Category: vaportecture

Behold, the future of soccer stadiums, Chicago Fire vaportecture edition

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been a long, dismal spring of record-breaking stadium subsidies making their way through state legislatures (not to mention other even more dismal stuff), so let’s have some fresh vaportecture as a respite from all the horror! And it’s for the proposed Chicago Fire stadium, which will allegedly be built entirely with the team owner’s own money. (The overall development itself will get a ton of tax kickbacks, but we won’t think about that right now.) Roll it!

Okay, sure, that’s fine enough. The stadium looks like a stadium, the sun is actually setting in the west at game time, nobody spelled the city’s name wrong. I do have some questions about what appears to be a practice (or youth?) field next to the stadium and whether all those tents and people walking on it before the game won’t destroy the turf and make it unplayable, but as these things go, that’s a minor quibble.

Likewise, let’s look at everything the interior image got right: There are 11 players on each team, and no one is reacting to the exciting play on the pitch by standing up and holding a scarf to face the back rows. And what exciting play it is: A Fire player looks to have just dribbled an opposing defender so ferociously that the defender just straight-up face-planted on the pitch, leaving the Fire player open for a likely goal. Too bad so many of the photographers lining the field seem to be looking in the wrong direction to get any good photos of the play, but you can’t have everything.

Okay, now you’re talking! What on earth kind of act is this that involves one guitar player and one dancer (?) while a sparsely arranged crowd generally pays no attention to the stage, despite it being lit by multiple spotlights? Is this what future stadium shows will look like now that currently popular artists are all canceling stadium gigs because they can’t sell enough tickets?

Anything else? Overblown quotes from team officials, perhaps?

Fire president Dave Baldwin told the Sun-Times the team wanted the design to harken back to “the City of Broad Shoulders” and its “rich industrial manufacturing heritage.”

“It has that Chicago warehouse feel, but also has a little bit of an enduring elegance to it — the brick facade, the steel, the glass, those are all things that were really important to Joe as we designed this,” Baldwin said. “Whether it’s opening day in 2028, or you fast forward 50 years and you come back to the stadium, it should still feel relevant to Chicago.”

Sure, brick, glass, steel, all things that scream “Chicago.” Or, you know, Baltimore. It probably would be too much to expect a stadium incorporating deep-dish pizza or sausages made of dead rats into its façade, but we’ll have to take what we can get.

As Baldwin noted, the projected opening date is 2028. That’s pretty aggressive given that it’s already halfway through 2025 and Chicago isn’t exactly known for its balmy winters and all-year construction schedules, but we can’t entirely rule it out.

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Browns release video of proposed domed stadium, get immediately hated on by fans

access_time personNeil deMause

The Cleveland Browns owners released some fresh vaportecture yesterday, in the form of a CGI flyby of their proposed Brook Park stadium as viewed from a high-speed drone in a hellscape where cars and video boards move but most of the people are frozen in place. But all that aside, by choosing to debut it on X, team execs opened themselves up to comments, and oh, the comments:

Heckuva job, Browns.

“Win some games first!” is maybe not the most rational response to a $1.2 billion stadium funding demand — spending public money on a private sports stadium doesn’t become a better investment just because fans are happier about the standings — but it is a common one, as we’ve seen from all the owners who have waited until their teams were on a playoff run to issue stadium subsidy demands. “That thing is ugly” and “Not with my money” are somewhat more on point. And added together, this comes to a pretty thorough public denunciation of the Browns’ stadium plans, albeit from the self-selected sample of X users who follow the Browns account.

Meanwhile, speaking of self-selected samples, the Ohio House Finance Committee is “likely” to include Browns owner Jimmy Haslam’s requested $600 million in stadium cash, according to committee chair Brian Stewart. The money would, according to Browns lawyer Ted Tywang, come from “revenues that are generated by the project that wouldn’t exist but for this private investment,” though he didn’t explain how moving the Browns from one part of Ohio to another would generate $600 million in new tax revenues. Win some games first, Jimmy!

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Friday roundup: Ravens get even more public cash, D.C. United wants somebody to buy them a roof

access_time personNeil deMause

Greetings from New York, where we now have two terrible mayors instead of one! That’s hardly the worst of today’s political news, so instead let us distract ourselves with some (mostly) terrible stadium and arena news:

  • The Baltimore Ravens‘ $434 million stadium renovation project is now a $489 million renovation project, and 64% of the additional cost is set to be covered by state taxpayers. Or, if you’re whatever AI is writing the headlines over at Sports Illustrated, “Ravens Spending Over $50 Million More on Stadium Upgrades,” sure, that’s probably right, no need to read your own story to check.
  • D.C. United‘s owners want to add 10,000 seats and a roof to their (checks) not yet 7-year-old stadium, and “what remains unknown is the potential price tag or whether the team will ask the city for subsidies.” Also the Axios reporter passing this along (from an original source of “two sources,” not even “familiar with the team’s thinking” or anything) calls D.C. United “American soccer royalty,” what ever happened to no more kings?
  • Missouri House Speaker Jonathan Patterson is turning up the heat on Jackson County, saying “time is running out” for “a plan and course of action” for new Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadiums, or else … the teams will kick everything back a year and try again, again? Too many showrunners these days really do substitute overbearing string sections for viable suspense plots.
  • D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser says a Washington Commanders stadium “will be the anchor that attracts other investment–housing, amenities, jobs, and opportunities,” guess somebody doesn’t remember what the late Allen Sanderson said about NFL stadiums and cemeteries.
  • In 2023, the city of Anaheim commissioned a $325,000, two-month study of how to keep the Angels‘ stadium viable for decades to come, and now the study may not be done until 2026 and will cost over $1 million, cool, cool.
  • New Sacramento Republic F.C. vaportecture! And it looks like, uh, a soccer stadium? At least there are some smoke bombs, on both ends of the pitch for some reason, but no fireworks or people holding up scarves dramatically and we can’t even see what ridiculous formation the players are in, I give this a B-minus for entertainment value at best.
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Friday roundup: City sues Browns over Brook Park vaporstadium, Broncos go all Bears on suburban move threats

access_time personNeil deMause

Weeks keep happening, and we keep making it to the end of them! (Well, most of us.) If you ever need a break from the general state of everything, you might want to check out this other project I’m involved in, where you can immerse yourself in great live music of the recent past to gird yourself for the present. Or just experience whatever exactly this is.

Back now, all musicked up? Good, because there’s some news waiting for you and it’s not going to stay hot forever:

  • As promised, the city of Cleveland officially sued the Cleveland Browns under Ohio’s Art Modell Law this week to force team owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam to offer the team for sale to local owners before trying to move it to the suburb of Brook Park. The Haslams already preemptively sued to block the Modell Law, so now this will be in the hands of the courts, though it’s also in the hands of the state legislature that is being asked for maybe $1.2 billion to help build a Brook Park dome, hey guys, I think I came up with a way to save a bunch on lawyers’ fees!
  • Denver Broncos co-owner Greg Penner said Wednesday that “We haven’t ruled out anything at this point” in terms of a new or renovated stadium to replace or upgrade their 24-year-old one, adding, “We’re still looking at options on the current site, around Denver.” If that sounds suspiciously like “We’re kicking the tires of local governments to see what our leverage is,” congratulations, you’ve passed Chicago Bears 101!
  • Speaking of the Bears, Illinois house speaker Chris Welch said he might consider having the state pay for some infrastructure costs of a new NFL stadium, so long as the team owners build one at the Michael Reese Hospital site that they first rejected before saying they might reconsider. Fox 32 Chicago further reports that “Governor JB Pritzker is open to talks with the Bears regarding the Michael Reese site” (according to “sources); if the Bears execs’ plan is really “keep throwing things at various walls until we see what sticks,” this might be just the opening they’ve been hoping for — now, how to define an entire stadium as “infrastructure”?
  • The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal … I probably shouldn’t even finish this sentence, but in the interest of the completeness: Mr. Bowtie says that Tampa Bay Rays owner Stu Sternberg needs to find a way to get a stadium built in his current city or else sell the team, and that the situation is “not identical” to the Athletics moving out of Oakland, because Tampa-St. Pete is a large market and the Rays have a stadium offer in hand while the A’s … well, they’re just different, okay? This is probably just Rosenthal going off for his own reasons, but he does spend a bunch of time discussing how MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is taking a “different approach” with the Rays than the A’s, so there’s some chance the consummate baseball insider is sending a message on behalf of MLB leadership, in which case maybe Sternberg will take the hint and stand down from his “Thanks for the billion dollars, what else you got?” gambit.
  • Retiring Miami Mayor Francis Suarez gave a farewell speech in which he stood before the under-construction Inter Miami stadium — as well as an American flag and two John Deere tractors, because Florida — and declared the “the best sports deal in America.” Mmm, maybe not quite that actually, but we have some lovely parting gifts.
  • Remember that time San Diego almost had a floating ballpark? Wait, that was never really going to happen? Shh, it makes a great story.
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Salt Lake okays rezoning for MLB as soon as someone finds an MLB team and $1.8B to pay for a stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

The Salt Lake City council approved rezoning last night for a 95-acre site that could include an MLB stadium, which “historic opportunity” and “create a place for Utah’s families to gather and thrive” and blah blah blah, is anyone actually proposing who would pay for this thing?

The answer appears to be no, or at least no more than the last time this was discussed back in March, at which time the state legislature approved kicking back sales and property taxes from a 200-acre “entertainment district” around the stadium to help pay for construction. At the time, the bill’s sponsors indicated that it would take $900 million to pay for half the cost of a $1.8 billion stadium, and that it would take more than just the tax kickbacks, without specifying how much more or where the more would come from. There had previously been talk of using hotel taxes as well, but that was stripped by the legislature at the last minute and not replaced.

Plus, of course, Salt Lake City doesn’t have an MLB team, though presumably someone there could put in for an expansion franchise as soon as the league decides to open itself up for expansion, which was supposed to happen as soon as the Tampa Bay Rays and Athletics situations are resolved, so, yeah, maybe don’t hold your breath there. At least it does have renderings — the best part is how there are no turnstiles between the ballpark and the adjacent river, so either fans will enjoy free in-game kayaking or kayakers will get free admission to the games, two thumbs up for both ideas.

 

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NYCFC releases more pretend stadium images, pretend public cost numbers

access_time personNeil deMause

New York City F.C. officials held a press event last week to promote their new stadium set to open in 2027, let’s see how that went:

Okay, yes, that’s a new rendering. (Or a “model” as the New York Daily News caption puts it.) It’s not exactly an improvement on the last round of vaportecture, given that the entire surrounding neighborhood (plus the Mets‘ stadium across the street) appears to have been demolished and replaced by a gray void featuring only some kind of elevated highway called the “Queens,” but maybe they just wanted people to stop clowning on it as “Naming Rights Sponsor Stadium.” (Team officials said they hope to have a naming rights deal in place by the end of the year, at which point people can clown on it for that name.)

And what about details regarding the possibly $700 million in tax kickbacks and infrastructure spending this all will cost New York City taxpayers?

“When [Mayor Eric Adams] got into office, that’s when the project really started getting some legs, because we were able to present what we really believe is a transformative project for Queens,” [NYCFC CEO Brad] Sims said.

“He was able to say, ‘100% privately financed [stadium]. The city’s in a housing crisis right now. [This is the] biggest affordable housing project that the city’s seen in four decades.’”

I mean, he was able to say “100% privately financed.” He wasn’t able to actually mean it, but he was able to say it. Somebody else — say, a sports economist, the city Independent Budget Office, me — could have told the Daily News otherwise, but as the Daily News didn’t speak to anyone not employed by the team, its readers will never know.

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Browns owners want $1.2B+ for Brook Park stadium, or renovations to current stadium as Plan B

access_time personNeil deMause

Yesterday, one day after the NEOtrans blog reported that Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam were set to announce a $3.6 billion domed stadium complex in Brook Park requiring upwards of $1.1 billion in public subsidies, Browns management issued a long letter to fans that said, well, let’s let it speak for itself:

With Mayor Bibb releasing the City’s latest proposal for a renovated stadium last week and the increased community dialogue around our stadium future, including the possibility of a dome stadium in Brook Park, we feel it is the appropriate time for us to communicate directly and share an update on our stadium process.

Do tell!

We do not take the stadium decision lightly, and have been working diligently with city, county and state officials to consider all opportunities.

Undoubtedly. So what’s the update?

We need to be bold, we need to be innovative, and we need to take advantage of this unique moment to create a transformational project not only for our fans, but for Cleveland, the Northeast Ohio region and the State of Ohio.

Uh, sure, okay. And that project is?

While we have considered numerous sites throughout Cleveland and the region, our focus has been on two potential paths for the future of our stadium.

And the winner is…

While significant work remains, the more we have explored the Brook Park option, the more attractive it has become, and we are excited to share the current vision with you.

It’s Brook Park! Or at least it’s renderings of Brook Park:

That definitely looks like a domed something, somewhere! And only most of the fans came to the game with their identical clones! So how much would it cost exactly?

As demonstrated in other markets, a project of this magnitude only realistically works through a public-private partnership. We have approached this as a 50-50 partnership on the stadium, excluding cost overruns, which we would cover. … The proposed $1.2 billion+ private investment in the stadium is unprecedented and would be the largest private per capita stadium investment ever in this country.

So a 50-50 partnership with a $1.2 billion+ private investment means $1.2 billion+ in public money too?

Importantly, we are not looking to tap into existing taxpayer-funded streams, which could divert resources from other pressing needs. We are instead working on innovative funding mechanisms with local, county, and state officials that would leverage the fiscal impact of the project and the unprecedented private contribution to support the public investment and generate a substantial return for Brook Park, Cuyahoga County, and the State of Ohio. While still in progress, our funding model also contemplates setting aside future dollars generated by the project for stadium repairs and maintenance to help ensure long-term sustainability of the building well beyond the initial lease term.

“Leverage the fiscal impact of the project” doesn’t really mean anything, but presumably this would be some kind of kickback of “stadium-generated” tax money, which usually means money that may or may not be newly generated but which team owners can claim is attributable to the stadium. This is what NEOtrans reported, though “setting aside future dollars generated by the project” is a new twist, as it suggests a grift-that-keeping-on-giving plan where addition future tax dollars would be set aside for future upgrades, a la the Atlanta Falcons “waterfall fund.”

But hang on, I feel like we skipped over something:

We have invested heavily in exploring this path and remain engaged with the City of Cleveland regarding a potential renovation plan, but it remains a complex and challenging proposition.

So: The Haslams would rather get a $1.2 billion check (or more) to build a new Brook Park stadium, but “remain engaged” with Cleveland on renovating their current stadium as a Plan B. That’s not so much a decision as a strategy, but I guess is an update of sorts. Plus, didja see the renderings?

Why are all the fans signaling for a touchdown when the Browns appear to be on defense at midfield? Actually, both teams appear to be on defense — what kind of screwy rules changes does the NFL have in store before this stadium opens?

Will future Browns fans really be purchasing en masse jackets and sweatshirts with the Browns logo on the back, not the front? Will anybody anywhere be going to sporting events wearing that hat? Does the woman with her hair pulled back know that stadium security is never going to let her in with that enormous purse/bowling ball bag?

These are all good questions, or at least enough to distract us from the one about where $1.2 billion in public money will come from, which is the whole point of releasing vaportecture renderings.

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Friday roundup: Kansas-Missouri stadium border war gets hot, yet another non-economist cited as economics expert

access_time personNeil deMause

Happy heat dome Friday! Hope those of you in the parts of the U.S. that are broiling are staying inside watching soccer tournaments and cranking the air-conditioning and … okay, maybe that isn’t the best plan. We’ll try to come up with a better one before the Paris Olympics, which will once again provide athletes from around the world with the opportunity to compete for medals and maybe die of heatstroke. (Or mutant sharks. But more likely heatstroke.)

Where was I? Oh, right, stadium and arena scams, plenty of those to go around while we wait for the world to boil:

  • Missouri elected officials are up in arms over Kansas elected officials’ passage of legislation to allow selling billions of dollars of tax-funded bonds to lure the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals across state lines, and are also prepared to work on their own stadium subsidy legislation in response. “Today’s vote regrettably restarts the Missouri-Kansas incentive border war, ” said Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, adding, “We remain in the first quarter of the Kansas City stadium discussion.” Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, calling the Kansas stadium bond legislation “a wakeup call to Missouri,” said he expects his state to put together its own legislation later this year. It’s all going according to plan!
  • Meanwhile, some developer dude took it upon himself to hire an architecture firm to design a rendering of a Royals stadium on the Kansas-Missouri border, with most of the stadium in Kansas but the right field wall in Missouri, that wouldn’t cause any problems figuring out which state would collect sales taxes to then kick back to team owner John Sherman. Lots of nice fireworks and people flinging their hands in the air, though.
  • WTOP reported Wednesday: “The projected benefits of a new Washington Commanders stadium being built in D.C., which were detailed in a report the city released last week, are largely honest and reasonable, according to a University of Maryland economist who reviewed it.” Unfortunately, three sentences later the radio news station revealed that Michael Faulkender is actually a finance professor, not economics, which is not the same thing at all. The University of Maryland does have an economist who’s an expert in stadium deals, but WTOP didn’t ask him for his opinion, they must have wandered into the wrong classroom building, that probably happens a lot.
  • Facing a vote on whether or not to commit to spending $775 million in public money on upgrades to Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan’s stadium, the Jacksonville city council yesterday pushed back — on spending $94 million on affordable housing and homelessness prevention as part of an accompanying “community benefits” package. The council says it’ll still come up with the money after taking “some time this summer to work on this,” and it doesn’t affect the $150 million from Khan for community benefits (over 30 years, so really only worth about half that amount), so nothing to worry about, elected officials never go back on their promises!
  • Charlotte was apparently “working on [a Carolina Panthers stadium] deal for a year and a half” before letting the public in on the details, yeah, that might be a story.
  • I personally prefer not to get my news in video form, as you’ve no doubt noticed from the endless scroll of plain text that is this website, but if you do, this report from More Perfect Union on “How Sports Team Owners Scam Communities Out of Billions”  is worth checking out: It has me in it, and also an A’s fan organizer saying “we’re all about kicking John Fisher in the nuts,” what’s not to like?
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Kansas legislators’ plan to funnel $2B+ in sales taxes to Chiefs, Royals stadiums is dead — for now

access_time personNeil deMause

At last word last night, the Kansas legislature was set to vote on a bill to provide $2-3 billion in sales tax kickbacks toward potentially two new stadiums for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals. How did that work out?

Renderings from Manica Architecture show a potential domed-stadium for the Kansas City Chiefs

Thanks, don’t really want to see renderings right now. Did the bill pass or not?

Stadium architect shares renderings hoping to bring Chiefs to KCK

The funding bill. What happened to the funding bill?

Here’s what a Chiefs stadium in Kansas could look like, and some necessary context

Didn’t anybody go to the last night of the legislative session? ESPN, whatcha got?

An effort to help the Super Bowl champion Chiefs and the Royals finance new stadiums in the state fizzled over concerns about how it might look to taxpayers.

Okay then!

The failed bill was what’s called in Kansas a STAR bond, but is broadly known as a STIF, or sales tax increment financing. The idea would be that all new sales tax revenue from in and around each stadium would be kicked back to pay the teams’ construction costs. Crucially, the state of Kansas can issue STAR bonds without a public referendum, so the legislature could have approved it without any risk of it failing at the ballot box like happened across the border in Jackson County, Missouri.

How would the math have worked out on raising $2-3 billion just from new sales tax revenues? Really, really badly, according to University of Colorado Denver economist Geoffrey Propheter:

Expanding all those abbreviations: If Kansas spent $4 billion on stadiums including infrastructure, the state’s annual debt service on bonds with a 4.5% interest rate would be $250 million a year. For the state’s sales and use tax to cover those debt payments, each and every Royals fan who showed up in a given year would have to spend $700 on taxable goods; each Chiefs fan, because they sell fewer tickets per year, would have to spend $2,100. And, Propheter notes, that might not even include tickets, since there’s been no indication of whether sports tickets would be exempted from the sales tax, or other lease details like whether the teams would pay rent.

But anyway, the legislature has now adjourned for the year without voting on the stadium bill, so we don’t have to worry about — oh, what now?

Lawmakers expect [Democratic Gov. Laura] Kelly to call a special session of the Legislature to try to get lawmakers to pass a tax plan that she will accept — and they could consider the stadium financing proposal then.

“We just need a little time on it. We’ll be OK,” said Senate President Ty Masterson, a Wichita Republican. “I mean, we’re serious about trying to incentivize the Chiefs to come our direction.”

Masterson later said he didn’t call for a vote on the bill because of “concern” about not passing income, sales, and property tax cuts for Kansas residents before “what appears to be corporate welfare,” showing an admirable ability to say the quiet part loud.

So, we know nothing just yet, other than that a plan to funnel as much as $3 billion to Chiefs and Royals stadiums remains on the table, or in legislators’ pockets, or somewhere in the state halls of power. Fine, let’s look at some renderings:

I mean, that looks like a football stadium, yes. Not sure why everyone in the stadium thinks that they need to put the flashes on for their phones while taking pictures of a game hundreds of feet away in broad daylight under a translucent roof, but then, this is a rendering drawn by an architect not connected in any way with the Chiefs, so it means even less than the usual vaportecture. Hey, maybe we could adapt that term for bills that haven’t been voted on and don’t have real details: vaporslation? Gotta workshop that to be ready for the Kansas special session.

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Arizona Cardinals renovation plans break new ground in catering to rich people

access_time personNeil deMause

The Arizona Cardinals ownership announced a bunch of stadium renovation plans yesterday, and since the only outlets reporting on it were the tattered remnants of Sports Illustrated and The Athletic and they pretty much just reprinted the press release, there’s no way of knowing how much the work will cost or who will pay for it. So for the moment, let’s just enjoy some of the more bonkers aspects of the renderings, because there are plenty.

First, though, let’s visit part of the press release, which is bonkers in its own way:

Last year, the Cardinals had the least expensive gameday experience in the NFL according to Team Marketing Report’s 2023 Fan Cost Index and affordability will remain in 2024. In addition, those fans seeking an unparalleled, upscale way to enjoy Cardinals games at State Farm Stadium will have an array of breath-taking new options starting this season.

Translation: “We’re charging our fans less than any other team! We want to keep things affordable, but we also want to charge as much as possible to people who can afford it, so here’s some stuff we think we can get away with charging through the nose for!”

Like what? Like this:

This is being dubbed a casita, or mini-house, which in this case means ripping out the seats behind the end zones and replacing them with tiny lounge areas with seating outside of and on top of it, to be enjoyed by … I’m sorry, what are these people wearing to a football game? Is there a heterosexist business executive cosplay convention in town? That would explain why there’s no one else at all in the stadium, though it’s left to the imagination what everyone here is watching if it’s not a football game.

Not to be confused with the casitas is the Casita Garden Club, which has no actual casitas, but does offer the chance to take photos of the Cardinals players while they … taunt you? I honestly can’t figure out what’s going on here, but I do wholeheartedly approve of the choice to show one of the clip-art fans facing away from the players she or her corporate employer paid so much for her to be near, the better to use them as a backdrop for her selfie.

Then there are the “field seats” built right out onto the field, or at least into the sideline area. Again, this is an extremely poorly attended game, despite the opportunity to, apparently, walk right up to the visiting team as they take the field, or even go on the field yourself, not like there’s a barrier or anything stopping you. Maybe this will be the ultimate premium experience, where if you pay enough for a ticket you can actually be a part of the game? In that case these fans are definitely dressed all wrong for it, at least one of the guys in the second image is wearing a souvenir jersey — and, it appears, possibly souvenir shoulder pads — so he might last a few seconds before going down with a traumatic brain injury.

All this, plus “an array of all-inclusive high-end menu offerings and handcrafted cocktails, beer and wine,” can be yours for only … okay, pricing isn’t available yet, but just put down a $10,000 deposit and we’ll start there. If these plutocrat pens can pay for themselves, more power to the Cardinals for identifying a market, I guess, but it’s absolutely a sign that income inequality is way out of control.

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