Getting a late start this morning after being out last night seeing Neko Case, so let’s get to this:
- MLS commissioner Don Garber is still beating the drum for two more expansion teams to get to a total of 28, and mentioned seven cities — Detroit, San Diego, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Charlotte, Las Vegas, and Phoenix — as possibilities, notwithstanding that Cincinnati was already picked for an expansion franchise earlier this year. Cut the man some slack, it’s gotta be hard to keep track of all the cities that do and don’t have MLS franchises yet. Maybe he could get someone to make him an app.
- Detroit, like a lot of cities, is giving tax breaks and other subsidies to lots of projects, not just sports, and the evidence is that most of these are wasted on development that would happen anyway. Which isn’t new news, but in case you needed the reminder.
- A $1.5 billion redevelopment of the parking lots around the Nassau Coliseum is seeking $100 million in New York state grants, despite concerns that building a $1.5 billion mixed-use development in what’s kind of the middle of nowhere without a major-league team playing there is kind of a crazy idea.
- And speaking of development near New York sports venues, the Willets Point area in Queens — which visitors to Mets games may remember as a hive of auto repair shops, and more recently as a barren wasteland where a hive of auto repair shops used to be — may end up getting partly used as parking lots for the foreseeable future, which has people whose businesses were forcibly displaced for what was supposed to be new development kinda steamed.
- The Mobile BayBears are moving to Huntsville — as I’m sure you know, right? — and the city’s terrible lease on their 22-year-old stadium means the landowner could tear it down if the city doesn’t find a new team to move in. Don’t put all your development eggs in the basket of minor-league sports, kids, and if you do, for god’s sake get some grownups to write the lease.
- Restaurateurs in Inglewood are hoping for a windfall once the new Los Angeles Rams and Chargers stadium opens in 2020. Somebody should really tell them that even with two teams, that’s only 20 games a year, so they’d better figure out how to seat 70,000 people all at once to make up for other 345 days a year when not much is going on there. (Okay, not 70,000 people at once when it’s Chargers games.)
- Yldefonso Solá Morales Stadium, home of the Caribbean World Series champion Caguas Criollos of the Puerto Rican league, is facing demolition from Hurricane Maria damage because the city can’t spare $15 million to repair it. Not that Caguas should be taking money from all its other desperate needs to fix a baseball stadium, but it does drive home the craziness of Puerto Rico’s economic situation when a stadium will get torn down for the lack of less money than Dustin Pedroia was paid by the Boston Red Sox to play three games this year.
- Construction News has a long article about how Tottenham Hotspur‘s new stadium might not open at all this year thanks to organizational disarray and workers snorting coke on the job; it’s worth a full read, but if you just want the short version, Deadspin has an excellent summary with a great headline and your clicks help pay me for future articles for them, so sure, go there!