unfamiliar to readers of this site — the report’s conclusion is “When evaluating these proposals, policymakers at all levels of government should carefully consider the potential benefits and costs,” which is about as nonpartisan as you can get — but it has a nice list of footnotes to past research and articles on the topic, including my 2011 essay for The Nation “Why Do Mayors Love Sports Stadiums?“, so it’s worth keeping handy for the next time you need to win a Twitter argument by dumping facts on your opponent. (No, this is not actually how Twitter arguments work, but it’d be nice to live in that world, wouldn’t it?)
  • Kansas City could get a new NBA team, according to … uh, the graphic designer for the Royals? Slow news day, KSHB-TV, or did you just really want the clicks from all the people old enough to miss the Kansas City-Omaha Kings?
  • Saskatoon’s nonprofit events center wants to build a soccer stadium, and is generously offering to put up $2 million, while the owner of an expansion Canadian Premier League franchise would put up another $2 million, so long as local government or (waves arms around vaguely at “the community”) puts up the other $24 million. They’ve also included a bunch of economic impact claims and a rendering of a stadium with no fireworks but weirdly synchronized glowing fountains, so you know they’re serious.
  • Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien is asking Rhode Island for an extra $30 million for a soccer stadium on top of the $46.2 million the state is already providing, on the grounds that “We lost the PawSox because of a lack of leadership. And hopefully we don’t lose this.” Pawtucket doesn’t actually have a soccer team, so it wouldn’t technically be “losing” something it never had in the first place, but it does sound a bit better than “money’s all gone, please send more,” anyway.
  • Hosting World Cup games in Atlanta could bring $500 million in economic benefits, says a study done by a “leading global management consulting firm”; hosting World Cup games in Nashville won’t bring in anywhere close to $700 million like a city tourism agency report claims, say every economist Center Square reporter Jon Styf could find. Guess we’ll all just have to agree to disagree, too bad there’s no way to tell whose numbers are correct by looking at evidence or something!
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Friday roundup: Tempe opens arena talks with Coyotes, soccer teams everywhere want taxpayers to cover their cost overruns

access_time personNeil deMause

Last of the semi-abbreviated news roundups! Things return to normal next week.

 

 

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Friday roundup: Reds exec says team will only demand renovation money, threatens to move if fans ask for better players

access_time personNeil deMause

This has officially been the longest week ever. Scientists agree! And so does the news:

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Pawtucket, Des Moines approve maybe $90m in soccer subsidies, local reporters can’t be bothered to explain it

access_time personNeil deMause

A $46.2 million subsidy for a Pawtucket USL soccer stadium was approved last week by … okay, let’s let the dueling crappy press reports explain it. First, the Providence Journal:

The Rhode Island Commerce Corporation board Friday afternoon approved $46.2 million in state incentives for a proposed $284-million soccer stadium and residential and commercial development on the Seekonk River in Pawtucket…

The 8-to-0 votes Friday approved $36.2 million in state borrowing for infrastructure improvements associated with the project, to be paid off by new tax revenue from Tidewater Landing. It also included $10 million in Rebuild RI tax credits, plus rebates of the sales and use tax on materials used during construction.

That seems pretty straightforward: The Rhode Island Commerce Corporation is the state development agency, and $46.2 million worth of future tax kickbacks (for a stadium that will only cost $40 million to build, plus a bunch of other non-soccer development) is about the size of what was being discussed last week. So, now it just needs to be approved by the state legislature, presumably? Let’s see what the Associated Press has to say:

A city committee approved the use of bonds and tax rebates amounting to $46 million for the project on Thursday, the city said in a statement.

The city … council? According to an earlier Providence Journal story, the “new tax revenue” kickbacks will include both state and city money, so it makes sense that the city would have to approve it. But why only a committee? Is there a full council vote still to follow? Anyone? Have our nation’s journalism outlets just totally given up on explaining anything that isn’t in the press release?

Meanwhile, in Des Moines, where last week it was reported that the city was working on subsidies for its own USL stadium that would amount to “much less than $45 million” (“much” here being a technical fiscal term meaning “something”), the city council voted last night to … the only reporting is from something called We Are Iowa, and here’s what it says:

The Des Moines City Council voted Monday night to approve a preliminary plan for the Capital City Reinvestment District, which formerly belonged to Dico, Inc.

The Council also voted to approve preliminary terms to sell part of the area for an urban renewal development agreement with Krause Group…

The Stadium District will transform the area into a “welcoming gateway into the downtown” part of Des Moines. A 6,300-seat, multi-use soccer stadium is hoped to be built in the area as well as a 150-room hotel with office buildings and a parking ramp.

Okay, what are those “preliminary terms”? Would the project still get tax kickbacks, just like in Pawtucket? Hello?Come on, guys, seriously, this is like your one job!
More news on both of these as they’re reported, I guess, which may or may not ever happen. (There’s video of the Des Moines council hearing, I see, but I don’t have time to watch it all right now to see if it includes any more details.) In the meantime, here’s a rendering of some sad people walking around the outside of the Pawtucket stadium because they can’t afford a ticket, or maybe don’t like soccer, or maybe decided to leave in the middle of the match because it was so boring, I mean seriously, half the fans are choosing to stand at an outward-facing railing and stare into the distance rather than watch the game … which is actually pretty much how I felt at the last low-level U.S. pro soccer match I went to, so points for realism!

 

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Friday roundup: We have entered the Golden Age of minor-league stadium scams

access_time personNeil deMause

Welp, that was another week. I know from comments that some of you think that the stadium and arena subsidy racket is about to come grinding to a halt, either because of the Covid economy or everybody already having a new enough stadium or something, but it sure looks like team owners didn’t get the memo — my RSS feeds are as hopping as they’ve ever been with tales of sports venue funding demands, and it’s still a rarity when local governments say no or even hmm, really? Check out this week’s roster, which, as yours truly predicted a couple of months ago, is especially jam-packed with minor-league baseball stadium plans:

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Pawtucket developer slashes size of soccer stadium project, still wants same $70m in tax subsidies

access_time personNeil deMause

The Covid economy has developers all over rethinking construction plans, especially office projects, since it seems pretty likely not nearly as many people will be going in to the office in our future. And so it goes with Fortuitous Partners’ soccer stadium project for a USL team in Pawtucket, which was going to involve $360 million in apartments, shops, offices, and a hotel and conference center to go along with the $40 million stadium, and which now will include something less than that:

Brett Johnson, one of the cofounders of Fortuitous told the Pawtucket City Council on Wednesday night that the project was being scaled back. The former Apex site — the centerpiece of the project due to its highway visibility — is now being eliminated.

Johnson, who is also owner of the Phoenix Rising USL team, told the Providence Journal that his new price tag was “likely in the ‘low $300 million’ range.” The pandemic, he explained, has reduced demand for office space, though he could still add more offices later if those become a thing again.

But at least if the project is slimmed down, it won’t need so much in public tax subsidies, right? Hahahahahaha, no:

The project is still looking for $70 to $90 million in public financing. The company has hired high-powered Rhode Island lobbyists to try and secure the funding.

Or as the Journal says, in a sentence that manages to contradict itself in a single clause:

Johnson said Fortuitous still intends to privately finance the project using Opportunity Zone investments aided by tax increment financing with the city and state.

Kicking back $70-million-plus in tax revenues to get a $40 million minor-league soccer stadium (and a pile of other stuff) never seemed like the best idea, but it’s singularly worrisome at a time when minor-league sports is reeling and may never fully recover. Here’s Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson back in April on Pawtucket’s USL plans:

“This is a league with 100 teams and different tiers. Minor league sports are above everything the sort of thing to get crushed by coronavirus — everything they do is about getting people into the stadium. That’s not going to be happening with this team,” said Matheson.

“And this isn’t Lucchino — this isn’t John Henry, or Bob Kraft. These are often shoestring operations. [Coronavirus] could bankrupt a reasonably large number of teams in that league and suddenly this isn’t the league it was before,” added Matheson.

The tax increment financing plan still needs to be approved — I think by the state legislature, though it already approved a Pawtucket TIF district, so maybe just the city or the governor needs to okay it, really the reporting on this has been terrible — so there’s still time for things like public hearings, if anyone believed in those anymore. Maybe I’ll see if I can ask Matheson about it when he and I join up as part of this big Zoom get-together on the Los Angeles Angels stadium deal tonight at 9:30 Eastern/6:30 Pacific. I’m told it’s going to be broadcast live on the Voice of OC’s Facebook page, so check that out if you’re interested — I anticipate being very active in the comments…

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Friday roundup: Another Canadian sports bailout request, and everyone pretends to know when things may or may not reopen

access_time personNeil deMause

Happy May, everybody! This crisis somehow both feels like it’s speeding into the future and making time crawl — as one friend remarked yesterday, it’s like we’ve all entered an alternate universe where nothing ever happens — and we have to hold on to the smallest glimmers of possible news and the tiniest drips of rewards to keep us going and remind us that today is not actually the same as yesterday. In particular, today is fee-free day on Bandcamp, when 100% of purchase prices goes to artists, and lots of musicians have released new albums and singles and video downloads for the occasion. Between that and historic baseball games on YouTube with no scores listed so you can be surprised at how they turn out, maybe we’ll get through the weekend, at least.

And speaking of week’s end, that’s where we are, and there’s plenty of dribs and drabs of news-like items from the week that just passed, so let’s catch up on what the sports world has been doing while not playing sports:

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