How is it Friday again already? Is there more than one Friday per week now? Is it always Friday? Discuss in comments.
- When the owners of the NWSL’s Kansas City Current agreed to build a $117 million soccer stadium mostly with private money in 2022, it was seen as a rare win for keeping public costs low. But as we should know by now, we can’t have nice things, so just two years after the Current stadium opened, K.C. Mayor Quinton Lucas (previously this week seen stumping for tax money for a Royals stadium) is proposing spending $235 million plus additional TIF property tax breaks to expand it from 11,500 to 18,000 seats, finish a mixed-use district around it, and add a parking garage. Lucas defended the deal as “less than what we see in almost any men’s sports economic development deal — not just in the country but in our own region,” and you have to admire the chutzpah of citing your own lavish subsidy plan for the local men’s team as justification for lavishing money on a women’s team as well, this may have to replace Leo Rosten’s original definition.
- The Tampa city council, moonlighting as the Tampa Community Redevelopment Agency, voted yesterday to put off a vote on funding for a Rays stadium until August, and possibly further, as a state ballot measure on property taxes in November could upend the local budget picture. Officials also said they don’t have enough information on how the stadium financials would work, with CRA member Charlie Miranda asking: “How can I vote on something that I don’t know what’s going to happen? That’s the fact of it. Plain and simple.”
- Meanwhile, a local Tampa attorney has called for four members of the CRA board to resign or be removed on the grounds that they own property in Ybor City that could gain in value if the Rays built a stadium there instead of at Hillsborough College. Not according to Bradlee Kilgore’s latest research, keep up with the literature, man!
- The owners of the Forest City Cleveland men’s soccer and Cleveland Astra women’s soccer teams want a cut of the cigarette and alcohol taxes that already aren’t enough to fund maintenance and upgrade of the city’s other sports teams, because of course they do.
- The city council in Modesto, California has backed out of a plan to build a USL soccer stadium after it turned out there was a $43 million funding gap. Now Modesto will never be on the map like Boise and Chattanooga!
- The Canadian Football League could be looking at building a $350 million stadium for a potential expansion team in Québec City, claims a guy. (Who’ll pay for it: TBD, but less likely to be public dollars than in the U.S., maybe.) The CFL’s past expansion attempts haven’t exactly gone smoothly, but you’ve got to root for a franchise that could have the name L’Attaque de Québec.
- $1.45 billion to renovate a college football stadium, sure, why not.
- The AI slop is getting weird, man.
