Royals and Chiefs owners are outspending community groups 20-to-1 as sales tax hike vote nears

Jackson County’s referendum on a 0.375% sales tax surcharge extension to raise $500-700 million towards Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadium projects — the former of which would still need another $650-750 million from the city and/or state — wraps up voting next Tuesday, and local media outlets are starting to give it their full attention. Just in the last couple of days we’ve learned:

  • Royals execs released a list of promises to the Crossroads neighborhood over the weekend, including assisting with “rent support, relocation assistance, tenant improvements, and payroll coverage to help with employee retention.” Chartreuse Saloon owner Jill Cockson immediately dismissed it as “a bullet list, nothing about that is binding whatsoever.” Community benefits agreement expert Julian Gross said the same of the teams’ broader benefits proposal, calling it “more like a press release than anything approaching a CBA.”
  • The group KC Tenants says to vote no, because a downtown stadium would drive up rent in the surrounding Crossroads district and the sales tax hike would cost the average county taxpayer $115 a year for the next 40 years.
  • County legislator Manny Abarca says to vote yes, because “opportunity rarely knocks twice.”
  • The Royals and Chiefs owners say they’ve provided proposed stadium lease agreements to the county, but county officials haven’t made them public yet.
  • The “no” campaign is being outspent more than 20-to-1 by the teams’ pro-tax committee, which has so far spent $3.2 million.

The whole thing still looks way too close to call. This is almost certainly reading way too much into a single quote, but one person who attended Abarca’s pro-tax town hall last night told Fox4KC, “As of right now I’m still undecided. I thought I had it down pat voting for the stadium but there are other issues involved — housing, economy, people’s jobs and parking of course.” That anyone is still shifting from “yes” to “undecided” at this late date is, if nothing else, a sign that the dueling campaigns are still having an impact, so a lot can still happen between now and next Tuesday.

And what happens on Tuesday could have a big impact on sports subsidies nationwide: There’s a strong “I’ll have what he’s having” theme to sports stadium and arena campaigns, and being able to point to the Royals in particular getting $1 billion in public money for a stadium would make it easier for other teams to demand the same. Not that that $1 billion would be guaranteed if next week’s ballot measure passes — the city council and/or state legislature would still need to vote on additional funds. But this is likely to be the only time the public will get a chance to vote on whether to put their money into building new playthings for Royals owner John Sherman and Chiefs owners the Hunt family, so it’s going to do a lot to set the tone for what comes after.

ADDENDUM: Just realized I left out economists saying the Royals’ claims of job creation from their new stadium are “completely made-up, concocted numbers” and a “bunch of hot air,” but you probably knew that, even if you might be surprised who one of the economists is. (The other economist was.)

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Friday roundup: $2.5B Philly stadium development could demand public money, KC sales-tax vote too close to call

It’s Friday again, and you know what that means: Time for the cavalcade of bullet points on news we didn’t have time for the rest of the week (or which just broke since Thursday morning, that happens too).

  • The Philadelphia Phillies and Flyers owners say they’re going to partner on a $2.5 billion mixed-use development in the teams’ shared parking lots, with restaurants, shops, hotels, apartments, and a 5,500-seat performance stage. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports: “Asked if the project would require public tax dollars, the company said that it was still working on an estimated cost, and that there were many ways to finance the development,” which is decidedly not “no”; stay tuned on this one.
  • Apparently it is allowed to conduct polls in Missouri during the early voting period, and one conducted in Jackson County on the April 2 referendum on a 0.375% sales tax surcharge extension to fund Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadium projects is … tied, basically, with “yes” ahead by 47-46% but with a 4.5-point margin of error. The poll was taken last weekend before the latest news that community groups are urging a “no” vote, and by the Remington Research Group, which is connected with the “yes” campaign, so all this doesn’t look great for the team owners, though of course they still have more campaign spending to do.
  • Asked if state and city money would be required for the $2 billion Royals stadium — since team owner John Sherman is only putting in $1 billion and the county sales tax surcharge would only generate $250-350 million, sure seems like yes — team EVP Sarah Tourville told Fox4KC: “What I’ll tell you is that the Royals are committed to putting private capital into the stadium. We’re committed to a billion dollars of private capital in the stadium district.” That’s also decidedly not “no.”
  • The Arizona Coyotes briefly posted some arena renderings on their team app on Tuesday, and they’re super-tiny images that don’t have any fireworks at all, come back when you have something high-resolution, guys. Team owner Alex Meruelo still doesn’t actually have the land to build an arena on, since he first has to win an auction for state land where the bidding starts at $68.5 million, then also find the money to build the thing, but baby steps, and baby images, first, apparently. A Sportsnet reporter warned last weekend that the Coyotes could relocate if they don’t win the land auction, but 1) there might not be time to do so before the 2024-25 season and 2) we’ve been hearing this for decades now about multiple arena plans, wolf-crying caveats apply.
  • Oakland A’s management has agreed with the Las Vegas Stadium Authority on a community benefits agreement worth at least $2 million a year, which is less than they’re paying 34-year-old relief pitcher Scott Alexander. Also, community benefits agreements are supposed to be signed with community groups that can oversee and enforce them; teams can sign them with local politicians, sure, but that generally turns out very badly.
  • Speaking of going very badly, “Oakland A’s again block all replies on Twitter after realizing how much everyone hates the A’s” is an excellent headline about how very badly things are going for A’s execs right now.
  • The Chicago Bears could use personal seat license sales to fund “a significant portion” of a new lakefront stadium, reports Crain’s Chicago Business, which also notes that the team used PSLs to fund a portion of its 2002 renovation of Soldier Field — a portion of the team’s share, not the public’s share, don’t get crazy now — and that those licenses’ “value would evaporate” if the team moved to a new stadium. “Buy the right to buy tickets and keep it forever or until we tear down the stadium and build a newer one, whichever comes first” would not seem to be the best marketing strategy, but team owners do seem to rely on sports fans having short memories.
  • I was all set to see where sports subsidies would fall on Phil Mattera’s list of biggest mega-scandals, but sadly he ranks these by how much in penalties companies have paid for their misdeeds, and sports team owners have so far escaped prosecution for their crimes, unless you count the St. Louis Rams settlement.
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Some of Royals’ “community benefits” spending wouldn’t arrive until 2064, team letter reveals

Sorry to keep you hanging: Wednesday has come and gone, what are the Kansas City Royals and Chiefs owners prepared to offer as part of their community benefits agreements in exchange for $500-700 million in county sales tax money for stadium projects, as promised Tuesday? Kansas City Star, whatcha got?

The teams shared broad outlines of those agreements on Wednesday afternoon in a three-page news release less than two weeks before Election Day. They did not share the actual documents themselves and the teams did not respond immediately to The Star’s request for those agreements with the county negotiating group.

Well, that’s not great. The Royals and Chiefs press releases (there were actually two, for a total of six pages) contained laundry lists of the things they would be willing to fund (healthcare! workforce assistance! education!) without much about how the money part would work, but the Star was able to extract some details there:

What the news release did not say is that the Royals’ contribution, at least, would be in annual installments of $3.5 million. Over the 40-year term of the sales tax and lease, that adds up to $140 million. That’s according to a letter that the Royals sent to county legislators with Tuesday’s date on it that was obtained by The Star before Wednesday’s announcement.

So, $140 million dollars dollars over 40 years is not anything like $140 million now: In terms of present value — how much money you’d need to set aside today to spin off $3.5 million a year for the next four decades — it’s worth more like $60 million. And as the community groups opposed to Royals owner John Sherman’s CBA offer have pointed out, Sherman already gives $3 million a year to charity, so upping that by $500,000 dollars dollars would be chump change. (The Chiefs owners currently donate $3.5 million a year, so their offer of $2 million a year with increases starting in 2035 would actually be a reduction in charitable spending.)

And speaking of the community coalition that on Tuesday announced they would be opposing the teams’ sales-tax hike campaign, did yesterday’s press releases do anything to turn their heads?

Gathered outside the Jackson County Courthouse in downtown Kansas City, members of the Good Jobs and Affordable Housing for All Coalition chanted “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Vote No, Vote No, Vote No” as group leaders gave short speeches faulting the Royals for not meeting their demands.

At least Sherman and the Hunt family still have friends at KCTV5, which not only printed an article that only quoted a single team official with no additional research, it included a link to “Here are the groups endorsing the Jackson County stadium sales tax question” with no link to the groups opposing it. Thankfully somebody in Kansas City knows how to uphold the traditional principles of stenography journalism!

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Royals set to announce community benefits deal, community hates it already, urges “no” vote on stadium tax

Yesterday was the deadline set by the Good Jobs and Affordable Housing for All Coalition for Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman to agree to a community benefits agreement for his planned downtown stadium, and: A CBA agreement has been reached!

Jackson County legislator Manny Abarca says the agreement includes funding for affordable housing, workforce training inclusion, and support for minority businesses, and the Kansas City Public Schools District will not lose any revenues.

“Directly from the mouths of the Royals and I can validate the community table achieved that historic and transformational win,” Abarca said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

And: The coalition of community groups says the proposed CBA sucks, and everyone should now vote against the stadium tax! From the coalition’s press release sent out last night, which isn’t on the web yet that I can find:

“Make no mistake, this project will harm Kansas City,” said Gina Chiala, attorney and executive director of Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom, of the Royals’ new ballpark and entertainment district development. “It will divert taxpayer funds away from sorely needed programs, drive rents up, and create poverty-wage bad jobs that will keep workers struggling instead of thriving. Let’s use public funds for the things the public actually needs, not to help billionaires boost their profits.”

So what did Sherman actually agree to? We don’t know yet, since Abarca didn’t provide much in the way of details aside from claiming “a minimum of $140 million dollars of community benefit dollars,” which would be a lot of dollars dollars of dollars, though still way less than the $250-350 million in county sales tax money the Royals would be getting, not to mention the additional $650-750 million Sherman wants, possibly from the state. The coalition has called for a guarantee of living wage jobs throughout the stadium district and a promise of affordable housing units to house three times as many people as are displaced by the project, among other things. “The failure to make this happen is entirely theirs to own, and we plan on making them feel the weight of their poor decision-making at the ballot box,” said Missouri Workers Center and Stand Up KC leader Terrence Wise in last night’s press statement. “To a team that claims to do a whole lot of listening, get ready to hear us loud and clear on April 2.”

There is going to be a lot of loudness and clarity happening on April 2, certainly: A whole lot of business groups, plus construction unions that cut their own side deal for union hiring with the Royals, are all in favor of the 0.375% sales tax surcharge extension to fund about $500 million in Royals and Chiefs stadium spending; in addition to the Good Jobs Coalition, tenant and environmental groups have come out against the plan. Members of the group KC Tenants interrupted a “Vote Yes” event on Monday by … doing something loud, presumably, the event was closed to the press and Fox4KC didn’t actually describe what happened.

The best predictor of a successful stadium subsidy push, as Kevin Delaney and Rick Eckstein made clear in their book Public Dollars, Private Stadiums, is when business and political leaders are all speaking in unison in favor of it. The business community is on board here, but with labor split, some elected officials like Jackson County executive Frank White opposed, and local media taking a surprisingly critical stance (or maybe not surprising, since the media tends to frame debates in terms of the range of what elected officials are saying), the April vote is looking up in the air, let’s just say.

There’s still a chance that the community groups will come around — Wise said yesterday before Abarca’s statement that “they have an opportunity still, until April 1st, to bring something meaningful to the table,” but then also Chiala said, “Any CBA that comes out, we should make very clear, is not actually a community benefits agreement,” because “the community is not at the table.” We’ll know more today, maybe, after Sherman actually announces how many dollars of dollars he plans to devote to how much housing of housing.

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KC community groups say Royals’ community benefits offer sucks, walk away from table … for now

So the coalition of Kansas City union, housing, and transit groups that had said if Royals owner John Sherman and didn’t agree to a community benefits agreement by Tuesday they’d tell people to vote against his stadium sales tax referendum declared Friday that his latest proposal was so unacceptable, they would be pulling out of joint talks with the team and county while continuing their own separate talks with team execs:

The announcement came just before the March 19 deadline set by the coalition for a CBA to be negotiated. Now, the coalition said it plans to continue negotiations with the Royals separately from the County.

“The window for negotiating a robust, powerful and transformative CBA with the Royals and the Chiefs is quickly closing,” said the Heartland Center and Missouri Workers Center in the letter. “Unfortunately, the responses we have received from the teams at the County Table largely ignore the community’s demands, fail to make meaningful progress on racial and economic justice, and assign value to the Teams’ own customary charitable works in an attempt to bloat the CBA’s value without actually providing the community the benefits sought.”

The gripe in particular is that Sherman was promising less in community benefits than he typically gives now to local charities, and the team would pick and choose where the money would go. Meanwhile, proposals from the coalition — such as that the team owners would replace any housing destroyed for stadium contruction with triple the number of units and provide housing affordable to people making 30% of the area’s annual median income — were rejected.

Walking away from the table — well, from one of two tables — is clearly an escalating ultimatum to Sherman (and Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, who is also part of the CBA talks) to agree to their terms or risk having them call publicly for a “no” vote. It was already looking like a bad weekend for Sherman after one of his main legislative supporters, Jackson County legislator Manny Abarca, accused County Executive Frank White of holding a grudge against his old team for how they had treated him as a coach and broadcaster and used the phrase “let’s call a spade a spade,” ohhhh, no you didn’t want to do that! After getting piled on by Xitter users and called out by White for using “overtly racist” language, Abarca wrote a followup post beginning, “Here’s a reality that I became aware of yesterday…” in which he apologized for “inadvertently making an insensitive comment,” while saying he had previously “only heard this phrase in association to the card game,” which is bizarre because while the phrase’s origin wasn’t initially racial, it also has nothing to do with the card game Spades, but whatever.

Will all this significantly influence the voting in the April 2 referendum? Who knows! But one of the consequences of early voting periods is that it’s nearly impossible to take polls on ballot measures like this — which is probably fine as polls are mostly garbage anyway, but it does mean lots of reporting in a vacuum about what it all means. Which maybe encourages more journalism about the actual meaning of events and not just horse race coverage trying to guess what voters will make of it all? That would be good? I’m not accustomed to things involving journalism improving, I need to sit and think on this one a bit.

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Friday roundup: Royals, Chiefs owners turn up heat before sales tax vote, VA gov tries to revive arena by insulting state senate again

Time to open up the ol’ Instapaper and see what this week’s leftover news items hold — seriously? Okay, better get started:

  • So much is going on in Kansas City in advance of Jackson County’s April 2 voting deadline for a referendum to extend the county 0.375% sales tax surcharge and give the resulting $500 million or so to the Royals and Chiefs for stadium upgrades that for the first time I’m having to break out a second level of bullets:
    • Chiefs president Mark Donovan went on TV and was asked if the teams would leave town if the tax hike is rejected, and replied, “for us the Chiefs; we would just have to look at all our options” and “I think they would have to include leaving Kansas City. But our goal here is, we want to stay here.” It’d be a shame if someone was to set fire to the football players, wouldn’t it, Luigi?
    • The two teams have doubled their campaign spending to $1 million each, with more presumably expected.
    • A coalition of low-income workers and residents of the Crossroads district where the Royals owner John Sherman wants to build a stadium with around $1 billion in public money says they’re giving Sherman until Tuesday to provide a community benefits agreement for the neighborhood or else they’ll advocate for a “no” vote.
    • And Chiefs mascot KC Wolf and Royals mascot Sluggerrr handed out “Vote Yes” stickers outside the city’s arena yesterday, and I had to dig through the Fox4KC video for photographic evidence but here it is:
  • Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s own internal analysis of the proposed Washington Capitals and Wizards arena deal for Alexandria finds that in order for it to raise enough money to generate the taxes needed to pay its construction costs, fans would have to pay $75 for parking, the arena would have to host 53 more events each year than the teams do now in D.C., and the project’s hotel would have to be able to charge $731 a night. Youngkin says he’s “working on” reviving the arena plan and that the problem is “the Senate didn’t do the work,” he really hasn’t learned his lesson about how to win friends and influence people, has he?
  • Three members of the St. Petersburg City Council remain opposed to Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg’s maybe–$1.5 billion stadium subsidy deal, and it would only take four to vote it down. The nearest anyone else is coming to opposing it is Gina Driscoll’s “undecided but optimistic,” though, so don’t hold your breath, but there’s at least a non-zero chance this thing might not sail through without more haggling.
  • Two weeks after Wisconsin assembly speaker Robin Vos pushed through $471 million in stadium renovation subsidies for the Milwaukee Brewers, five team executives each donated the maximum $1,000 to Vos’s reelection campaign. Probably just a coincidence, though, as they doubtless give money all the time to all sorts of — oh, this was their first donations to any candidate in the state ever? Well then.
  • Why don’t pro women’s teams get as much public subsidies as pro men’s teams? That’s the question being asked by Karen Leetzow, president of the Chicago Red Stars NWSL soccer team, which is owned by Laura Ricketts, who co-owns the Cubs with her brothers Tom, Pete, and Todd, something USA Today utterly fails to mention in its article.
  • The Seidman Research Institute at Arizona State University (which, despite its name, is actually a business consultant) reports that spring training games in Arizona generated more than $710 million for the local economy in 2023, enough to pay Shohei Ohtani’s entire 10-year contract, and this breaks so many rules about not comparing economic activity with actual tax receipts and not comparing present and future value that I almost can’t muster the energy to point out that previous studies show that the actual number is closer to zero.
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Royals stadium debates show some in favor, some opposed, because that’s how debates work

Early voting is going on now in the April 2 referendum on Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman’s proposed 0.375% sales tax surcharge to raise $500 million or so , half of which would go to Chiefs renovation and half toward a $1 billion or so public subsidy for a new downtown Royals stadium — (deep breath) — and there were two separate informational sessions yesterday for locals to learn about and debate the plan.

One, a hearing called by county legislature chair Jeanie Lauer and vice chair Megan Marshall, drew a packed house for public comment, though Lauer and Marshall laid out strict ground rules in advance, instructing, according to KCTV5, that “comments should focus specifically on concerns or benefits to the selected site, not on the taxing mechanism to fund the project.” That’s a pretty severe limit, and according to the TV station, the comments mostly came from:

  • Business owners in the Crossroads neighborhood that would be displaced to make way for the stadium, who were “nearly all opposed to the project,” including one distillery owner who testified, “I will not support my own displacement from a team that sells its best players to the Yankees.”
  • Members of contruction unions, who said, well, you can guess: “We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to influence the economic prosperity for this region for years to come.”

Over at the other event, former Kansas City councilmember Becky Nace — now chair of the Committee Against New Royals Stadium Taxes — and former Kansas City mayor Sly James — now an advisor to the Committee to Keep the Chiefs and Royals in Jackson County — debated every aspect of the Royals plan, including the taxing mechanism to fund it:

  • “This is not simply public money going into this,” said James. “This is the largest public-private partnership in the history of the city and the county.”
  • “We’ve supported these teams, and to threaten to leave if we don’t meet their demands is not appreciated by fans,” countered Nace. Furthermore, she added, it might not be easy for the Royals and Chiefs to just pick up and move: “Maybe they are bluffing, but maybe they aren’t, but it would cost them money they have to rebrand and move the team.”
  • “It may not be easy, but it sure does seem to happen a lot over stadium issues,” retorted James.

Does it, though? Aside from the flurry of NFL teams that switched cities in the wake of St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke breaking the seal on putting an NFL team in Los Angeles in 2016, the most recent sports relocations have been:

  • The Montreal Expos becoming the Washington Nationals in 2005, which was only partly about stadium concerns and partly over concerns about Montreal as a good MLB market, though the league certainly took advantage of the situation to extract a sweetheart stadium deal in D.C.
  • The Seattle Supersonics becoming the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008, which came after a failed arena push in Seattle but also after the team was sold to an Oklahoma business leader.
  • The Atlanta Thrashers becoming the new Winnipeg Jets in 2011, which didn’t involve a newer arena unless you count moving from one built in 1999 to one built in 2004.

And that’s it for the last 20 years. It does seem to happen, yes, but not really “a lot,” and the number of teams that threaten to move and then never do it is much, much longer.

James also addressed the issue of displaced businesses, saying, “If it requires people be moved, we will help them move. If it requires people to lose profits, we will help them with that. If it requires people get out of their leases, we will help them with that.” Nace, meanwhile, pointed to the unknowns about what public money Sherman will ask for if he gets the sales tax approved, saying, “”You don’t know what you’re voting for and what the consequences will be. It does come at a risk, and it does come at a cost; this cost is too steep.”

Probably none of that quite justifies the headline that KSHB slapped on its accounting of the event — “South Kansas City residents get April 2 stadium sales tax vote questions answered” — but at least it put some cards on the table. What would be nice to see would be some polls indicating how Jackson County residents are leaning on the sales tax ballot proposal, but with voting already underway we’re not going to get that. Instead, everyone set your clocks for the evening of April 2, when we — and John Sherman — will finally get to see if the Royals’ stadium plan moves forward with its first quarter-billion-dollar public down payment, or gets stopped in its tracks.
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Friday roundup: NYCFC unveils images of Naming Rights Sponsor Stadium, A’s reveal plans to blow a/c at fans’ feet

And so we have reached the end of another programming week, one mercifully without Jerry Reinsdorf’s stadium subsidy demands going up yet again. That’s just about the only thing that didn’t happen this week, though, so let’s hit the news recap:

  • NYC F.C.‘s $780 million soccer stadium plan cleared another hurdle this week, getting the okay of the City Planning Commission, the last stop before a final city council vote. It also got some fresh renderings depicting how fans would enter the stadium through a giant cube-shaped entryway (dubbed The Cube, this team has a way with words) that would be covered in a giant video board that display the names of all five New York boroughs, in case you forget where you live. (The stadium is depicted bearing the name Naming Rights Sponsor Stadium, while the entryway in one image says “New York City FC” while in another it’s “Cube Entrance Sponsor,” pick a lane, guys.) Still up in the air: how the affordable housing component would work, where fans will park if Mets owner Steve Cohen refuses to let the soccer team use his parking lots across the street unless he gets a state casino license, and, oh yeah, how the whole thing would be paid for, someone should really look into that.
  • The Oakland A’s “spherical armadillo” stadium in Las Vegas would have “the highest number of suites, clubs and other high-end seating products” relative to size of any MLB stadium, according to Venues Now, which spoke to A’s president Dave Kaval on the subject. In addition to hardly any affordable tickets, Kaval promised that the air-conditioning would blow out from under people’s seats, something that’s used at the Sacramento Kings arena and in some Middle East soccer stadiums, and which the site reported Kaval said he’s “working with Henderson Engineers to find a way to make it work in MLB.” Also a work in progress: The A’s are playing an exhibition game in Las Vegas tonight, and plenty of good seats are still available.
  • The Virginia legislature has officially passed a budget without money for an Alexandria arena for the Washington Wizards and Capitals, though Gov. Glenn Youngkin could still try for an amendment or a special session. State senate finance chair Louise Lucas, who has the power to kill budget bills by denying them hearings in her committee, doesn’t seem real amenable to that, though. One Alexandria restaurant owner tells D.C. News Now that he’s upset not because he wants arena traffic for his businesses, but because spending over $1 billion in public money on an arena would “alleviate some of the tax burden from the residents,” somebody’s been reading too many clown documents!
  • Two members of the Jackson County legislature will be holding a public hearing this Monday at 3 pm on the Kansas City Royals‘ $2 billion stadium plan and $1 billion public subsidy plan. While attendance at these things is never representative of the public as a whole — it’s almost guaranteed there will be a throng of construction workers bussed in to cheer the project on, for example — it will at least give us some hint of the public mood as we approach the April 2 deadline for voting on the 0.375% sales-tax surcharge extension that would fund the first chunk of the project. (The Kansas City Star editorial board is a no, at least until Royals owner John Sherman explains more about how the money, lease, and provisions for relocating businesses would work.)
  • The Chicago Bears owners are reportedly “close to” announcing a lakefront stadium in Chicago and are also still haggling with suburban cities over property tax breaks for a stadium there, never take seriously rumors that are spread by team execs themselves, just don’t.
  • Maricopa County and the city of Phoenix are considering a “partnership” to address the Arizona Diamondbacks owners’ stadium demands, which would … do something? Also this was just a letter that the county sent to the city council last August, and the council never replied, guess the Arizona Republic was having a real slow news day.
  • Would a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium increase the team’s attendance? Yes at first, then no after the honeymoon wears off in a few years. This report is not remotely new news, but it comes with lots of stats and charts! Guess the Tampa Bay Times opinion section was having a slow news day.
  • Sure, New York taxpayers are spending over $1 billion on a new Buffalo Bills stadium, but who can put a price on 16-foot-tall bison statues? ESPN reports that “there was some disappointment on social media among fans” that the statues aren’t bigger, since the “World’s Largest Buffalo Monument” in North Dakota is 26 feet tall, that does it, time to tear down the new stadium and build one with state-of-the-art bison.
  • New Mexico United‘s new stadium “costs the city nothing,” according to team president Ron Patel; KOAT-TV checked, and it’s actually nearly $29 million in public money, about half the total cost. Never take seriously cost estimates that are put forward by team execs, just don’t.
  • The Hawaii legislature is set to consider a bill to scrap a $350 million plan to rebuild Aloha Stadium so that the money can be used for wildfire recovery and housing instead. Rep. Gene Ward said he opposes the bill because “it’s not going to get anybody to come to the football games, regardless of how bad you are as a football player,” no, I don’t know what he meant by that either.
  • Finally, back on the A’s front, I was on this week’s Rickeyblog podcast, where we talked about all aspects of the team’s stadium situation, not least why fans in the Vegas stadium renderings are waving the flag of Gaddafi’s Libya and what that could mean for tourism. Give it a listen, you’ve got all weekend!
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Friday roundup: Opposition builds (somewhat) to sports subsidy plans in Virginia, Kansas City, elsewhere

It’s been a rough week, what with new stadium demands dropping every couple of hours, half of them from Jerry Reinsdorf. But there have also been signs of new organized opposition from all corners, some of them involving heavy hitters:

  • The Northern Virginia AFL-CIO came out against the proposed Washington Capitals and Wizards arena in Alexandria after being unable to reach an agreement with the teams and the state on whether a hotel that would be part of the $2 billion project would employ union workers. “If they’re against it, then the arena deal is probably going to have a very difficult time,” remarked Virginia House Speaker Don L. Scott Jr. afterwards, as the arena bill heads for reconciliation talks between the house, which passed it, and the senate, which didn’t even give it a hearing. “If it dies, it dies.”
  • Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas, meanwhile, upped the ante on her opposition to Alexandria arena plans, challenging D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Twitter to “compete by both offering $0 in taxpayer dollars to these teams and let them decide where they want to pay to build their own arena.” (Bowser’s account did not respond, unless this counts.) Former Alexandria mayor Allison Silberberg, who is part of the Coalition to Stop the Potomac Yard Arena campaign, was so pleased that she brought Lucas a cake.
  • After the Kansas City renters’ group KC Tenants came out against the upcoming April 2 referendum to renew Jackson County’s 0.375% sales tax surcharge and give the money to Royals owner John Sherman as part of a potential $1 billion in public money for a new downtown stadium, calling it “$167 per household, per year, all to pay for a playground for the wealthy and for tourists,” a group of city residents have formed the Committee Against New Royals Stadium Taxes to likewise oppose the tax hike. The group has “little to no money in its bank account,” according to the Kansas City Star’s account of campaign manager Tim Smith’s characterization, but it does have a parked domain name and its organizers are members of the extremely active Save Kauffman (Royals) Stadium at Truman Sports Complex Facebook group, which is a recommended follow if you want to see how extremely angry many Kansas City residents, and Royals fans, are about this whole state of affairs.
  • Arthur Acolin, a real estate economics professor at the University of Washington, released a three-page report on the proposed downtown Philadelphia 76ers arena that found that disruptions to existing businesses during construction and operation could cost the city and state between $260 million and $1 billion in lost tax revenues. The math is a little rough — it looks like Acolin just added up all the economic activity in the area of the proposed arena and calculated what would happen if it fell by sample round numbers — but as he writes, “the 76ers have provided nowhere near this level of details nor any of the analysis behind their figures.” It was enough to get the 76ers to respond by calling the report “fatally flawed” and “another attempt by those who oppose the project to obfuscate the truth by pumping out misinformation and half-baked theories instead of engaging in productive dialogue,” in a CBS News article that repeatedly refers to Acolin as “Albert Alcoin,” which should get all their copy editors immediately fired, if they had copy editors, which they probably don’t.
  • Arizona Republic sportswriter Greg Moore wrote a column about Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick’s threat to leave town if he doesn’t get public stadium money that includes the subhead “I don’t like bullies,” and really the rest of the column is just icing on that four-word cake.
  • I brought my mighty rhetorical weight to the airwaves, or at least the internetwaves, by going on the Sox Machine podcast to talk about why giving Reinsdorf $1.7 billion in tax money for a new Chicago White Sox stadium development (since upped to $2 billion) would be crazytown.

So that’s it, then, the tide is finally turning, and maybe soon we can all stop pushing this damn rock back up this damn hill day after day? Hahaha of course not, the forces of vacuuming up money and giving it to rich people so they can have more money (because that’s what makes them rich people) continue unabated:

  • The Utah legislature advanced a bill to hike sales taxes in Salt Lake City by 0.5% to generate $1 billion for an arena for a nonexistent NHL team, with the backing of Mayor Erin Mendenhall. This would be on top of $600 million or more in proposed hotel tax hikes to help pay for a stadium for a nonexistent MLB team. Hockey bill sponsor state Sen. Dan McCay denied that this was giving in to threats by the Jazz ownership that they could move out of the city limits without a new subsidized arena, then added, “you’d hate to see downtown lose the sporting opportunities they have now,” so, yeah.
  • Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson delivered up a fresh bowl of word salad about whether he’ll endorse city money being used for a new White Sox stadium: “As far as public dollars, we haven’t gotten into any of those specifics just yet. But I will say that we’re gonna explore all options. … Everything is on the table here. But again, I want to make sure that there’s a real commitment to public use and public benefit. … There’s no guarantee that they’ll get it from the city. What I’ve said repeatedly is that we need to make sure that our investments have real public benefit and that there has to be a commitment to public use. Those conversations are being had, and there are some promising developments that eventually we’ll be able to talk about out loud.” He has it right here on this list
  • The new $27 million Rhode Island F.C. soccer stadium in Pawtucket will now cost state taxpayers $132 million over 30 years, because the Pawtucket Redevelopment Agency got a terrible bond rate. State commerce secretary Liz Tanner defended the pricey borrowing by pointing out that even though the state legislature could have just appropriated the money and saved taxpayers a ton of interest payments, “there would’ve been a level of uncertainty without knowing whether the legislature was going to pass those dollars or not,” and we can’t have that, now can we?
  • The Dodger Stadium gondola project — surely you remember the Dodger Stadium gondola project — lurched forward again on Thursday when the Metro Board of Directors signed off on its environmental impact report. The gondola still needs approval from the city of Los Angeles and parks and transit officials, plus to figure out who exactly will pay for its potential $500 million price tag, but if nothing else it lives to gondola another day.
  • Oakland A’s owner John Fisher is reportedly focused on staying in Oakland until a new Las Vegas stadium is open in 2028, and also Sacramento is the frontrunner to be the temporary home of the A’s, this is way too blind-men-and-the-elephant for me, maybe let’s all calm down about the latest rumors you heard, guys.
  • And in non-sports news, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry defended signing a bill to remove the requirement that recipients of state development subsidies report how many jobs they’ll be creating, because “this program is about capital investment. It is not about job creating.” Just gonna sit here and let that roll around in my brain for a while, have a great weekend and see you back here Monday!

 

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Friday roundup: Bears set arbitrary stadium deadline, A’s now have three different sets of stadium renderings they won’t show you

A reporter asked me this week if I thought there was one particular thing driving the current wave of stadium and arena demands, and I said not really, though there are a few factors influencing it — lots of ’90s stadiums hitting the end of 30-year leases, local governments feeling a little more flush thanks to federal infrastructure and COVID relief money, baseball teams rushing to get deals in place before expansion takes move threat targets out of play. But at the same time, man is the sports subsidy news ever a firehose right now: This site is seeing multiple posts a day right now, and still I feel like I’m leaving more news than ever for the Friday roundups.

Which is all fine and good and I’m happy to do it, it can just be a little exhausting to write. If it’s not too exhausting to read as well, and you want to throw some additional coins in the tip jar to help me shoulder this increased workload, that’s always appreciated. I’m sure things will die down some once we get to the end of various legislative sessions in the spring and early summer, but right now we should all be taking our vitamins to keep our stamina up.

And speaking of the firehose, let’s turn it on and get blasted:

  • Chicago Bears CEO Kevin Warren says as far as a new stadium goes, “the timeline has to be in 2024,” adding, “Time is money. It takes probably three years once you put a shovel in the ground. ’24 should be the focal point.” Oh hey, it’s our old friend the Two-Minute Warning from the standard stadium playbook! As is de rigueur, Warren did not indicate what would happen if his team didn’t get a new stadium approved in 2024, but given that right now he doesn’t have a lot of viable alternatives, I’d wager that holding his breath until he turns blue is not off the table.
  • And speaking of arbitrary deadlines, St. Petersburg is pushing back a council vote on Tampa Bay Rays stadium funding until May, so there’s enough time for committee meetings first. Rays president Brian Auld warned back in October that “any delay is going to fundamentally alter the entire agreement”; nothing yet from Auld on whether he has a problem with this delay now, but given that it looks like relatively smooth sailing right now for Rays owner Stuart Sternberg to get a potential $1.5 billion in public cash, I’m expecting he won’t complain too much about waiting a few extra weeks for the check to arrive.
  • MGM Resorts International CEO Bill Hornbuckle, who previously said he had seen the mythical Oakland A’s Las Vegas stadium renderings and that they were “spectacular,” now says he’s seen three different versions of where the stadium would go on the current Tropicana resort site, and it’s holding up his plans to renovate his resort across the street until he sees the final design. “I have to believe, in the next 30 to 60 days, we should find out more,” Hornbuckle said; maybe he has to believe it in order to sleep at night, but with the stadium renderings now overdue by two and a half months and counting, we are under no such obligation.
  • The meeting between A’s execs and Oakland officials about a potential short-term lease extension at the Coliseum were “really positive” according to an unnamed team official and “very open and frank” according to Alameda County supervisor David Haubert, who added, “No food fights.” I read somewhere that I can’t find now that the whole thing only lasted about 30 minutes; more meetings are expected, at which there should be plenty of time for food fights.
  • For the many of you expecting Joe Lacob to ride to the rescue and buy the A’s from Fisher and keep them in Oakland, Lacob has an update of sorts: “I’ve not checked in recently. It’s his team. If he decides he wants to sell, he knows who to call, that’s all I’ll say. We might be interested, obviously. We’ve said we were interested in the past. But I don’t think he’s doing that. I think he’s very committed to continue to own the franchise. Looks like he’s committed to Las Vegas. We’re always there. But I’m not calling anybody, it’s his team. I want to stay out of the way. We’ll cross that bridge if it or another team comes available.” Read those tea leaves as you prefer.
  • Jacksonville mayor’s office lead negotiator Mike Weinstein says Mayor Donna Deegan is considering paying the public’s share of $2 billion in Jaguars stadium upgrades by using money in the city’s pension funds, which would be repaid by (scroll, scroll) nope, he didn’t say how, so this is very much the equivalent of explaining how you’ll afford a new purchase to your spouse with “I’ll put it on our credit card.” Note to First Coast News headline writers: This is not what “paying for” means.
  • Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas says her finance and appropriations committee will “absolutely” strip funding for the proposed Alexandria arena for the Washington Wizards and Capitals from a 2024 budget bill: “I’m not changing my mind.” We certainly seem headed for a scenario where the state house approves an arena bill while the state senate does not, though there’s still lots of speculation that Senate Democrats are just haggling over their price, possibly for cannabis legalization, an increased minimum wage, more affordable housing, or possibly a pony.
  • An analysis of the Virginia arena deal by the D.C. city council, which obviously isn’t impartial, estimates that it would actually cost taxpayers more than $5 billion counting maintenance and debt service. That’s not entirely fair since a bunch of that money would be paid out in the far future — it’s the old fallacy of calculating how much your house costs by adding up all your mortgage payments over 30 years — but the report does note that the arena plan includes a publicly covered $12 million a year repairs slush fund that would grow at 2% a year, so that’s maybe another $250 million in cost that hasn’t been accounted for by the first $1 billion or so in public money, add it to the list.
  • Another stadium playbook standard is the Home Field Disadvantage, claiming that the old place is just too decrepit ever to stack up with modern buildings, and the Kansas City Royals deployed that one this week, having Populous stadium designer Earl Santee say it’s “just not feasible” and “not realistic” to renovate the team’s current stadium, on account of it having what’s called “concrete cancer.” Oh, really, Earl? This didn’t come up when the Royals stadium was just renovated last decade? Do you have an engineering report to show us, or a price tag on what it would cost to subject Kauffman Stadium to concrete chemotherapy? Hello, Earl, we have followup questions! Earl!
  • Buffalo Bills execs say that their new stadium will have a steeper upper deck that will allow it to bring fans closer to the field, so that, in WGRZ-TV’s words, “fans who sit in the last row of the general concourse will be 54 feet closer to the field than they are at the current stadium.” Yes, that’s how geometry works, and yay for them for applying it — except that the old stadium holds 71,608 fans and the new one will hold only 62,000, so really a lot of the improvement is just from lopping off the farthest 10,000 seats, so not so yay after all.
  • The city of Pawtucket sold $54 million worth of bonds last week to fund a new Rhode Island F.C. stadium, and while that’s a lot for a minor-league soccer stadium and double what taxpayers were supposed to be on the hook for less than a year ago, perhaps most alarming is the news that the bonds were sold at “a yield of 8.24%, equivalent to almost 14% on taxable securities.” Nothing tops off massive public cost overruns like the worst interest rate imaginable, that’s what I always say!
  • I was on the radio in Chicago this week to talk about the new White Sox and Bears stadium proposals, and props to WBBM’s Rick Gregg for leading with my juiciest quote: “I think we went in fairly skeptical, and we came out of our research horrified.” Click the link above to give it a listen, and have a good long weekend for those who celebrate!
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Field of Schemes