Category: stupid infrastructure

Friday roundup: Rays stadium could erode beach sand funds, Oakland mayor sends message to MLB owners on A’s-to-Vegas

access_time personNeil deMause

I published four posts in the first four days of this week despite a router (finally replaced last night) that was doling out packets with an eyedropper, and now the internet itself isn’t letting me consistently load the site, so you’ll forgive me if the Friday roundup is a bit perfunctory or late, won’t you?

On with the news, typed out for now in a Notes file:

  • Sports subsidy advocates like to argue that spending tourist tax money on stadiums doesn’t really cost local governments anything because it can only be spent on tourism projects anyway, but what then of news that a Tampa Bay Rays stadium in St. Petersburg could eat up all the county hotel tax money that is needed to replenish the county’s beaches?
  • The New York Times’ new non-union sports department has an interview with Oakland mayor Sheng Thao about how she met with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred after he claimed there was no stadium offer in Oakland for the A’s to present him with 31 copies (one for him and one for each MLB owner) of her city’s stadium offer. Thao said she wanted “to ensure that the [relocation] committee understands all of our deal points” and also said that “absolutely” she would consider improving her offer. All of which could just be covering all her bases so she can say she tried, but also could be playing to the crowd of MLB owners who’ll be voting on the A’s-to-Vegas move, in hopes that at least eight of them are fearful enough of trading a top TV market for MLB’s smallest, or just hate John Fisher enough, to vote “no,” either of which is certainly possible.
  • Baltimore Orioles execs have started lobbying Congress for federal money for “revitalization efforts” in the Camden Yards area, according to disclosure forms uncovered by Politico. How much money they want isn’t the kind of thing listed on lobbyist disclosures, but it’s definitely fresh territory in terms of public funding asks, albeit expected once Joe Biden announced a ton of federal infrastructure spending and sports teams smelled blood in the water.
  • Milwaukee Brewers business operations president Rick Schlesinger has provided a list of some of the reasons team execs want about $350 million in state money to renovate the stadium, and they include: 22-year old boilers, obsolete field chillers (?), and TV wiring that needs to be upgraded to fiber optics. Damn, I should have kept renting — under sports logic, I apparently could have demanded that my landlord pay for my new router…
  • Charlotte mayor Vi Lyles says spending $120 million on a new tennis center is about “creating jobs in this community” WFAE’s race and equity desk asked if that’s really so, but didn’t ask any actual economists who might be able to answer the question, so gotta give this a B-minus at best.
  • NBA commissioner Adam Silver says the league will consider both Seattle and Las Vegas for expansion teams once the league signs a new TV rights deal in 2025. Both cities have new arenas already, so maybe they can get away without building even newer ones, though I dunno, Climate Pledge Arena will be five years old by then, who knows how the field chillers will be holding up.

Okay, I can access the site again, going to hit publish on this before Mercury goes back into retrograde. Stay cool, and see you Monday!

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Oakland mayor wants every U.S. adult to kick in $1 toward a new A’s stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

I’ve written here before about cities and teams that are looking for a cut of federal infrastructure money to help in building sports venues, now that there’s that trillion-dollar infrastructure bill hanging out there like so much fresh meat. Mostly that’s been a few million here and there, but Oakland mayor-for-another-few-weeks Libby Schaaf, who has about a half-billion-dollar budget hole for an A’s stadium even after putting in $495 million in city infrastructure money, has previously talked about seeking $180 million in “federal grants.” And now we know where that money would come from, and of course it’s the infrastructure bill. As Oakland urban policy advocate Kitty Kelly Epstein wrote in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed:

Thanks to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Mega Grant program, communities across the country have been asked to identify their highest-priority projects in the first round of long-needed transportation investment funding to help make U.S. transit safer, more efficient and resilient to future challenges…

Mayor Libby Schaaf’s administration applied for a $182 million Mega Grant to help fund what it describes as a “waterfront mobility hub” at Howard Terminal in Jack London Square. In reality, though, the grant would help billionaire Oakland A’s owner John Fisher develop his $12 billion proposal for luxury condos and a stadium far more than it would the public.

The Mega Grant program — MEGA here stands for National Infrastructure Project Assistance, because of course it does — includes a total of $5 billion to be provided this year to local governments for highways, bridges, freight rail, passenger rail, or other “critical large” transportation projects that “would otherwise be unachievable without assistance.” It’s money that the feds are going to spend one way or another anyway, yes; on the other hand, it’s also a finite pool of money, so if $182 million of it goes to the A’s, that’s $182 million that some other city doesn’t get for building some other road or bridge or rail line, which might benefit more people than just one sports team owner.

(And yes, new transit will benefit A’s fans trying to get to the game, but right now they have a stadium they can get to just fine when there’s anything worth seeing there, so it’s hard to see it as that much of a public good vs. a private one.)

Epstein notes that Oakland “residents, stakeholders and experts were never asked how they might want to spend a Mega Grant. No hearings; no webinars; no surveys — not even consideration for existing projects in Oakland’s Capital Improvement Plan.” All of which is par for the course in sports subsidy deals: Part of the challenge is shaking loose public money, but sometimes it’s more about shoving your way to the front of the line for money that already exists. It’s unclear whether the transportation department will look kindly on Schaaf’s pitch — City Administrator Ed Reiskin was previously skeptical — but either way, Oakland’s mayor who used to decry spending public money on sports teams using her city’s power to ask that federal infrastructure money be funneled away from established transportation priorities and toward the local sports billionaire is a sign of the political times, if nothing else. The Gang of Four isn’t turning out to be very hardline after all.

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Rays seeking “tens of millions” in state infrastructure money for Tampa stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

It was only just in April that I wrote: “Nobody’s proposed any of the new federal infrastructure money going to stadiums just yet that I’ve seen, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before someone tries.” Since then we’ve seen state infrastructure money going to pay for video boards at an Illinois hockey arena, a proposal to use state infrastructure money to build restaurant spaces outside a new Washington Football Team stadium in Maryland, a proposal to use federal infrastructure money to bridge over train tracks near the Cleveland Browns stadium, and of course the possible hundreds of millions of dollars in state or federal money the city of Oakland may seek to help build out a whole new neighborhood for the A’s.

It’s been quite a whirlwind six months for this site’s nascent “stupid infrastructure” category. And now, this:

The Tampa Bay Rays’ potential move to a stadium in Ybor City already includes a team pitch for state financial assistance.

Florida Senate President Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby, said a Rays representative spoke to him about a month ago about an unspecified stadium site in Ybor and the likelihood that state aid would be needed for infrastructure costs.

It’s nothing new for sports teams to request public money for things that aren’t stadium construction but are stadium-adjacent, like private highway ramps or railyard platforms or pedestrian bridges or train stations. But with “infrastructure spending” one of the few priorities Congress can agree on, even if not how much to spend on it or how to pass it, sports team owners appear to be rummaging through their desk drawers in search of any plans that could potentially apply for a cut of the boodle.

In the Rays‘ case, this is likely to amount to “tens of millions of dollars or beyond for interstate highway improvements, realigned streets, sidewalks, utility work and a potential mass transit component,” according to the Tampa Bay Times. Some of this could benefit Tampa drivers or riders of potential mass transit as well as the team, of course, but funneling highway funds to one business owner’s pet project — one that would supposedly only be in use about 40 games a year, let’s not forget, as team president Brian Auld was back out this weekend insisting that “it’s next to impossible that full-season baseball can succeed in Tampa Bay today” — is a subsidy in its own way; we’ll have to wait and see exactly what kinds of “infrastructure” team owner Stu Sternberg is demanding before we can determine how egregious the ask is.

Meanwhile, of course, there’s still no plan for paying for the stadium itself, whether in Ybor City or elsewhere, or the land to put it on, though the developer with that terribly-named Gas Worx project did buy a chunk of land in Ybor City earlier this year for $24 million, and Sternberg is reportedly still interested in that site, for what that’s worth. (Presumably that developer would wan to be paid by somebody for using their land.) Supposedly the Rays owner is still looking to have someone spend about $500 million apiece on stadiums in Tampa Bay and Montreal, but no one knows where he got those cost estimates from other than $500 million sounded like a nice round number, so there’s still a ways to go to figure all this out, yeah. But step by step the longest march, so if you can grab a few tens of millions of dollars from the state for infrastructure, do that now and cross the rest of the bridges when you come to them.

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Cleveland, Browns owners want $200m+ to build a giant lakefront plinth, because everyone needs a plinth

access_time personNeil deMause

Last week an interviewer asked me what kind of public funding sources team owners tend to look for these days in addition to the obvious ones, and I answered something like “it’s limited only by your imagination.” But one of the big trends is asking not for money to build the stadium but for money to build a whole bunch of stuff around it, and this weekend the Cleveland Browns stepped into that game with both feet:

The city of Cleveland and the Browns propose building a broad elevated park that would soar over railroad lines and the Shoreway and expand public access between downtown and the lakefront.

The project envisions a long, gradually sloping green ribbon – about 350 feet wide — that would connect Mall C downtown to North Coast Harbor and land adjacent to FirstEnergy Stadium.

On the one hand: Sure, a waterfront park might be nicer for Cleveland than a bunch of railroad tracks. (Though it’s worth noting that if people want to go to the lakefront, they can do so by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame just on the other side of the Browns stadium.) But even if it might make the stadium a more alluring destination, and presumably increase Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam’s ability to make money, is a 350-foot-wide ramp — sorry, a “plinth,” apparently, because that sounds so much sexier — really what Cleveland needs most for … sorry, how much would this cost exactly?

The project could carry a cost of $229 million, according to the city’s TRAC application.

Once the design is complete, Cleveland would seek $200 million in construction money from the state, the application said.

Other money could be available through federal sources, such as through infrastructure funding now being considered in Congress.

And now the motivation for this project, and why the city of Cleveland has hitched its wagons to a plan first proposed by the Haslams, becomes clear: “Infrastructure spending” is hot right now as the U.S. looks to emerge from the pandemic economic slump, and if the feds or state government are willing to throw money a city’s way, who would be foolish enough to turn it down? And as sports teams have the resources to whip up some “shovel-ready” blueprints at the drop of a hat … yeah, “stupid infrastructure,” here we come. Maybe I should go back and change my interview answer.

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A’s owners plan “privately financed” stadium that would cost Oakland $855m

access_time personNeil deMause

If you’ve been following the agonizingly slow drip of news about the Oakland A’s plans for a new stadium at Howard Terminal on Oakland’s downtown waterfront, you may recall me wondering aloud how much city taxpayers would be on the hook for associated “infrastructure and transportation projects,” which were slated to be paid for by siphoning off future property tax revenues from the stadium district. I took a guess at a $1 billion stadium cost, and speculated that the ultimate public price tag could be $200 million or more, a figure that was later repeated by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Well, on Friday the A’s owners released their proposed term sheet for the project, and if you scroll wayyyyy down to Exhibit F, you will find this:

Project-generated revenues from the Jack London Infrastructure Financing District are estimated [to include] $360 million to be used to fund off-site infrastructure (e.g., pedestrian grade separation, vehicular grade separation, bike lanes, railroad safety improvements, sidewalk improvements and intersection improvements).

And:

Project-generated revenues from the Howard Terminal Infrastructure Financing District are estimated [to include] $495 million to be used to fund all on-site infrastructure development costs (e.g., environmental remediation, seismic improvements, backbone utilities, sea level rise improvements, sidewalks/streets, over 18 acres of parks and open space, and a Bay Trail connection.

A’s owner John Fisher, in other words, will pay for the construction costs of a baseball stadium and surrounding development — so long as the city coughs up $855 million in tax revenue to take a largely inaccessible industrial district and trick it out with new roads, underpasses and overpasses around highways and train tracks, and protect it from earthquakes and the sea level rise that is set to hit San Francisco Bay extra-hard. You know, $855 million in sundries.

This is a very large number, especially for a city that is already facing budget cuts as a result of pandemic-related revenue shortfalls, even after getting partly bailed out by the federal stimulus package. How best to distract people from that kind of an ask? Why, with even larger numbers, of course:

Okay, so: The ballpark will indeed cost more than $1 billion in private money to construct, atop all those city-funded sea-level-protection berms and surrounded by city-funded infrastructure (everybody drink!) improvements. That additional $1 billion in “general fund dollars” and $450 million in “community benefits,” though, is a mirage: Those numbers were calculated by adding up all the city revenues that will be diverted by those two new tax increment financing districts, subtracting what the A’s will use, and decreeing what’s left over to be public benefits, even though it’s, you know, public money that normally would go to the public in any case.

And while some of the property tax money will be “generated” by the A’s new development — “generated” in scare quotes, because TIFs invariably end up cannibalizing tax revenue that would exist even without the new development that they go to fund — that huge pool of cash would be created by mapping out TIF districts that are flipping ginormous, encompassing not just the new stadium development but much of the already-built-up area around Jack London Square:

To her credit, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf appears to have read the $855 million fine print, issuing a statement that “The City is willing to bring to bear its resources to help make this vision a reality; however, today’s proposal from the A’s appears to request public investment at the high end for projects of this type nationwide.” Still, that sounds more “Can’t we bring that number down a bit?” than “You’ve got to be kidding me,” in which case this project is looking at certainly hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure subsidies, even if Schaaf intends to haggle over the price.

Hundreds of millions of dollars sound smaller, though, when compared to numbers in the billions, so expect to see the A’s trying to keep the focus on how much the team would be spending, not on how much in public money it would be asking for. Already, team stadium czar Dave Kaval has already been successful on one front: all the news coverage so far has used the biggest number possible in their headlines, and that’s the $12 billion that team execs say they’ll spend on the overall development, once the stadium gets built, maybe. (The term sheet doesn’t actually require any buildings other than the stadium to be built — and the stadium needs to be built first, and most of the infrastructure would be required to be built before the stadium opens.) Misdirection is the cornerstone of all successful magic.

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Friday roundup: Fresh subsidy plans for Titans and WFT, Flames arena “paused” amid overruns, Boston Globe can’t stop clowning on Pawtucket for not wanting to spend $150m on stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

Happy Friday! I have a ton of week-ending stadium news to bring you today, or at least there’s a ton of news out there whether I’m bringing it to you or not. What is it about that that is confusing?

Onward:

  • Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, according to DCist, wants to use “some of” the county’s $1.6 billion in state funding this year to build — wait for it — “infrastructure improvements” for the Washington Football Team‘s stadium that would include “restaurants and places to shop.” It sounds like Alsobrooks is only talking about $17.6 million, maybe, but still this earns a Stupid Infrastructure category tag until proven otherwise.
  • Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee wants to use $2 million a year in state sales tax money (figure roughly $30 million in present value) for upgrades to the Titans‘ stadium, though actually it could end up being more like $10 million a year (figure roughly $150 million in present value) if more development is built around the stadium, plus he wants to give $13.5 million to Knoxville for its Tennessee Smokies stadium. Did Lee call this an “infrastructure” plan? Not that I can find in the Tennessean’s news reporting, but everybody drink anyway.
  • The Calgary Flames‘ $550 million arena plan, which already includes about $250 million in public subsidies, has run into $70 million in unexpected cost overruns and is now “paused” until the team and city can figure out who’ll cover them. Actually, the report is that the Flames owners are demanding $70 million, and previously the city and team agreed to split overruns 50-50, so maybe it’s really $140 million over budget? Either way, there’s already a petition to scrap the whole deal, though “trim a little from the team’s design and both sides kick in a little more money” seems a far more likely outcome, especially with Mayor Naheed Nenshi declaring it “far better to have these issues sorted out at this stage than to have unexpected cost overruns after construction has begun.” (Are known cost overruns actually better than surprise ones? Discuss.)
  • The Boston Globe, not satisfied with its glowing report last month on Worcester’s new stadium for the Red Sox Triple-A team (top farm club of the Boston Red Sox, owner of the Boston Globe), ran two separate opinion pieces this week slagging Pawtucket officials for not offering up $150 million in subsidies like Worcester did and thus losing their team: Dan McGowan, the Globe’s Rhode Island politics reporter, wrote, “Imagine what we could have had if our leaders showed even a tiny sense of vision” and “It too often takes only one politician to spoil a really good idea” while condemning “extremists on both sides of the [stadium] debate” who think a thing can be either good or bad (while also calling the Worcester stadium “great”). The very next day, Mike Stanton, a UConn journalism professor who writes occasionally for the Globe, wrote that former Rhode Island House speaker Nicholas Mattiello “rightly deserves blame for his role in killing the PawSox,” though he also blamed WooSox owner Larry Lucchino for “demanding extravagant taxpayer support for a new ballpark” and harming negotiations for, I guess, less extravagant taxpayer support? Anyway, the Globe wants you to know that Worcester has a shiny new baseball stadium and Pawtucket doesn’t, and let’s not speak of what else Worcester could have done with $150 million.
  • Six Republican Congressfolk — Sens. Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, and Marsha Blackburn, and Rep. Jeff Duncan — have cosponsored legislation seeking to end MLB’s antitrust exemption in response to the league pulling the 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta over Georgia’s new voting-restrictions law. This is part of a long line of proposals to yank the league’s 99-year-old exemption from antitrust laws, which never seem to go anywhere; the last time by my count was when more than 100 Congresspeoples wrote a letter in 2019 threatening to rescind “the long-term support that Congress has always afforded our national pastime” if MLB didn’t back down on its plan to eliminate more than 40 minor-league franchises, a letter that was signed by none of Lee, Cruz, Hawley, Rubio, or Blackburn, all of whom were in office at the time. (SPOILER: MLB didn’t back down, and Congress did.) Waving the antitrust-exemption stick has become the standard way for federal representatives to express their anger at baseball over one thing or another, in other words, but actually using it is apparently beyond the pale, either because of partisanship or lobbyists or both, pick your poison.
  • Another U.S. representative, Georgia’s Buddy Carter, has introduced legislation — or maybe just drafted legislation and sent it to Fox News, he doesn’t seem to have actually submitted it to Congress — to block MLB from relocating non-regular-season events except in cases of natural disaster or other emergencies, under penalty of allowing local businesses to sue for damages for lost revenue as a result of the move. Which, as Craig Calcaterra notes, would be hilarious because it would put MLB in the position of having to argue in court that its events have no economic impact, which is pretty much the truth: “The evidence — like, all the evidence from multiple studies — would actually be on MLB’s side in such a case! And it’d likely win! And all it would cost MLB is the ability to continue to lie about how big an impact All-Star Games and stadiums and things have on local economies when it suits its interest.”
  • The Cincinnati Reds are offering discounted tickets to fans who can show they’re fully vaccinated, and Buffalo officials say the Bills and Sabres will be required to limit attendance to the fully vaccinated in the fall, though New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he’ll be the judge of that. Whatever the eventual admittance policies end up being, having going to things like ballgames (or traveling internationally) be less of a hassle if you wave your vaccine card seems likely to be the best way to encourage more people to get their shots, which is the only way to get to herd immunity, which is the only way to prevent lots more deaths and more re-closings of things like ballgames, so this is good news regardless of whether sporting events turn out to be insanely risky or relatively safe.
  • Finally, I can’t let this week pass without noting that the Buffalo Bisons, who have been temporarily relocated to Trenton to make way for the Toronto Blue Jays, who will be spending the summer in Buffalo thanks to Covid travel restrictions, will be playing their home games as the Trenton Thunder while playing road games as the Bisons. No word yet on how this Frankenstein monster of a franchise will be listed in the (checks revamped minor-league nomenclature) Triple-A East standings, though I wholeheartedly hope the Thunder and Bisons get counted as two different teams, ideally with players forced to wear fake mustaches in New Jersey and go by assumed names. “Marc Rzepczynski? No, he plays for Buffalo, I am of course Shmarc Shmepczynski, would you like my autograph?”
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Illinois spends $13m in “infrastructure” money on new video boards for minor-league hockey arena

access_time personNeil deMause

It was only Friday that I suggested we would be needing a “stupid infrastructure” category to cover government spending infrastructure money on things that should at the bottom of the list, below tax breaks for yachts. And now here we already have our first entry, it’s so exciting:

State officials joined the Chicago Blackhawks, the city of Rockford, and the Rockford Area Venues and Entertainment Authority and the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity in announcing a $23 million multi-year capital project to revitalize the [Rockford IceHogs‘] BMO Harris Bank Center — Rockford’s largest sports arena and entertainment venue.

Fueled in part by the Rebuild Illinois $45 billion capital plan, the project will modernize Rockford’s largest destination asset, creating over 250 construction jobs, retaining hundreds of existing full-time positions, and generating millions in economic activity to the region.

Rebuild Illinois, for those not familiar, is a $1.5 billion spending plan put forward by Gov. J.B. Pritzker to fund transportation and other public infrastructure. In this case, the infrastructure being paid for by $13 million in Rebuild Illinois grants is, as Kane County Connects relates it, “necessary infrastructure improvements, improved audio-visual and digital technology, enhanced guest experience and concession areas, space for sports betting, and other modernized customer amenities.” These new video boards and hot dog stands and in-arena gambling halls are somehow projected to create “$382 million in net spending” in Rockford — though actually the report says it’s the arena upgrades “combined with the sale of the team to the Blackhawks and their long-term commitment to the facility” (Chicago Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz graciously agreed to buy the IceHogs as part of the deal for public cash) that would create the economic benefits, so maybe Pritzker is just adding up every dollar that will be spent at an IceHogs game ever and attributing that to the new scoreboards?

In addition to the $13 million in state infrastructure money, the Rockford Area Venues and Entertainment Authority and the city of Rockford are putting up $10 million in “short and long-term capital,” bringing the public cost of upgrading the arena to $23 million, for a building that was built in 1981 for, let’s see, $15.7 million. Though that’s $47.5 million in today’s dollars, so really taxpayers are only paying half the entire original construction price to upgrade a minor-league hockey arena that, while owned by the city, is managed by a private operator and used by a private sports franchise now owned by a guy rich enough to own a superyacht. Stupid infrastructure: Ask for it by name!

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