Category: Chicago White Sox

After U of I pulls out, downtown Chicago developer suggests just building more stadiums

access_time personNeil deMause

The University of Illinois has backed out of plans to build a research and teaching facility at the proposed The 78 downtown development site, but don’t fret! This is actually good news, says site developer Related Midwest, because it means now they can build moar stadiumz:

“Given its proximity to downtown, adjacency to the river and flexibility to accommodate a wide range of uses, The 78 stands alone in its ability to house large institutions that want to plant their flag in the heart of Chicago,” their statement read, in part. “We are actively exploring the co-location of dual stadiums for the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Fire, two organizations whose presence at The 78 would align with our vision of creating Chicago’s next great neighborhood.”

That disturbing “plant a flag in the heart” image notwithstanding, the more alarming part here is that unlike a research and teaching facility, a soccer stadium for the Fire is unlikely to bring in enough new money to pay off its construction costs. (The Fire only bring in $45 million a year in gross revenue total, so relocating from Soldier Field to a new stadium isn’t likely to move the needle by more than a few million a year, which wouldn’t do the trick.) While Fire owner Joe Mansueto has said he doesn’t “believe in using Tax Dollars to fund these ANY such projects” (that’s the way he typed it, yes), it’s hard to picture a soccer stadium at the The 78 site without some public money, at least for infrastructure or tax breaks.

So we could be looking at additional public costs beyond $900 million in tax kickbacks for infrastructure plus $1.1 billion for a White Sox stadium. None of which anyone at any level of government has offered to step up to pay just yet. You can’t get if you don’t ask, sure, but tacking on a soccer stadium to an already aspirational project doesn’t seem likely to make the financing pencil out any better.

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Somebody (hint, hint) says Jerry Reinsdorf could sell White Sox to Nashville-linked ownership group

access_time personNeil deMause

The Athletic reported a weird story yesterday, citing “sources briefed on the matter but not authorized to discuss it publicly,” that Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf is discussing selling the team he’s owned since 1981. According to the article, Reinsdorf in “in active discussions” with a group led by former MLB pitcher Dave Stewart and player agent Lonnie Murray.

Why is it weird? For one thing, the 88-year-old Reinsdorf has previously said he planned to hold on to the team as long as he was alive, leaving it to his heirs to figure out what to do with it afterwards. (Though he’s the White Sox principal owner, Reinsdorf reportedly only owns about 19% of the team.) But also, Stewart and Murray almost certainly don’t have anywhere close to the couple billion dollars or so it would take to buy the White Sox; on top of that, they don’t have any particular ties to Chicago, with Stewart previously having helped lead efforts to get an expansion franchise for Nashville.

It’s certainly possible that Stewart and Murray, who would become the first Black majority owners in MLB if they bought a team (and could raise the funds to be the majority owners), figure that buying a team in Chicago would be a faster and more certain route than waiting for the possibility of one in Nashville. Or it’s possible that they have designs on buying the White Sox and moving them to Nashville, though that would seem like an expensive way of going about it, given that Chicago is the nation’s #3 media market and Nashville is #27.

Or, given that this came out of nowhere based on unnamed sources and that Reinsdorf has previously played footsie with Nashville to try to scare up public stadium funding in Chicago and that is literally his signature move, maybe this is Reinsdorf himself leaking news of the sale talks to kickstart talks about his $2 billion Chicago stadium funding demands? There’s no way to be sure without knowing who the Athletic’s Brittany Ghiroli heard this from — even then it might not be possible to know who if anyone directed them to spread the rumor, but at least if we had a name we could make an educated guess. Unnamed sources really are bad for humans and other living things.

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Friday roundup: Florida Panthers’ lease extension could be one of the priciest ever for taxpayers

access_time personNeil deMause

I’ve been trying to write about this all week, but stuff kept happening: Broward County commissioners agreed to a term sheet that would give the Florida Panthers a five-year lease extension through 2033, and the money part is so convoluted that it calls for its own set of bullet points:

  • Panthers owner Vincent Viola will give the county $51.5 million to pay off the remaining debt on the arena where the team plays, which cost the county $185 million to build in 1998.
  • The county will continue to spend $25 million a year in hotel tax money on operations, maintenance, and upgrades to the arena, for the life of the lease extension.
  • The county has two five-year options to extend the lease. If it doesn’t do so, it has to return some or all of Viola’s $51.5 million debt payment.
  • Viola gets development rights to land around the arena, which he had given up as part of a 2015 deal to get access to the hotel tax funding and get the out clause in his lease that is the whole reason why the county is renegotiating his lease now instead of waiting until 2028.

I’m hesitant to put a dollar figure on the whole thing, but it looks like if Broward County picks up the two five-year lease extensions it gets the $51.5 million while spending $25 million a year over 15 years, which comes to around $250 million in present value, plus gives up development rights to 140 acres of land, which is worth who knows — let’s guesstimate it as $250-300 million in subsidies from the county to Viola. On the other hand, if Broward doesn’t do the extensions, it doesn’t get the $51.5 million, but also its annual arena subsidies go down to more like $100 million, so that’d be more like a $150-200 million subsidy — but also it would need to redo the Panthers’ lease a decade sooner.

So on a per-year basis — math’s almost done, I promise! — that’s either $17-20 million a year for a 15-year extension, or $30-40 million a year for a 5-year extension. That would still be less than the current record $43 million a year lease extension that Charlotte gave the Carolina Panthers (no relation), but it’s a chunk of change regardless.

The Broward County Board of Commissioners still needs to give final approval to the deal, so maybe if we’re lucky we’ll get some hearings or something that will shed more light on the bouncing dollar signs. In the meantime, we had more news this week, let’s get to that:

  • Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch says if Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf wants a new stadium, he should mostly pay for it with private money. Welch also revealed that the White Sox greats at that private ballfield event Reinsdorf held this week for elected officials included Bo Jackson, Ron Kittle, Harold Baines, and Ozzie Guillen, and they didn’t even play catch — though given Kittle’s career –7.5 defensive wins above replacement, you probably don’t want to let him throw many baseballs your direction anyway.
  • Frisco, Texas approved that $141 million-plus renovation for the F.C. Dallas stadium that it was set to vote on Tuesday, as expected. At least the new sun roof looks cool, even if the provided rendering shows lots of fans still sitting in the sun.
  • My former employer Gothamist, continuing its race away from quality journalism that saw it earlier this week write about New York police shooting a bystander on a subway car in the head by only asking former cops whether it was justified, opines that the Philadelphia 76ers not moving to Camden is a loss for New Jersey officials who proposed the idea. Not mentioned: All the other things New Jersey can do with $400 million if it doesn’t give it to Sixers owner Josh Harris. Guess this is what happens when keep laying off your news staff.
  • The design of the Oakland Athletics‘ proposed Las Vegas stadium is 50% complete, and no, I don’t know what that means either. It would only have 30,000 seats, with another 3,000 in standing room. If you don’t count the Tampa Bay Rays stadium, which only holds 25,000 because its upper deck has been closed since 2019, this would be the smallest MLB ballpark since the 1969 Seattle Pilots played at 25,000-seat Sick’s Stadium, which went so well that the Pilots moved to Milwaukee the next spring.
  • Cleveland.com asked some sports economists if a new Cleveland Browns stadium would be good for local jobs or tax revenue, and got the expected answer. It’s a good overview of the existing economic findings, though, and worth reading if you want to dive into the details of why sports subsidies don’t pay off for taxpayers, not even if you count the value of keeping a team from leaving town.
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White Sox lobby for $2B stadium subsidy by inviting legislators to play catch with former players

access_time personNeil deMause

With Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s demands for $2 billion in public money for a new downtown stadium going nowhere fast, what’s a poor little rich boy to do? How about inviting local elected officials to take fielding practice with former White Sox players on a pop-up baseball field laid out on the proposed stadium site:

Attendees then got to “round the bases and shag ground balls* on The Diamond with White Sox Greats and Hall of Famers,” according to an invitation for the event, which was closed to press and billed to “celebrate the spirit of America’s pastime, and embrace the future of Chicago’s legacy.”

That’s right: Like all good lobbying efforts, the state legislator fantasy camp was closed to the public, meaning we don’t know which elected officials attended, or which former players. (One can only hope it included White Sox Great Steve Lyons.) We do, though, have one comment on the event from a non-attendee, courtesy of the Chicago Sun-Times:

One suburban state representative told the Sun-Times they passed on the invite “because I don’t need a tour to know it would be awesome with that outfield skyline.”

“Everyone knows this would be awesome. That doesn’t mean taxpayers should put up a dime for it,” the representative said, asking not to be named.

That’s a reasonable enough quote, but what are you doing, Sun-Times, letting this state rep spew his opinions, on both the awesomeness of a downtown stadium and the non-awesomeness of taxpayers paying for it, behind shelter of anonymity? Don’t you even read your own parent company’s ethics policy?

While we may consider protecting a source or information with anonymity, we avoid doing it frequently because it poses editorial hazards, and because anonymity can be abused and harm public trust. When we do take the exceptional step to grant anonymity, we grant it on the basis of danger and threats to the source, and ultimately, on the basis of serving the public good. Anonymous sources must be approved by a senior manager.

(Senior manager mutters: “Public good, danger to source, editorial hazards, I dunno, it’s a good quote, let’s go with it. Surely no elected official would ever use this power to speak anonymously to manipulate the media for their own reasons, that would be mean.”)

*No, you can’t shag groundballs, only flyballs. Shh, don’t tell the elected officials.

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Friday roundup: Sacramento celebrates A’s move with new golf simulators, KC residents say cap public stadium funds at one-third

access_time personNeil deMause

Sports economist Victor Matheson and I were both on a radio show this week to discuss the Cleveland Browns and Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadium situations — you can listen to it here, but first check out the rest of this week’s stadium and arena news, it’ll be quick, I promise:

  • There’s a “major economic boost” coming to Sacramento now that the Oakland A’s are relocating there temporarily, reports KCRA-TV: A new brunch-and-golf-simulators venue is opening across the street! (It was going to open there anyway, but now that the A’s are coming, the owner is trying to open it earlier.) Also, the mayor is “in discussions” with three new restaurants! Feel the excitement!
  • There is no excitement in St. Louis, where the Cardinals are still technically in the playoff hunt, but fans in the best baseball city in the world don’t want to watch .500 baseball, it turns out, or even buy hot dogs. “I love being the hot dog lady,” says hot dog lady Karen Boschert. “I’ve cut my staff down. My prices are reasonable. You can take my food into the stadium.” Maybe she could pivot her sales pitch to point out that you can buy her food and not bring it into the stadium? Just an idea.
  • Pollsters in Missouri decided to ask an unusual question of local voters: not whether taxpayers should pay toward new stadiums for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals, but how much. The average was two-thirds team, one-sixth state, one-sixth city and county, which is kind of arbitrary and doesn’t account for whether the public would get back any share of revenues or community benefits or anything, but sure it sounds fair. Ish. Time will tell if the team owners come back with “zero-thirds team, poke in the eye with a sharp stick public.”
  • Most of the San Antonio residents who testified at a Wednesday hearing on a $160 million Missions minor-league baseball stadium “voiced concerns and skepticism,” according to Fox San Antonio. For actual quotes we have to turn to KSAT, which notes that a local arts and social justice activist said, “This project is all about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer,” while a resident of a housing complex that would be demolished to make way for the stadium said, “I would not be able to get somewhere else, and I would end up in the street yet again.”
  • Chicago’s city budget is facing a $982.4 million shortfall, and Mayor Brandon Johnson says, “There are sacrifices that will be made,” but not new Bears and White Sox stadiums, those are important even if they would cost the city upwards of $1.2 billion and $2 billion respectively, sacrifices are for little people.
  • Team-funded studies of a Philadelphia 76ers arena say it would be great, other studies show it would be a disaster; the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board says it’s up to the mayor and city council to figure out where the truth lies in the middle!
  • Another group of developers unrelated to either the Royals or the city has come up with renderings for a new downtown baseball stadium, and guys, you should at least look up how many players are on the field for a baseball game.
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Friday roundup: A’s charging $200 each for Sacramento tickets, DC hires NFL-linked firm to study building NFL stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

How much additional stadium news was there this week? So much so that I skipped posting anything yesterday, just so I could start on the bullet points for this roundup. That’s just how much I care about you, the readers of this site. (Also I couldn’t bear to write entire posts for any of these, they were all either too silly or too depressing or both.)

On with the news:

  • There were rumors that Oakland A’s management was going to force fans to also buy Sacramento River Cats season tickets if they wanted A’s season tickets in Sacramento next year, but it turns out that’s not true. What is true: A’s fans wanting season tickets will have to commit to buying them for the “duration” of the team’s stay in Sacramento, and tickets will run between $185 and $250 per seat per game. (UPDATE: The Sacramento Bee reports that that’s only for “premium” season tickets; it’s unclear if there will be non-premium season plans, or if so what they will cost.) At least A’s players won’t have to suddenly acclimate themselves to playing in front of crowds bigger than the intimate affairs they’ve grown used to since owner John Fisher alienated all his fans in the Bay Area.
  • Washington, D.C. is exploring building a new Commanders stadium by agreed to pay $565,000 for a feasibility study to ASM Global, which Fox5DC describes as “a company with extensive experience managing NFL stadiums,” but which is more accurately described as a subsidiary of Legends Entertainment, which is co-owned by the New York Yankees and Dallas Cowboys. Surely they will deliver an unbiased and comprehensively researched cost-benefit analysis of building an NFL stadium in D.C., why would you ever think otherwise?
  • Not only is the city of St. Petersburg forcing its top employees to pay back $250,000 in bonus checks it sent out for overtime work on the new Tampa Bay Rays stadium project, now city administrator Rob Gerdes has suspended city HR director Christopher Guella for a week as punishment, despite Mayor Ken Welch having defended the bonuses as “within budget and my administrative authority.” Gerdes says this is because the bonuses actually turned out to be illegal; Welch insists it’s just because he wanted to avoid a bad look, though if so he really should have checked first with Barbra Streisand about how well that works.
  • Illinois labor leaders are pushing for the state to fund sports stadiums for the Chicago Bears and White Sox and Red Stars, because “unions want to build,” according to AFL-CIO president Tim Drea. And they don’t like building the things that won’t get built if the state saves a few billion dollars by not building stadiums? Somebody get them on the phone with the Nevada teachers union, they have a lot to talk about.
  • Two Cleveland city councilmembers walked around the Browns stadium during an exhibition game and asked more than 3,000 fans if they’d rather the team stay at the lakefront or move to Brook Park, and most said they prefer the lakefront. Of course, since these were people at a game at the lakefront, you’d expect them to skew more toward wanting to see games there, since people who skip going to games because they’re at the lakefront wouldn’t be at a game at the lakefront. Anyway, what did the fans say about how much they want the city government to spend on a new or renovated Browns stadium? Oh, they didn’t ask about that? Opening day is two weeks from Sunday, plenty of time for the councilmembers to plan a new round of canvassing.
  • The Dome at America’s Center, former home of the St. Louis Rams, needs $150 million in upgrades, according to the stadium authority that runs it and surely would never lie about something just to get a nicer space to rent out at public expense. The dome is currently rented out for “assemblies for large conventions, Metallica and Beyoncé concerts, and even some lower-level professional football games,” which surely will make it easy to earn back $150 million, so long as Metallica never stops touring.
  • Saskatoon needs to come up with $400 million in public money toward a $1.22 billion development to include a new arena for the Saskatoon Blades, and it plans on raising the money via a long list of uhhhh, we’ll get back to you: maybe hotel taxes, maybe TIF property tax kickbacks, maybe money from the province, who knows? “What would the city look like without SaskTel Center or without TCU Place?” asked Saskatoon director of technical services Dan Willems. “Would we be able to attract newcomers and help major employers attract talent to our city without these types of amenities?” Shh, don’t tell him.
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Friday roundup: Voters hate stadium subsidies, business leaders love ’em, the truth must lie somewhere in the middle

access_time personNeil deMause

Thanks for sticking around to the end of the week! As a reward, you get more news items to stick around through! This is the information economy you signed up for, sorry, no refunds!

  • The folks at No Home Run in Tampa Bay have commissioned a poll on the Rays stadium plans, and say it shows that while 51% of voters supported them initially, that figure fell to 38% after respondents heard “key financial details.” This turns out to be: that Rays owner Stu Sternberg would get stadium land at a price that appears to be below market value, that he wouldn’t pay property taxes, that the city would be on the hook for $494 million (including interest) while Sternberg would keep all revenues from the stadium including non-baseball revenue, and that he would not share profits on the sale of the team with the city, all of which are undeniably accurate — all polls are hot garbage, it’s true, but this one seems as legit as any.
  • What do people in Charlotte think of the plan to spend $650 million in public money on Carolina Panthers stadium upgrades? “Leaders say” that it’s necessary for Charlotte to remain a “big-league city,” according to the Charlotte Observer, at least if by “leaders” you mean the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, that’s how representative democracy works, right, the only important people are the ones who own businesses? When not reporting on what the bosses think, the Observer also asked, “Could the Panthers leave Charlotte if they don’t get $650 million from the city?”, answering its own question by saying that sure, “the Panthers don’t appear to be interested in moving” and team owner David Tepper has made “no outward statements about wanting to relocate,” but they could, and other NFL teams have, are you $650 million worth of scared yet, huh, huh?
  • The Jacksonville city council seems prepared to rubber-stamp the city’s plan to spend $775 million in public money on Jaguars stadium renovations, with no councilmembers at a Wednesday workshop expressing major misgivings about the deal. There will be a single public hearing on June 17 for Jacksonville residents to weigh in — it remains to be seen how many councilmembers will show up for that, and how many will listen as opposed to just playing with their phones.
  • The Indianapolis City-County Council on Monday approved Mayor Joe Hogsett’s plan to create a TIF district to kick back taxes for a new MLS team and dissolve the one previously approved for the USL’s Indy Eleven. Indy Eleven fans are displeased, and some councilmembers questioned whether dedicating tax money to a team and ownership group that don’t even exist yet is the best move, but Hogsett countered that the Eleven plans were too financially risky and also the stadium was going to be built on a damn African-American graveyard, so good points on both sides, really!
  • Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch has become the latest state official to tell the Chicago Bears and White Sox owners to pound sand on their subsidy requests: “Even after the election, I just think it’s, things we have to focus on: the kitchen table issues. People want to make sure their groceries are affordable, their rent is affordable, you know, that they have a roof over their head. The last thing they want us to be talking about is stadiums for sports teams. … As we’ve said to the Bears over and over again, to the White Sox, and also to the Chicago Red Stars, there’s just no appetite to use taxpayer funding to fund stadiums for billionaires.”
  • The Chicago Reader, meanwhile, has a good article on Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s weird obsession with building the Bears a new stadium with tax money, which is even better since they fixed the part where the coining of the term “vaportecture” was credited to my old Deadspin editor Barry Petchesky. (It’s not the Reader’s fault — the new Deadspin owners broke a bunch of bylines when they did a site redesign, though they’re fixing them now.) I get quoted some in the piece, but the best line, as is often the case, goes to University of Chicago sports economist Allen Sanderson: “There’s a better chance of Brandon Johnson being drafted number one by the Bears than that stadium making a dollar.”
  • Janet Marie Smith, who worked on the design of the Baltimore Orioles‘ Camden Yards but is not involved with its current renovation, was asked by the Baltimore Banner to comment on what the O’s owners could possibly be spending $600 million or more of public money on, and mentioned various things that reflect a “more fluid way of watching a game,” including more standing room and bar areas, which is certainly one way of describing giving fans fewer places to sit.
  • The NFL is ramping up lobbying efforts to protect the use of federally tax-exempt bonds for stadiums, holding a briefing for Congressional aides during the draft in April. None of the recent attempts to rein in this practice went beyond a committee hearing, but since it saves sports team owners about $230 million a year in taxes for absolutely no benefit to the U.S. as a whole, may as well throw a few lobbyists at making sure no one even thinks about touching it, that’s the sports league way.
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Bears’, White Sox’ $2B+ stadium subsidy demands are officially dead until fall, at least

access_time personNeil deMause

The writing was already on the wall that a Chicago Bears lakefront stadium with a $2.65 billion public price tag wasn’t likely to get fast-tracked in the state legislature, and this weekend it became more or less official. Per the Chicago Tribune:

State Sen. Bill Cunningham of Chicago, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, said there would be no action on the team’s request before the legislature adjourns for the spring.

State Rep. Kam Buckner of Chicago, a member of House Democratic leadership, likewise said the team’s quest for a new home to replace aging Soldier Field, which lies in his district, isn’t on the legislative agenda in the waning days of session.

“It’s fair to say that there won’t be any Bears action … in this legislative session, which I think is fine,” Buckner said Saturday at the Illinois State Capitol. “I think a proposal of this magnitude deserves sunlight and scrutiny. And very often what has happened in this building is that things get rammed through at the last minute without much public input or transparency.”

Translation, probably: There needs to be a whole lot more haggling behind the scenes before we can ram something through without much public input. Or, before we can tell Bears execs not to let the door hit them on the way out. Lots of ways this can still go, but no decisions are going to be made until the fall at the earliest.

Oh, and same goes for White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s own $2 billion stadium subsidy demand:

Cunningham also said there would be no movement during the spring session on the Chicago White Sox requests to get public assistance for their new stadium proposal.

Another state legislator, Sen. Robert Peters, whose district covers Soldier Field, said Thursday that he wanted to see the Bears, White Sox, Chicago Red Stars women’s soccer and Chicago Sky WNBA teams to figure out a unified effort rather than all asking for the same tax money, so that may be how this plays out when everyone regroups in the fall. It’s honestly not the best negotiating tactic — hey, all you guys get your lobbyists together and gang up on us — but if it cuts the total ask, then maybe? There’s a scenario where the Bears and White Sox owners only come away with $1 billion in public money each and we’re all supposed to see that as a victory for taxpayers; maybe I’ve been doing this too long and am hopelessly negative, but my pessimism has served me well in the past, so we’ll see.

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Friday roundup: More Bears $2.6B stadium subsidy fallout, plus Indianapolis switches soccer horses

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we get to the news: I hope that those of you who enjoy using dark mode are enjoying the new dark mode plugin I installed this week (DarkMySite, if anyone cares), which seems, unlike the old one, to actually mostly work. If you haven’t tried it out and want to, click the little moon symbol at bottom right and take a load off your eyes!

Also, a special shoutout to a couple of FoS readers (unnamed, but you know who you are) who either sent in a large lump sum of cash or upped their monthly Patreon pledge for no reason at all in the last week. As I forget if I explicitly mentioned, I quit my previous day job last month, which should give me more time to devote to this site; and while I do have a new regular gig that seems promising, every step towards making this site self-sustaining is hugely helpful, so a huge thanks to all you supporters, at any level. (And for those who haven’t yet taken the plunge: There are still about a dozen more Vaportecture art prints, get ’em before they’re gone!)

Okay, enough of that, time’s a-wasting and there’s a whole week of news remainders to dig through:

  • The fallout continues from the Chicago Bears owners’ $2.6 billion stadium subsidy demand (see the updates for the math behind the updated figure), with so much more today that we’re going to have to break out the second level of bullet points:
    • Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson says it’s no contradiction that he said during his mayoral race that the city shouldn’t spend billions of dollars on a Bears stadium when there were “dozens of other urgent needs” and now thinks this is a great idea, on the grounds that he, a “middle child” from a “working-class family,” got to talk to billionaires and make sure they put some “skin in the game” and also the stadium will be “transformational” and “the Bears are staying in Chicago” and “the type of economic development this project brings” and “14 more acres of space for our children in the city of Chicago to benefit from.” Is all that the best use of $2.6 billion? I’m sorry, we’re out of time for questions, thank you for coming.
    • The Chicago Sun-Times editorial board did get a chance to ask Bears CEO Kevin Warren what would happen if the team got its $1.225 billion in taxpayer money for the stadium and nobody came up with another $1.175 billion to build new underground garages and park space, and Warren replied: “I’m not going to think negatively about that now. … If that’s the conclusion that … you want to reach now, then you can say that. I’m being positive about it … and being very transparent as far as what we need from the different three phases with this stadium project.” So, optional when projecting the city’s costs, not optional in the sense that you don’t want to go there in terms of what happens if the city doesn’t come up with another billion-plus dollars, got it.
    • Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker reiterated yesterday that he’s agin’ the whole kit and kaboodle, saying: “I’m skeptical of the proposal that was put forward and I’m even more skeptical of the ability to get enough votes for it in the General Assembly.”
    • Chicago Sun-Times columnist David Roeder suggests that if the Bears (and White Sox) want public money, they should give the public a cut of ownership of the team, though some stick-in-the-mud (okay, it’s me) points out that sports leagues love nothing more than to head off the possibility of public ownership, even blocking one-time San Diego Padres owner Joan Kroc from gifting her team to the city of San Diego on the grounds that that just isn’t done.
  • Way back in 2019, the Indiana state legislature approved giving $112 million toward a new soccer stadium for the Indy Eleven soccer team, provided owner Ersal Ozdemir got his team promoted from the USL to MLS. At the time, this seemed like an easy enough lift, since all the other kids were doing it, but it hasn’t happened yet, and now apparently Indianapolis mayor Joe Hogsett has gotten tired of waiting, announcing that he’s putting in a bid with another ownership group to get an MLS expansion team, using the same tax kickbacks that Ozdemir was looking to get. Ozdemir, who already broke ground on his stadium site last year, though it’s unclear if he’s actually started construction, is naturally enough extremely unhappy with this latest news, accusing Hogsett of “preparing to walk away” from “years of good-faith negotiations” and instead give the public money to some other soccer guy instead of him. Will there be lawsuits? Stay tuned!
  • A “hotel entrepreneur and former longtime Kansas City resident” got space on the Kansas City Star op-ed page to argue that Kansas Citians who voted against a tax subsidy for Royals and Chiefs stadiums missed an opportunity to become like Denver, where “the Coors Field development inspired a stunning downtown renaissance” where “dozens of restaurants, bars and clubs opened to serve crowds before and after the 81 hometown games each year.” I once again wish that I still had a copy of the chart someone once showed me that indicated that most of the development starts in Denver’s LoDo district actually preceded the construction of the Rockies stadium; if I can dig it up, I’ll post it here as an update.
  • The Arizona state senate is considering a bill to allow the state to approve “theme park districts” like the one Alex Meruelo wants for a Coyotes 2.0 arena, without city governments weighing in. (It did so by virtue of hollowing out an already-state-house-approved bill to give first responders access to treatment for PTSD and inserting theme park district language instead, which Arizona calls a “strike everything amendment” but “zombie bill” is a much better name.) This could make it easier for Meruelo to have the state levy a sales tax surcharge in his arena district that would be kicked back to him for construction costs; we’ll have to wait and see what the state senate thinks of it.
  • Buffalo Bills owners Terry and Kim Pegula may sell up to a quarter of their team to help raise money for their share of a new stadium, after construction costs have soared by a reported $600 million. In case you needed more evidence that many if not most stadiums are money losers that are only built so that team owners can cash subsidy checks, here’s your Exhibit A.
  • Arlington, Texas is spending $4.2 million to upgrade the Texas Rangers‘ old stadium, which the team moved out of after 2019 into a new publicly funded one, because, according to Arlington Mayor Jim Ross, “it’s a regional injection of all economic development.” The stadium is currently home to the XFL Arlington Renegades and occasional concerts.
  • What more could happen to Montreal’s Olympic Stadium after costing $1 billion to build and hundreds of millions more to fix the roof on and now $870 million to fix the roof on again? How about catching fire and needing $40 million to fix the damage? You gotta wonder if the Big Owe is just trying to put itself out of its misery at this point, but Montreal officials aren’t getting the message.
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Bears, White Sox announce plans to make announcements about stadium announcements

access_time personNeil deMause

Things are not going smoothly at all for the Chicago White Sox and Bears stadium plans, with White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf facing criticism not just for his record-shattering $2 billion public subsidy demand but for his ties to a guy who did jail time in Iraq for trying to assassinate the prime minister, while pretty much everyone hates on Bears owner Virginia Halas McCaskey’s lakefront domed stadium plan. Time for the billionaires to seize control of the narrative! Which means splashy stadium announcements — but first, to prime the pump and maximize air time, announcements of those announcements:

  • Bears officials issued a statement yesterday that they plan to issue a statement on Wednesday presenting a “state-of-the-art, publicly owned enclosed stadium” near Soldier Field on the Lake Michigan lakefront. The Chicago Tribune reports that “the team has pledged to spend $2 billion in private money” while “the cost of the stadium is estimated at $2.5 billion to $3 billion, plus $1 billion for associated roads and other infrastructure.” For the math-challenged, that leaves $1.5 billion to $2 billion to be covered by taxpayers — not including the presumed exemption from property taxes that would come with a publicly owned stadium, and assuming the team’s $2 billion is really $2 billion.
  • Reinsdorf had “a source close to” him, which could easily be Reinsdorf himself, tell Crain’s Chicago Business that he is totally willing to put in some of his own money toward a $1.25 billion stadium, which would be part of a massive South Loop redevelopment project on land owned by Nadhmi Shakir Auchi, the aforementioned ex-con Iraqi real estate baron. Reinsdorf’s avatar didn’t specify how much money, mind you, but different sock puppets “close to negotiations” told Crain’s that “Reinsdorf has mentioned a figure of $200 million or more.” This earned the ur–savvy negotiator the Crain’s headline “Reinsdorf offers to open wallet for new Sox stadium.”

Let’s take the Bears first. While we’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see whatever renderings and other distractions the team throws at the public, the intended framing here is clear: McCaskey, or whoever actually controls the 101-year-old owner’s bank account, plans on spending two billion dollars on a new stadium not in the suburbs, and all that’s left is for someone to figure out how to raise maybe another $2 billion, no problemo. While unlikely to immediately sway skeptical state officials, it’s the necessary first step to change the narrative from “you and Reinsdorf need to get together and figure out something that doesn’t cost taxpayers billions of dollars” to “oh, well, if you’re offering to pay for at least half of your insanely expensive stadium project, then maybe we can talk.”

As for the comparatively youthful Reinsdorf (he’s 88), offering $200 million while demanding $2 billion in public funds might seem like chump change. But his reality distortion field is strong, and he’s effectively managed to anchor people’s expectations to where him putting up any money at all might just feel like a win. (To Crain’s headline writers, anyway.) As with his Chicago NFL frenemies, Reinsdorf doesn’t need a winning argument just yet, he just needs to get the conversation off of his ten-digit subsidy demands and partner’s shooty past and onto what he’s willing to do for you, which is to generously pay for maybe 20% of his own stadium’s construction cost, something he should easily get back in property tax exemptions alone.

Tl;dr: The Bears and White Sox owners are still asking for close to $2 billion in tax money each to help pay for new stadiums so they can make more money, but they want it to seem like a bargain. There’s a ways to go to get there, but the payoff would be lucrative enough that it’s worth throwing rhetoric against the wall to see what sticks.

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