Category: North Carolina Courage

Rays execs “anticipate” county officials will approve stadium bonds once Rob Manfred Manfredsplains at them

access_time personNeil deMause

Tampa Bay Rays co-president Matt Silverman is in statement-issuin’ mode again, and this time his statement is that the team’s stadium plans are going quite great, actually:

“We anticipate that the Pinellas County Commission will authorize the bonds at their next meeting,” Matt Silverman said in a statement Tuesday. “As we stated in our letter three weeks ago, we remain ready to work with all key stakeholders to fill the funding gap their delay has created.”

That is, needless to say, an interesting statement to state, given that at last count there was still a 4-3 majority on the commission opposed to authorizing the county’s stadium bonds. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred made the rounds of local elected officials on Monday, including phoning “no” voters Dave Eggers and Chris Latvala. It doesn’t sound like Silverman or other Rays execs have met with anyone on the commission, so it’s always possible that his statement was meant as “We anticipate that the Pinellas County Commission will authorize the bonds at their next meeting if they know what’s good for them, capisce?”

As for that bit about “stakeholders” needing to fill the “funding gap” created by the bonds being sold four months before the Rays’ own initial deadline for doing so — something Eggers aptly termed “coy” — Silverman wasn’t at all clear about how much money team execs are looking for or who they expect to pay for it. It’s still possible that Rays owner Stu Sternberg intends to compromise on “You guys agree to send us the $1 billion you promised us, and we’ll agree to pay for the cost overruns we just made up — er, I mean, suddenly discovered.” Though one could also read Silverman’s statement as implying that they’re hoping to win over the newly critical commission members just by the commissioner Manfredding at them and get additional public cash on top of that for their troubles. We’ll know more by the commission’s next scheduled vote a week from today, maybe.

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Rays owner, Pinellas County prepare to haggle over $1B stadium deal, but what’s on the table?

access_time personNeil deMause

On Thursday, as the St. Petersburg city council hearing on approving $287.5 million in Tampa Bay Rays stadium bonds toward a total $1 billion public subsidy was still underway, I asked this:

It's very clear at this point that the St. Pete council intends to vote 4-3 to approve city bonds for a Rays stadium. The big question: Then what? Will Stu Sternberg demand more money to fill the budget gap he's claiming? Will the county demand more money to flip one of its four opposed members?

— Field of Schemes (@fieldofschemes.bsky.social) 2024-12-05T21:55:04.676Z

On Saturday, the Tampa Bay Times provided some preliminary answers:

Representatives from the Rays and from St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch’s administration have met with commissioners this week to seek their votes. It’s still unclear whether the Rays remain on board. … Welch said Thursday that “significant issues” remain regarding the Rays’ stadium obligations, though the private sector could fill the funding gap.

Could it, though? Presumably any private investor would want some kind of tangible return on their investment — economic activity doesn’t feed the balance sheet — so that would have to be either something Rays owner Stu Sternberg would have to give up (naming rights, pouring rights, suites, etc.) that he could otherwise cash in on and pocket the money from, or something the city would have to give up. Unless this whole cost overrun claim is a dodge by Sternberg to counter demands from county commissioners for a better deal so they can end up compromising right where both sides started, in which case the Rays owner might be happy enough to find private money for it so long as he gets to keep his initial $1 billion.

As for what Pinellas County commissioners might compromise on:

[Commissioner Vince Nowicki] said he wants the deal renegotiated with more convention and meeting space, revenue sharing by the team and payouts each time land from the Gas Plant is sold.

That’s a fair modest ask, though “revenue sharing” could add up to a significant amount, depending on the details. But of course Nowicki is only one county commissioner, and Sternberg only needs to sway one of the four “no” votes to get his stadium bonds; anyone else likely to come cheaper?

“I don’t feel any pressure to approve something that I said was a bad idea the entire time,” [Commissioner Chris Latvala] texted the Times.

Nothing much to work with there. Who’s next?

[Commissioner Dave Eggers] said he was meeting with Rays officials this week with an “open mind,” [but] he said hewas not “overly optimistic.” [Chris] Scherer, a stadium deal skeptic who also is new to the board, has said he could be a swing vote. Neither Scherer nor Eggers could be reached for comment.

I could be wrong — I only know these four commissioners from what I saw of them at one webcast hearing — but after watching a whole lot of stadium haggling over the years, this feels like one that is going to be settled not on the basis of whether a $1 billion public stadium price tag is bad policy, but on how much in sweeteners the swingiest of the swing votes is willing to settle for at the negotiating table. That isn’t necessarily terrible — if the whole kerfuffle of the last two months ends up getting a smidge more for the public, it’s better than nothing. And ensuring that the Rays stay in town isn’t worthless, even if it’s probably close to worthless, especially considering Sternberg’s lack of other cities offering him a similar deal.

Still, if it turns out that Pinellas County residents voted in a commission majority opposed to handing over a pile of money to a local sports billionaire when the area is reeling from a devastating hurricane, all to end up handing over a slightly smaller pile of money and calling that victory, that’s not great, exactly. The county commission majority has the opportunity to play hardball and demand a significantly reworked deal, or even to scrap this plan entirely and tell Sternberg to go back to the drawing board. So far they’re playing it close to the vest what if anything they’ll settle for, but given that a one-vote majority is only as strong as its weakest member, it’s probably not worth getting your hopes too high.

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Friday roundup: Chiefs want public money if Royals get any, plus what a baseball lockout could mean for MLB stadium talks

access_time personNeil deMause

Eight posts already this week, and now a full slate of Friday roundup news? Remember all the way back on, uh, Wednesday, when people were claiming that the public sports funding era had run its course? Those were good times, I thought maybe I might get to sleep in one day, but clearly that day is not now:

  • The Kansas City Royals owners haven’t even started publicly discussing a new downtown stadium, let alone how to pay for it, but already Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt is saying he’s considering what to do if the Royals leave the suburban sports complex the two teams share. “We’re going to watch as they go through the process, and at some point here in the next year or so, start thinking about what’s next for the Chiefs from a stadium standpoint,” said Hunt, who added that “we’ve had beautiful stadiums open now in Los Angeles and Las Vegas” that include features “I’m sure we’ll want to incorporate into the stadium.” The Kansas City Star added that “if the Royals receive tax dollars for a new downtown stadium … it’s believed the Chiefs would want a piece of the monetary pie,” which makes sense, it’s how the last Kansas City stadium subsidy worked way back in 2019, and the one before that in 2006. Look out, Indianapolis, there could be a new repeat sports subsidy offender in town!
  • MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred is saying the quiet parts loud again, exclaiming of the pending expiration of the players’ union contract on December 1 that “an offseason lockout that moves the process forward is different than a labor dispute that costs games,” which in Manfred-to-English autotranslates as “we’re going to lock the players out now when it doesn’t cost us anything in ticket sales rather than wait for them to strike in the spring when they have more leverage purple monkey dishwasher.” That makes hardball negotiating sense, but you have to wonder what effect a lockout will have on stadium talks in places like Oakland and Cleveland and Tampa Bay and Kansas City, where elected officials could now be debating whether to give hundreds of millions of dollars to a sport that is shut down in a labor dispute. Sports execs really do do the darnedest things.
  • Manfred also said the league’s executive committee has put off an approval request from Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg on his split city Montreal-Tampa Bay plan, because of “the press of other business” and that “it’s a complicated topic.” You could read this a bunch of ways — that the other owners think it’s a dumb idea, that Sternberg himself thinks it’s a dumb idea and they’re providing him cover by pretending to consider it so he can keep using it as a threat, or that they’re genuinely too busy discussing such issues as how much tacky stuff to preapply to baseball so that pitchers can grip the ball well but not too well — so take your pick.
  • Augusta voters rejected $240 million in bonds for a new arena on Election Day, so now naturally the Augusta-Richmond County Coliseum Authority is trying to figure out somewhere else to find $240 million that doesn’t require voter approval. “We’re looking at other options,” said authority chair Cedric Johnson, which so far could include $6 million in federal infrastructure money for new roads around an arena; Augusta has also diverted $45,000 from its parks budget to hire a consultant to look for more federal money. I’m telling you, while the Biden infrastructure bill is certainly designed to fund a whole lot of genuine public benefits like keeping bridges from falling down and keeping the power grid from failing, if there’s a a loophole that even part of a stadium or other pet development project can be rammed through, sports owners and their friends in local government are going to find it.
  • After a new $190 million stock show arena was similarly rejected on Election Day, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock says he’s determined to find a way to build one anyway, to fulfill his “commitment to the voters” to … build this thing the voters just said they don’t want? Mayors also do the darnedest things.
  • Chicago alderman George Cardenas says he’ll introduce a bill for the city to buy the Bears and sell shares to fans, a la the Green Bay Packers to keep the team from moving to Arlington Heights, which is a great idea except that the NFL passed new bylaws ruling out any new public or community-owned teams, so much for that then.
  • Developers in Raleigh say they have no “clear pathway” to build a 20,000-seat soccer stadium for North Carolina F.C. and the North Carolina Courage because the city has not shown “a deep interest” in kicking back property taxes to help pay for one. The minute someone offers them a huge pile of public money for a stadium, though, they’re rarin’ to go, because Raleigh “deserves” one, really what are they even waiting for, you know?
  • Staten Island’s new minor-league baseball team that is getting $8 million in public stadium renovations in order for the Atlantic League to bring it into existence will not be called the Pizza Rats after all, but rather the Staten Island FerryHawks, which the team’s website claims is “a fun-loving, baseball-playing superhero that combines the power, toughness and persistence of the Staten Island Ferry and the red tailed and cooper’s hawks that are seen around Staten Island.” I would have considered Googling this and similarly pronounced names before making the announcement, but maybe that’s just me.
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Friday roundup: A’s high-rises too damn tall, Raleigh stadium roof too damn bent, many baseball parks too damn flood-prone

access_time personNeil deMause

First things first: If you’re one of FoS’s new Patreon subscribers and missed yesterday’s post about whether the Oakland A’s owners are seriously considering moving to Las Vegas because it didn’t show up in your email, go click there (or here) now to catch up on it. (The automatic email system skipping the day’s early post and only sending out the later one is a bug that I think I’ve developed a workaround for, but we’ll have to wait for the next two-post day to tell for sure.)

And now, on to more news items from this week that you need to catch up on, because I haven’t reported them yet:

  • The Oakland Design Review Committee, which is part of the Oakland Planning Commission, which advises the Oakland city council on development issues, has raised concerns about the A’s proposed Howard Terminal stadium complex because it would include a 600-foot residential tower that would be the tallest building in the city, it would require fans to cross active train tracks to get to games, and it could interfere with the Port of Oakland’s future ability to expand its port operations to enable bigger cargo ships to dock. “I just don’t want anything bad to happen,” committee chair Clark Manus told KTVU regarding the train tracks, which is a reasonable worry, but isn’t this part of what the $855 million in public spending is supposed to go to fix? Did A’s owner John Fisher really request nearly a billion dollars in new roads and other infrastructure and neglect to guarantee that it would eliminate all grade crossings? The team’s proposed term sheet mentions “at-grade and grade-separated rail safety improvements,” but I guess that’s not super-specific, so yeah, let’s make sure if you spend a couple billion dollars on a new stadium district nobody dies in dumb ways.
  • Here are some renderings of a proposed North Carolina F.C and North Carolina Courage soccer stadium in Raleigh that looks like somebody sat on it and bent the roof, I guess that’s how future Raleighites will be able to tell they’re living in the future. After the Raleigh planning commission rejected rezoning for the project — which could include up to $335 million in public money — last December, the city council went ahead and approved it, presumably because the area where it would be built is, according to The Architect’s Newspaper’s report, “sleepy” and “underutilized,” and we can’t have that.
  • Images of the Somerset Patriots‘ stadium underwater after last week’s torrential rains in the Northeast set off a flurry of articles about how climate change will make flooded stadiums a more frequent sight, whether in cities prone to sea level rise (Miami, San Francisco, Washington, San Diego, New York, St. Petersburg) or those along flood-prone rivers (Cincinnati, maybe Pittsburgh?). There’s a big distinction between “occasionally flooded” and “permanently underwater,” obviously — something I tried to address in my Defector article earlier this year, which also raised the issue of cities like Phoenix becoming too hot to live in — but in the meantime let’s all just enjoy this image of two Cincinnati Reds pitchers crossing Crosley Field in a rowboat after a flood in 1937.
  • Is it safe to go to a packed football stadium even if you are vaccinated? Six out of seven public health experts who spoke to Kaiser Health News say no, but says if you do, wear a mask, and also try to get the other 50,000 people to wear masks as well, because that’s what will keep you from catching Delta more than your own personal masking decision. (Also presumably whether you’re in a domed or outdoor stadium, whether you spend time in enclosed areas like restrooms and concessions areas unmasked with other unmasked people, whether vaccinations are required for entry to the game, and other variables, but KHN didn’t really get into all that.)
  • Sports fans are increasingly dropping their cable subscriptions, and the sports industry needs to address this with what kind of plans they offer, says … okay, a guy whose column is called Cord-Cutter Confidential, so maybe not the most unbiased source. Anyway, I gotta go update my credit card for my ESPN+ subscription so I can watch Spanish soccer, I sure hope the sports leagues figure out a new system of charging people to watch sports without cable soon!

 

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Raleigh commission warns $2B soccer plan could displace residents, council may still okay it

access_time personNeil deMause

Plans for a $2 billion office/residential/hotel complex in Raleigh including a $180 million stadium for the USL’s North Carolina F.C. and the NWSL’s North Carolina Courage have been burbling along for more than a year now, as locals expressed concerns about the more than $300 million in city and county tax money that would be required over 30 years and also about encouraging gentrification and whether the city could afford any of this during a pandemic recession budget. Still, Steve Malik, the owner of the two soccer teams, and local developer John Kane got as far as a vote of Raleigh’s Planning Commission last night on rezoning the land, when things when unexpectedly awry, as the commission voted unanimously to deny the rezoning request because, man, I dunno, you try to parse all this:

“I find this whole thing disappointing because there is a general opportunity here for Raleigh, but you can’t do it at the expense of people,” said commissioner Jennifer Lampman.

“Maybe this is a really good thing, but it’s coming before things are in place to guide the growth to ensure that it is equitable. I worry by approving this now we will be signing off on the potential for disproportionally high and adverse transportation, environmental, economic and social impacts and there would primarily be bored by black communities,” said commissioner Nicole H. Bennett

“This rezoning application shows a vicious disregard for equity and fairness,” said commissioner Michele McIntosh.

The upshot — assuming WNCN-TV meant to type “borne,” not “bored” — seems to be that the planning commission is mostly worried that the project would price out residents of southeast Raleigh without consulting them first, a concern that has been raised in the past. And it’s a legit concern: Big development projects absolutely can, if not directly raise property values themselves, serve as a way to market a neighborhood as “revitalized,” which is the kind of thing that deep-pocketed newcomers like to hear, because less-well-heeled residents are unvital if not a little bit scary.

Still, we shouldn’t give short shrift to the concern that spending as much as $335 million in public money (mostly future property tax kickbacks, plus some other public cash) on a project based around a 20,000-seat stadium for one minor-league soccer team and one women’s soccer team — teams that currently average about 4,000 and 6,000 fans per game, respectively — is a little bit nutso. Malik has talked of wanting an MLS-ready stadium for Raleigh, but even though MLS seems determined to put a team in every city in North America, Charlotte is already getting an expansion team in 2022 with the help of public stadium upgrades, so a second North Carolina team probably isn’t going to be a priority anytime soon. (There was discussion earlier this year of downsizing the proposed stadium to 12,000 seats, but WNCN is saying 20,000 seats again, so either the developers are back to their original plan or the station’s proofreaders were asleep at the switch again.)

This whole mess will be dumped in the lap of the Raleigh city council for a public hearing next Tuesday, at which point lawmakers will decide whether to move ahead with the project or just torpedo the whole thing once and for all. Or at least until the developers inevitably return with a new plan, maybe one where they’ve paid to create some local pro-development groups? That’s how the pros do it.

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