Halifax Schooners – Field of Schemes

Friday roundup: OKC Thunder want their subsidies sooner, Indy Eleven want theirs later, let me repeat back your orders to make sure I have it right

January 15, 2021 Neil deMause

I’ve already thanked everyone individually, but I’d like to give a collective shoutout to all the readers who signed up as FoS Supporters this membership cycle. The money you send translates directly into time I can spend covering stadium and arena news for you, and I remain extremely heartened by your support. If you sent me your mailing address, your magnets should be en route; if you didn’t, send me your mailing address already, these magnets aren’t going to ship themselves!

And speaking of covering stadium and arena news, let’s cover some stadium and arena news, why don’t we:

The owners of the Oklahoma City Thunder, who won $115 million in arena upgrades as part of a sales-tax-hike project to fund mostly parks and social services because that’s the way Rick Horrow sells you your monorail, are now asking to get the first $115 million off the top to build a new scoreboard and install new seats and let the parks and stuff wait till later. City councilmember JoBeth Hamon says she would rather prioritize “things people would see out their front door,” get a load of her! How many megapixels do your trees have, hmm?
Indy Eleven owner Ersal Ozdemir, who last year successfully got $115 million in state money for a new MLS stadium while wriggling out of a requirement that his USL team actually make the jump to MLS, may now be about to wriggle out of the requirement that he actually pick a start and start building the stadium anytime soon. A bill introduced by state senator Jack Sandlin, the main backer of the original stadium bill, would extend that deadline to July 2024, in exchange for absolutely nothing that I can tell, because the business of Indiana is Indiana’s business or something.
The would-be Atlantic Schooners‘ would-be CFL football stadium project was already mostly dead, and now it’s completely dead, with the Halifax Regional Municipality declaring it was putting the plan on hold indefinitely since nothing was going on with it anyway. The Schooners ownership group says it still hopes to bring the plan back from the dead someday once the pandemic is over, though, because you never want to leave $20 million in subsidies sitting on the table if you can help it.
Did I say the Worcester Red Sox‘ new stadium would cost a record $157 million? Make that a record $172 million, once you add in the $15 million in “infrastructure improvements” the city will also be on the hook for as part of the team’s new lease. Some of the money will come from state and federal dollars, but that’s still money that could have been used elsewhere otherwise, though I guess “let’s build the local sports team some new roads or else the state will just blow the money on Lowell or Pittsfield” has some logic to it if you’re extraordinarily provincial.
Speaking of the Worcester Red Sox, the city of Pawtucket is suing the team’s owners of for failing to adequately maintain Pawtucket’s McCoy Stadium before the team relocated after the 2020 season. (Really after the 2019 season, since there was no 2020 minor-league baseball season, which ruined a perfectly good road trip to Pawtucket I had planned.) Pawtucket is seeking unspecified damages.
In case you’ve missed it, the NBA season is already a mess thanks to Covid outbreaks, and the league is trying to fix things by allowing players to keep playing maskless indoors in close proximity to each other for 48 minutes a night, but not allowing them to hug. Before that there was talk of holding off on playing games until the pandemic has stopped raging quite so much, but surely this will do the trick, no need to do anything crazy now.
Speaking of Covid, it’s running rampant in Arizona, where baseball spring training is about to start in a month, but MLB wouldn’t agree to any delay unless the players agreed to take pay cuts, which they wouldn’t, so fingers crossed that the vaccine rollout speeds up, I guess.
Part of Miller Park Way in West Milwaukee will remain Miller Park Way even though the Milwaukee Brewers‘ Miller Park is no longer called Miller Park, because locals have grown attached to the old corporate name, so there it will stand forever, apparently. Kind of like the Citgo sign.

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Friday roundup: Sports remains mostly dead, but train subsidies and bizarre vaportecture live on

April 24, 2020 Neil deMause

It’s been a long, long week for many reasons, so let’s get straight to the news if that’s okay:

Inglewood, California has now raised $328 million — $233 million in local sales tax revenue and $95 million from the California State Transportation Agency — toward the $1 billion cost of an “automated people mover” (read: an elevated trolley) to carry fans the 1.8 miles from the Inglewood subway station to the new Los Angeles Rams and Chargers stadium and proposed Clippers arena. On the one hand, this could be seen as a worthwhile public investment to reduce car use and provide a valuable service to local residents; on the other, spending a billion dollars in public money to build light rail on a route that’s already covered by city buses is pretty clearly mostly a benefit to the teams. We might have to add “free trains” to free land and tax breaks as among the more popular ways to subsidize sports venues in the 21st century while looking like you’re not.
The U.S. Supreme Court has denied a motion by Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke to have a lawsuit over his move of the team out of St. Louis moved from a courtroom to arbitration. That’s bad news for Kroenke and good news for St. Louis, which is hoping for monetary damages from the team and league for skipping town in violation of its own relocation guidelines, but mostly it’s an opportunity for KMOV in St. Louis to employ such terrible football metaphors as “The Supreme Court’s response represents an incomplete pass on the Hail Mary heaved up by Kroenke and co.,” which really should win an anti-Pulitzer, if that were a thing, which it really should be.
Two New York City baseball fans have sued MLB and several ticket agencies to recoup money they spent on 2020 tickets that the teams are refusing to refund on the grounds that the games are just “postponed,” not canceled. The pair sued in California, where the consumer laws are stronger, and are seeking class-action certification for their suit, which if successful could draw millions of additional plaintiffs (including me, since I have a pile of now-almost-certainly-useless Mets tickets for this season).
Taiwan is playing baseball in front of cardboard fans, and South Korea has started exhibition games with umpires (but not players) wearing masks and gloves, but before you get any hopes up that this could mean the resumption of pro sports in the rest of the world, keep in mind that Taiwan used its experience with SARS to quickly use quarantines, testing, and face marks to contain the virus before it ever became widespread, and South Korea quickly snuffed out an outbreak using similar measures. South Korea saw only 14 new cases yesterday and Taiwan only one, so until the rest of the world is down to around that level, it’s unlikely we’ll see much in the way of sports.
Back in pretend land, the NHL is talking about finishing its season in four empty arenas, and MLB could maybe play games in Dallas in addition to Phoenix and wherever, and college athletic directors think there will be some kind of football season this fall, and the independent minor baseball league American Association has a “target date” of starting play before paying fans in July, and European soccer leagues are slowly restarting practices while trying to figure out how to stage games with between 50 and 300 people (including players and staff) total in stadiums, but this is all just wishful thinking and reshuffling deck chairs for the moment — we could see some play resume starting in May, or July, or not until 2021, as the error bars on virus projections are still just too big to say for sure.
Now that the XFL has folded, the Texas Rangers‘ old Globe Life Park is set to be used for high school football this fall, if anyone thinks that there will be high school football this fall and that if so it will take place before enough fans to fill a 49,000-seat stadium, or any fans at all. Financial terms for the Arlington Independent School District to pay the Rangers for using their 26-year-old stadium that Arlington replaced with a new one because it didn’t have air-conditioning were not disclosed.
The Atlantic Schooners have put plans for a Halifax CFL stadium on the back burner, partly thanks to the pandemic but also because one of its three founding partners took a job with the Ottawa Senators and anyway they weren’t getting very far at getting money out of the Halifax regional council, so yeah. Looks like Cab-Hailing Purse Woman will have to find her sportsball somewhere else for the time being.
Moody’s may downgrade Atlanta’s $150 million in bonds used to finance renovations of the Hawks arena because the car rental taxes scheduled to pay them off are through the floor thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. This doesn’t change my conclusion the other day that sports projects aren’t particularly threatened by the economic crash — bonds get downgraded all the time, and Atlanta is still extremely likely to pay off the arena debt in other ways if it can’t come up with enough car-rental tax revenue — but it’s a worthwhile reminder that sports subsidies are never free, even when elected officials insist that they can pay for themselves.
Guangzhou Evergrande is building a new $1.7 billion, 100,000-seat soccer stadium, in part as a push for China to host the 2030 World Cup, and while I can’t find details on how it’s being funded (the Bangkok Post cited a local journalist as saying the team is “likely” paying for it), we do know that it’s going to have a roof designed to look like an enormous lotus flower and apparently with an unearthly red glow inside and the ability to project the score onto the inside, so enjoy these visions of pro sports’ stupid future:

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Halifax council okays $20m for CFL stadium for ex-Coyotes owner, but says not a penny more

December 11, 2019 Neil deMause

In a bit of a surprise because everyone in local government seemed to hate the idea, the Halifax regional council voted 10-7 yesterday to provide $20 million in public money toward a new CFL stadium in the city. There are a few caveats, though:

Would-be Halifax Schooners owner Anthony LeBlanc (yes, that guy) wanted as much as $79 million, but is getting only a little more than a quarter of that.
LeBlanc will have to agree to pay full property taxes on the stadium.
The government won’t be on the hook for any construction loans or ongoing capital or maintenance costs.

This is not the worst deal in the world for the public, and certainly a lot better than what LeBlanc was proposing. On the other hand, $20 million is $20 million, and there are lots of other things that Halifax could be spending it on instead: One councillor who voted against the proposal said he’d rather see the money go toward a new police station, a new library, or traffic and transit improvements.

Of course, LeBlanc now still needs to raise the rest of the money for a $110 million stadium, and the CFL has to approve a new franchise, though the league did make appreciative noises following yesterday’s vote. Part of me kind of hopes this stadium does happen, if only to see if they really build something that looks anything like the surreal renderings.

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Friday roundup: Developers pay locals $25 each to hold pro-arena signs, a smoking and farting winged horse team logo, and do you even need a third thing after those two?

November 15, 2019 Neil deMause

It’s been another week of pretty bad news, topped off by a private equity firm somehow buying the entirety of .org domains, meaning every nonprofit website will now have to be licensed from an entity whose sole mission is to squeeze as much money from them as possible. The stadium and arena news, by contrast, isn’t all terrible, so maybe it qualifies as cheery? You be the judge:

The Richmond city council voted Tuesday to put off a decision on a $1.5 billion downtown development that would include a new arena (public cost: $350 million), after a contentious hearing where both supporters and opponents held signs espousing their opinions. Or espousing somebody’s opinions, anyway: Some locals holding “yes” signs later reported that the project’s developers paid them $25 a pop to do so. City council president Michelle Mosby replied that if anything people were just reimbursed gas money, which 1) only makes sense if everyone there drove their own car and had to travel like 250 miles round trip to get to the hearing and 2) isn’t really any less corrosive of democracy anyway.
If you’ve been wondering how Inter Miami plans to build a temporary 18,000-seat stadium in Fort Lauderdale (later to be turned into a practice field) between now and March and figured it would have to involve throwing up a bunch of cheap metal bleachers, now there’s video of construction workers doing exactly that. Also laying down the sod for the field, which I thought usually takes place after the stadium is more or less built, but I guess if they can build the stadium without treading on the field, no harm in doing so now. This all raises questions of whether the stadium will feel excessively crappy, and if not why more soccer teams can’t just build cheap quickie stadiums like this without the need for public money; I guess we’ll know the answer by springtime one way or another.
When the state of Minnesota agreed to pay for the Vikings‘ new stadium with cigarette revenue after electronic pulltab gambling money didn’t come in as expected, it still kept collecting the gambling cash; and now that e-pulltabs (which are just lottery tickets, only on a tablet) have taken off, there’s debate over what to do with the cash that the state is collecting, about $5 million this year but projected to rise to $51 million by 2023. The Vikings owners want the money used to pay off their stadium debt early, while some lawmakers would like to use the revenue to fund other projects or reduce taxes on charitable gambling institutions now that it’s no longer needed — all are valid options, but it’s important to remember that the state already paid for most of the stadium, this is just arguing over what to do with the zombie tax that was left over after the financing plan was changed. (It would also be nice to know if e-pulltab gambling has cannibalized revenues from other gambling options, thus making this less of a windfall, but modern journalists have no time for such trivialities.)
The city of Wichita is spending $77 million (plus free land) on a Triple-A baseball stadium to steal the Baby Cakes from New Orleans, and have been rewarded with the Wichita Wind Surge, a name that’s supposed to reference the city’s aviation history or something but actually means “storm surge,” which isn’t a thing that they have in landlocked Kansas? It also features a logo that looks like a horse and a fly got caught in a transporter accident, which the team’s designer explained with “The nice thing about Pegasus, however, to me, was the fact that it’s got a horse in there.” A local designer responded with a sketch of a winged horse smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer, and farting, which by all accounts is much more popular with Wichitans. (The sketch is, I mean, though I’d love to see a poll asking Wichitans, “Which do you prefer, the name Wichita Wind Surge or farting?”)
San Diego State University’s plan to buy the city’s old football stadium and its surrounding land for $87.7 million has hit some “speed bumps,” namely that city economists have determined that the price could be below the land’s market value and $10 million of the sale price would have to be set aside for infrastructure improvements for the university’s development. “There’s also the matter of the $1-per-month lease that, as proposed, may not adequately protect the city from expenses or legal risk,” notes the San Diego Union-Tribune. Given all these uncertainties, the city’s independent budget analyst called SDSU’s proposed March 27 deadline “very challenging,” not that that’s stopped city councils before.
Saskatoon has enough room under its debt limit to finance either a new central library or a new sports arena, and regardless of what you think of how badly Saskatooners need a new library, it’s still a pretty strong example of how opportunity costs work.
The Phoenix Suns‘ new practice facility being built with the help of public money will include a golf simulator for players, because of course it will.
Speaking of Phoenix, the Arizona Republic has revealed what the Diamondbacks owners want in a new stadium; the original article is paywalled, but for once Ballpark Digest‘s propensity for just straight-up paraphrasing other sites’ reporting comes in handy, revealing that team owners want a 36,000- to 42,000-seat stadium with a retractable roof and surrounded by a 45- to 70-acre mixed-use development and a 5,000-seat concert venue and good public transit and full control of naming-rights revenue and public cost-sharing on ballpark repairs. And a pony.
“Will Raiders football hike your home value?” asks the Nevada Current, apparently because “Is the moon made of green cheese?” had already been taken.
And last but certainly not least, your weekly vaportecture roundup: The New Orleans Saints‘ $450 million renovation of the Superdome (two-thirds paid for by taxpayers) will include field-level open-air end zone spaces where fans have ample room enjoy rendered people’s propensity for flinging their arms in the air! The new Halifax Schooners stadium designs lack the woman hailing a cab and players playing two different sports at once from previous renderings, but do seem to still allow fans to just wander onto the field if they want! It should come as no surprise to anyone that even Chuck D can do a better job of drawing than this.

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Friday roundup: Team owners rework tax bills and leases, Twins CEO claims team is winning (?) thanks to new stadium, and other privileges of the very rich

October 11, 2019October 11, 2019 Neil deMause

Tons more stadium and arena news to get to this week, so let’s dive right in without preamble:

Minnesota Twins CEO Dave St. Peter told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that revenue from the team’s new stadium is what allowed the team to build a winning ballclub. The Twins actually made the postseason more times in their last decade in the Metrodome (five times) than in their first decade in Target Field (three times), and skimped on adding expensive players at the trade deadline this summer before running its postseason winless streak to 16 games across 15 seasons, but one of the nice things about being a CEO is that you can say things in the newspaper without getting fact-checked.
The Carolina Panthers got a break on their property tax assessment from county officials that will cut their annual tax bill from $5.7 million to $4.7 million, though team execs still want it cut to closer to the $1.8 million they paid last year before it was reappraised this year, and also they already don’t pay any taxes on the land under the stadium because they lease that from the city. The rich really are different from you and me: They can get their taxes lowered just by asking, that is when they don’t get to avoid paying taxes at all.
Also, a clause in Nashville’s lease with Nashville S.C. requiring the soon-to-be MLS team to play at least one game in Nashville in any 24-month period has the team’s financiers balking at loaning money for the stadium — presumably because they’re afraid MLS will up and disappear for a couple of seasons, maybe as part of a labor stoppage, who knows — so the city may just delete that clause. Seriously, lord grant me the negotiating powers of a mediocre rich man.
Golden State Warriors fans are pleased to discover that their team’s new arena isn’t just in the middle of the San Francisco Giants infield, plus it has a really really big scoreboard. But maybe it won’t be as loud as their old arena in Oakland? Or maybe this was just because it was an exhibition game? At least you can enter a lottery to win the right to buy one of 250 tickets per game priced at $25, without which the cheapest opening day seat would be $188, which taken together is the most 2019 factoid I can imagine.
Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer and New York Knicks owner James Dolan are still fighting over Ballmer’s plans for a new arena in Inglewood, and they will fight eternally.
The U.S. Supreme Court has given a final dismissal to a case charging that the car rental tax used by Arizona to fund sports facilities was unconstitutional because the money wasn’t being used for transportation projects.
There are 52 pro sports stadiums located in the new Trump-created Opportunity Zones, according to research by Billionaire Boondoggle author Pat Garofalo, which means they’re eligible for some kind of future tax breaks on appreciated value, though still nobody seems quite sure exactly how that works no matter how many FAQs the IRS adds about Opportunity Zones.
The Tampa Bay Rays weren’t the only team to play a postseason game before a less-than-capacity crowd: The Washington Nationals and St. Louis Cardinals did too, though in the latter case maybe partly because of games that started in the afternoon, though games have started in the afternoon before and still sold out, so draw your own conclusions about the death of baseball or whatever.
The Halifax CFL stadium proposal isn’t dead yet, but it’s close, with city councillors readying a motion to kill the $110 million plan because its funding plan is too hazy, which it really is.
The Boston Bruins‘ and Celtics‘ arena may have to replace all its seats again after installing new ones that eliminated any leg room to add more padding. This seems like the sort of thing that somebody should have tested out before ordering all new seats, but hey, that’s just me!
The Pimlico renovation subsidy battle has now entered into the former owner suing his own daughter phase.
The city of Santa Clara has voted again to remove the San Francisco 49ers as manager of their stadium, after the first vote might have been illegal because it took place in closed session. Glad we worked that out!
The Hamilton County Commission approved a plan that will involve spending $30 million to relocate a concrete plant so the county can build a music venue next to the Cincinnati Bengals stadium, with the Bengals helping out by forgoing $30 million in future payments from the county, though the team will also now get free parking space on the land. The music venue is reportedly needed because the waterfront is “an area starved for attention outside of Bengals and Reds games,” which maybe is something to keep in mind the next time you hear that a sports stadium will be enough to revitalize an underused area.
In completely unrelated news, here’s an article about a Columbus bar owner who is hoping that the new Crew soccer stadium being built nearby will be a windfall for her business.

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Friday roundup: Lots more fans showing up disguised as empty seats

September 27, 2019 Neil deMause

Is public financing of sports venues worth it? If you’ve been noticing a bit of a dip in the frequency of posts on this site over the past few months, it’s not your imagination: I had a contract job as a fill-in news editor that was taking up a lot of my otherwise FoS-focused mornings. That job has run its course now, which should make it a bit easier to keep up with stadium and arena news on a daily basis going forward, instead of leaving much of it to week-ending wrapups.

That said, you all do seem to love your week-ending wrapups, so here’s one now:

- Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Joe Musgrove says of poor attendance this season, “With the price of tickets now, I don’t know if I’d pay that much to watch a team that played like we did this year,” which is a pretty excellent summation of the conclusions that I and Rob Arthur came up with for MLB’s attendance drop.
- On the other hand, we have the Tampa Bay Rays, who are in the thick of a wild-card race and still can’t draw fans no matter what. Tampa Bay has some special problems.
- San Jose Sharks vice president Doug Bentz says of trying to keep attendance numbers up, “Our biggest competitor is Netflix.” Aw, does Bentz actually think that the younger generation is still spending its leisure time watching TV and not TikTok videos? That’s so adorable.
- The Texas Rangers move into their new air-conditioned stadium next year, and Dallas Morning News columnist Tim Cowlishaw says baseball won’t be the same with most games played under a roof. Time to build a new stadium, maybe with these!
- Pawtucket is considering bringing in a Single-A or independent league baseball team next year to replace the departing Pawtucket Red Sox, and studying “how much it would cost to remodel McCoy should a new team utilize the stadium.” I guess it can’t hurt to do a cost-benefit analysis of baseball vs. no baseball, but still I would say maybe check whether one of these lower-level leagues would even demand a remodeling before rushing out to price new furniture.
- Alan Trammell loved Tiger Stadium so much that he snuck in years after it was closed to walk around the dugout and wade through a flooded clubhouse.
- Halifax officials are proposing a $110 million CFL stadium with about $20 million worth of public subsidies, which doesn’t sound too bad, except the various options for how the subsidies will work are so up in the air that it’s tough to put a grade on this one just yet. But I’m so long as the stadium can still be used for soccer and football at the exact same, I’m not gonna complain too hard.
- Sports economist J.C. Bradbury has been appointed to the Cobb County development authority, which is way too late to do anything about the Atlanta Braves stadium subsidies, but maybe can at least give Bradbury a bigger platform to point out all the money the state of Georgia wastes on film subsidies.
- The Buffalo News still won’t let go of its dream for a new Bills stadium, and sent one of its reporters to Boston to look at supermarkets and “an inflatable Stay Puft Marshmallow Man” to show what the future may hold.
- The Cleveland Browns owners still won’t say if they want a new stadium or a renovated stadium or what, and their lease isn’t up for another nine years, and why is this interview even considered news exactly?
- The Cleveland Plain Dealer asked its editorial board to consider the question “Is public financing of sports venues worth it?” and their answer was: No, no, yes, maybe, what choice do we have, sort of, maybe not, and yes. We’ll be back again next week!

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Friday roundup: IRS hands sports owners another tax break, A’s accused of skimping on Coliseum land price, Rays could decide this summer on … something

May 3, 2019 Neil deMause

Happy Friday! Here is a fatberg of stadium and arena news to clog up your weekend:

San Jose Mercury News columnist Daniel Borenstein says the Oakland A’s owners could be getting a discount of between $15 million and $65 million on their purchase of half the Oakland Coliseum site from Alameda County, which is hard to tell without opening up the site to other bids, which Alameda County didn’t do. You could also look at comparable land sale prices and try to guess, which shows that the A’s owners’ offer is maybe closer to fair value; it’s not a tremendous subsidy either way, but still oh go ahead, just write us a check for whatever you think is fair is probably not the best way to sell off public assets, yeah.
St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman says he expects to hear by this summer from Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg whether Sternberg will seek to build a stadium in St. Pete or across the bay in Tampa. Of course, Sternberg already announced once that he was picking Tampa and then gave up when nobody in Tampa wanted to pay for his $900 million stadium, so what an announcement this summer would exactly mean, other than who Sternberg will next go to hat in hand, remains unclear.
Fred Lindecke, who helped get an ordinance passed in St. Louis in 2002 that requires a voter referendum before spending public sports venues, would like to remind you that the soccer stadium deal approved last December still has to clear that hurdle, not that anybody is talking about it. Since the soccer subsidies would all be tax kickbacks and discounted land, not straight-up cash, I suspect this could be headed for another lawsuit.
Cory Booker and James Lankford have reintroduced their bill to block the use of federal tax-exempt bonds for sports venues, but only Booker got in the headline because Lankford isn’t running for president. (Okay, also it’s from a New Jersey news site, and Booker is from New Jersey.) Meanwhile, the IRS just handed sports team owners an exemption from an obscure provision of the Trump tax law that would have forced them to pay taxes on player trades; now teams can freely trade their employees like chattel without having to worry about taxes that all other business owners have to, thank god that’s resolved.
Golden State Warriors star Kevin Durant, for some reason, revealed that “Seattle is having a meeting to try to bring back the Sonics,” but turns out it’s just Chris Hansen meeting with a bunch of his partners and allies from his failed Sodo arena plan, not anyone from city government at all, so everybody please calm down.
The rival soccer team that lost out to David Beckham’s Inter Miami for the Lockhart Stadium site in Fort Lauderdale is now suing to block Beckham’s plans for a temporary stadium and permanent practice facility there, because this is David Beckham so of course they are.
Publicly owned Wayne State University is helping to build a $25 million arena for the Detroit Pistons‘ minor-league affiliate, and Henderson, Nevada could pay half the cost of a $22 million Las Vegas Golden Knights practice facility, and clearly cities will just hand out money if you put “SPORTZ” on the name of your project, even if it will draw pretty much zero new tourists or spending or anything. Which, yeah, I know is the entire premise of this site, but sometimes the craziness of it all just leaps up and smacks you in the face, you know?
The Philadelphia Union owners have hired architects to develop a “master plan” for development around their stadium in Chester, because they promised the city development and there hasn’t been any development and maybe drawing a picture of some development will make it appear, couldn’t hurt, right?
Wannabe Halifax CFL owner Anthony LeBlanc insisted that “we are moving things along, yeah” on getting federal land to build a stadium on, while showing no actual evidence that things are moving along. “The only direction that council has ever given on this is ‘dear staff, please analyze the business case when it comes,’” countered Halifax regional councillor Sam Austin. “Everything else is media swirl.”
Never mind that bill that could have repealed the Austin F.C. stadium’s property tax break, because its sponsor has grandfathered in the stadium and any other property tax breaks that were already approved.
Hamilton, Ontario, could be putting its arena up for sale, if you’re in the market for an arena in Hamilton, Ontario.
And finally, here’s an article by the Sacramento Bee’s Tony Bizjak on how an MLS franchise would be great for Sacramento because MLS offers cheap tickets and a diverse crowd who like public transportation and MILLENNIALS!!!, plus also maybe it could help incubate the next Google, somehow! And will it cost anything or have any other negative impacts? Yes, including $33 million in public subsidies, but Tony Bizjak doesn’t worry about such trivialities. MILLENNIALS, people!!!

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That lady from the Worcester baseball stadium rendering has found her way to the Halifax CFL stadium rendering

April 2, 2019April 1, 2019 Neil deMause

The Halifax CFL stadium renderings are out, and are they ever the bestest!

https://twitter.com/architecture49/status/1112733853800648704

It’s little hard to see the images when they’re that tiny, so let’s blow up, oh, the top right one and:

This is amazing for several reasons, several of which have been spotted by the Halifax Examiner’s Tim Bousquet, who just last week wrote an item wonderfully titled “We are eagerly awaiting the ridiculous architectural renderings that are certain to accompany the stadium sales pitch,” and who yesterday tweeted:

Also, this is a wonderful sporting event, where soccer and football players are using the field AT THE SAME TIME and there's some random woman taking a photo of the sky

— Tim Bousquet (@Tim_Bousquet) April 1, 2019

I also love that the end zone just turns into a pedestrian plaza, the better for Halifax’s lone bike rider (his name is Steve) to ride right out onto the field during a game, and that all the fans in the stands are choosing to watch from the concessions concourse instead of taking seats, and that the stadium lights appear to be on in the middle of the day. But mostly I really love that Cab-Hailing Lady (or her friends know her, Linda) is living out her dream of visiting every imaginary sports stadium in North America. And hailing a cab there.

Meanwhile, Bousquet’s final comment reminds me of a very old strip from Tug McGraw’s (and some unnamed cartoonist’s and ghost writer’s, I’m sure) very old comic Scroogie, which I still have around for some reason:

You know what they say: Comic strips plus time equals architecture. Or something like that.

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Friday roundup: Neo-Expos seek public land for stadium, Hawaii mulls new stadium to host nothing, D-Backs spend bupkis fixing supposedly crumbling stadium

February 15, 2019 Neil deMause

So very, very much news:

Would-be Montreal Expos reviver Stephen Bronfman has reportedly settled on federally owned land in Peel Basin near downtown as a prospective stadium site once a franchise is obtained, through expansion or relocation. Mayor Valérie Plante called the idea “interesting”; other than that, there’s been no word of what Bronfman would pay for the land or how the stadium would be paid for or really anything involving money, so sure, “interesting” is a fine evaluation of this news.
Charles Allen, the D.C. councilmember whose district includes RFK Stadium, calls the site “a very wrong choice for an NFL stadium,” and instead would like to see housing and parks there. Mayor Muriel Bowser disagrees, so this is going to come down to a good old council fight. Too bad Marion Barry isn’t around anymore to make things interesting.
Hawaii is considering spending $350 million in public money on a new football stadium to replace Aloha Stadium because, according to state senator Glenn Wakai, “It’s kind of like driving a Datsun pickup truck that is just being run into the ground. At a certain point, time to get a new pickup truck.” Given that Aloha Stadium currently hosts nothing much at all other than University of Hawaii football, it’s more like spending $350 million to replace your pickup truck that just sits in the driveway with a new pickup truck, but far be it from me to interfere with Sen. Wakai’s attempts to bash Datsun for some reason.
Halifax is still considering whether to spend $120-140 million on a stadium for an expansion CFL team, maybe via the magic of tax increment financing; University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe points out that a TIF isn’t magic but just “makes the subsidy less transparent, less obvious that it indeed even is a subsidy” — but then, pulling the wool over the public’s eyes is a kind of magic, no?
The Oakland Raiders have a “very real” chance of playing 2019 at the Oakland Coliseum, according to … this Bleacher Report headline, but nothing in the actual story? What the hell, Bleacher Report?
Arizona Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick has claimed that the team’s stadium would need $8 million in upgrades over the winter, but has only spent $150,000. Which isn’t totally a gotcha — team execs say they’re conserving the stadium maintenance fund to spend on future repairs — but it does poke a bit of a hole in their argument that the stadium is in such bad shape that MLB could order the Diamondbacks to leave Arizona.
Austin residents will get to vote in November on whether the city can give public land to a pro sports team owner without a public vote, but it’ll probably be too late to affect the deal to do that for Austin F.C. owner Anthony Precourt. It’ll come in handy next time Austin is in the market for a pro sports team, I guess, though then the owner will probably just figure out a different way to ask for subsidies. “Better late than never” doesn’t work that well when it comes to democracy.
Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said he’s “not sure that there’s much space for public consultation” on a redevelopment project to include a Flames arena, though he added that “it would be very interesting to hear from the public on what they think the right amount of public participation in this should be, and certainly there will be an opportunity for the public to have their voices heard but it might not happen until there’s something on the table.” It’s hard to tell whether that’s a justification or an apology — and keep in mind that Nenshi was deliberately shut out of the committee negotiating any deal — but there you are.
MLS commissioner Don Garber just got a five-year extension, and — quelle coincidence! — the league is now talking about expanding to 32 teams by 2026. Whether this is really a Ponzi-esque attempt to paper over weak financials with a constant influx of expansion fees won’t be entirely clear until the expansion finally stops and we see how the money looks then, but one thing is increasingly clear: It’s kind of crazy to throw stadium money around in hopes of landing an MLS franchise when it’s increasingly clear every reasonably large city in the U.S. is going to get one sooner or later.
And finally, Amazon pulled out of its $3 billion tax break deal with New York yesterday, and it sounds like it’s because its execs were tired of taking a PR beating around the company’s anti-union stance and contracting for ICE. Some New Yorkers are celebrating victory, others are retreating into the Casino Night Fallacy, and as always, The Onion has the final word.

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Halifax CFL stadium would cost taxpayers up to $190m, team owners to kick in (cough cough, hey, what’s that over there?)

October 29, 2018November 5, 2018 Neil deMause

The CFL expansion team for Halifax that was first rumored last year — okay, not really “first,” as this has been the subject of rumblings for decades, but first this time around — took a major leap forward, at least in terms of media coverage, on Friday as the Halifax Regional Council posted a document laying out the basics of a stadium financing plan, which would entail:

a 24,000-seat stadium, to be built at a cost of $170 million to $190 million, which would cost $9 million to $10 million in annual debt service;
the city getting permission from the province of Nova Scotia to “contribute
financially to the debt financing of a stadium through a Tax Incremental Financing model or otherwise”;
the province kicking in some money as well, with possible sources being a hike in hotel taxes or the imposition of a car rental tax;
the proposed team’s owners, Anthony LeBlanc (yes, the former Arizona Coyotes owner), Bruce Bowser, and Gary Drummond, would purchase land in Shannon Park, a former Navy barracks site across the harbor from Halifax in Dartmouth, from the federal Canada Lands Company for an undisclosed sum.

Needless to say, there’s a lot of hand-waving involved here. Would a football stadium in use for only nine home games really generate anything significant in terms of tax increment, which relies on increased spending in the area around a development? How much money would come from a TIF, and how much from provincial car or hotel taxes? Would the team chip in any money up front, or at least pay rent to defray the public costs? Would they pay fair market value for the Shannon Park land? Would they pay property taxes? Who would get any naming rights money? Who would pay for cost overruns and maintenance and operations? And what would the stadium’s neighbors — one bit of Shannon Park is currently owned by the Millbrook band of the Mi’kmaq first nation, and another by the Halifax regional school board — think of having this project visited upon them?

The Halifax regional council is set to meet tomorrow to vote on opening negotiations over a Shannon Park stadium plan, but it seems unlikely that we’ll get more details then about any of the above. Which is a shame, as I’m dying to call this “the worst disaster on the Halifax waterfront since 1917,” but I really should wait for confirmation of how bad it would be before saying something like that.

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