Happy baseball season! Unless you’re a Miami Marlins fan, in which case it’s already ruined. But anyway:
- The Texas Rangers owners say they won’t tear down their 24-year-old stadium once they build their new one next door so they can have air-conditioning. What on earth will they use an empty baseball stadium for? “We will look for tenants to occupy the office building and now we’re entertaining ideas and how to retrofit the rest of the park,” says Rangers VP Rob Matwick. “What that will be, I don’t know. Right now we’re just fielding ideas and there has been a lot of interest.” Uh-huh.
- Morocco is touting its “very low gun circulation” as a plus for its 2026 World Cup bid against North America. Also it would spend $15.8 billion on new stadiums and infrastructure, which might actually be even crazier than U.S. gun laws.
- The Marietta Daily Journal says the Atlanta Braves‘ new stadium has been a huge success for Cobb County because the formerly undeveloped land is worth more now that the Braves owners have developed it, which isn’t how economic impact works at all. But I guess it’s nice that the traffic hasn’t been a nightmare, though you have to wonder how it’ll be once the Braves are good enough for people to start going to games again.
- The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s $1 billion expansion project is over budget and in financial trouble — in case you couldn’t have guessed that from “$1 billion expansion project” — and there have now been “discussions among local officials about potentially having to increase sales taxes to help fund the project.” Man, I gotta find me a way to become considered too big to fail.
- Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley still wants to build a soccer stadium in the West End despite everyone else considering that plan dead. A lawyer who fought against previous Cincinnati stadium deals calls this F.C. Cincinnati situation “madness,” which is about right.
- Building a football stadium creates stadium construction jobs, at least for a while! Hey, you know what else creates temporary jobs? Natural disasters. Clearly we need more of those.
- NFL commissioner Roger Goodell can’t stop hoping that the Buffalo Bills owners will get with the program and demand a new stadium, saying the Pegulas are “in the very early stages” of stadium planning. The Bills lease has an opt-out clause in two years, but team officials say they have no plans to use it. Don’t tell Roger, it’ll only make him sad.
- A developer trying to buy county-owned land in Bayville, Long Island swears he’ll build a $120 million minor-league hockey arena there even though he doesn’t have any investors yet, apparently under the impression this will make people take him more seriously.
- “Will the $1.1 billion Vikings stadium look like a bargain?” asks the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Ian Betteridge has your answer!