The world may be on vacation this week, but the stadium news decidedly is not:
- The Nashville S.C. stadium squabble continues, months after the city council supposedly approved a $75 million public subsidy (plus free land), and it’s way more than I can recap right now, so please go read the Tennessean’s summary instead while we wait for a final vote next Tuesday.
- The Kansas City Royals had a game delayed by leaky fountains, and the Los Angeles Dodgers had a game delayed when the lights went out. Clearly those stadiums are both outmoded, tear ’em down and build new ones!
- The city council of Mobile, Alabama, decided not to build a new $72 million stadium for the University of South Alabama, and the mayor is worried this will send a message to the NFL that Mobile doesn’t care about the Senior Bowl college football exhibition game, which is put on by a local nonprofit and not the NFL, so I don’t even know, man.
- Tampa Bay Rays designers say they can keep flyballs from hitting the roof at a new stadium, because computers! (Actually because new statistics-keeping, but everybody likes a “because computers” story and statistics are for guys who live in their parents’ basements, so.)
- Did you know that the Indianapolis Colts‘ stadium was built atop the remnants of a once-integrated neighborhood largely demolished for a new interstate? If not, here’s a great, sad Indianapolis Star article all about it.
- The Miami Marlins are experimenting with lower ticket prices to lure back fans, and some NFL teams are experimenting with $5 beers. We could call this the natural order of price-setting in a free-market economy after owners went too far with price increases, or we could get all excited about how forward-thinking owners are, ha ha, it’s Derek Jeter, no one will ever accuse him of that.
- Jason Notte is writing his new Forbes column way too frequently for me to link to them all, but here’s a nice one about how Phoenix should drive a hard bargain with the Arizona Diamondbacks, Arizona Coyotes, and Phoenix Suns to get you started.
- Speaking of other sites you should read regularly, here’s some lovely historical stadium vaportecture from Uni-Watch.
- The Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers owners want $1.16 million in public money for stadium upgrades, because it never hurts to ask.
- Perpetually injured professional baseball player says Wrigley Field and Fenway Park “suck” because his dressing room isn’t palatial enough, film at 11.
- A former Sacramento Kings exec is suspected of embezzling $13.4 million from the team to spend on beach houses, which has nothing to do with stadiums except that the Kings got hundreds of millions of dollars in public arena funding because they said they needed to improve their bottom line, so actually it has a lot to do with it.
- King County councilmember Rod Dembrokski is proposing putting the Seattle Mariners owner’s proposed $180 million lease subsidy up to a public vote in February. This really doesn’t seem to be going the Mariners owners’ way, does it?