- An Oregon state senator has introduced a bill to increase the state’s spending on a possible Portland MLB stadium from $150 million to $800 million, provided Portland gets an expansion team whenever MLB next expands. The source would still be funneling player income taxes to pay off stadium bonds, yet another Casino Night–style funding scheme that is both risky and not really free money, for reasons we’ve covered here before. (The increased figure would rely on rising player payrolls since the initial $150 million plan was approved more than 20 years ago.) The $800 million figure is apparently meant to compete with Utah’s proposed $900 million in property tax kickbacks for an MLB stadium in Salt Lake City; expansion city bidding war, activated!
- Denver’s NWSL franchise is planning to build a 14,500-seat stadium, and “the ownership group is paying for the stadium in its entirety,” according to the Denver Post. Also according to the Denver Post, four paragraphs later, a tax increment financing district is already in place on the team’s proposed stadium site, meaning the team would recoup property taxes worth some number that the Denver Post didn’t deign to mention. The city would also be on the hook for buying $24 million worth of land for the stadium project, but Denver Mayor Mike Johnston says “the city would always own that public space and that could come back to us for repurposing in 50 years from now if the stadium were to move,” so really it’s an investment, see?
- Will the Tampa Bay Rays draw more fans this season, despite playing in an 11,000-seat minor-league stadium, thanks to now being on the side of the bay where more people with more money live? Doesn’t look like it, based on the fact that opening day is one week away and hasn’t sold out yet. It doesn’t help that Rays management raised average ticket prices by 30% in response to the smaller capacity, which could complicate efforts to use the 2025 season to answer the age-old question, “Is it St. Petersburg, or is it just Florida?“
- Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne says the financing plan for a new Cleveland Browns stadium would require average ticket prices to rise to $800 over 30 years in order for the math to work, while a Browns spokesperson says this isn’t true, and nobody’s showing their math, that’s no fun! (Yes, this website is predicated on the notion that math is fun. I’m sorry if you’re learning about this late.)
- A Massachusetts judge heard arguments this week in a lawsuit charging that a new stadium for BOS Nation F.C. (soon to be renamed, finally) violates a state law requiring a two-thirds supermajority of the state legislature to approve any new uses of land taken for conservation purposes. The Boston mayor’s office insists that tearing down a public school stadium and rebuilding it as a pro women’s soccer stadium that public school students would still get to play in is really the same use — cue the Ship of Theseus debates!
- The Eugene Emeralds are absolutely, positively moving out of Eugene after 70 years, uh, just as soon as they find somewhere else offering to build them a new stadium. Until then, they’ll still be playing in Eugene. But they’re gonna leave, just you watch! Don’t call their bluff, voters who rejected giving them $15 million last May!
Category: Portland MLB team
Portland baseball booster releases fresh stadium renderings in hopes it’ll get him more tax money
Portland Diamond Project, the people who want to bring an MLB team to Oregon, released new renderings yesterday of a 32,000-seat stadium along the Portland waterfront. We’ll get to the pretty pictures in a minute, but first, this:
[Portland Diamond Project CEO] Craig Cheek told a legislative committee Monday morning that Portland could break ground on a Major League Baseball stadium on the south Waterfront as early as 2027 if Portland is awarded a team.
Uh, sure? MLB isn’t likely to pick its expansion cities before 2027 — it still needs to settle the Tampa Bay Rays and Sacramento A’s stadium situations, and then hold a bidding war for both prospective owners and prospective cities. And “breaking ground” is typically just a matter of a bunch of elected officials showing up with hardhats and shovels, so it’s not really a sign of major construction activity. So this is mostly Cheek, an ex-Nike VP who runs the hey-Portland-let’s-put-on-a-baseball-team show, trying to get headlines by issuing checks his butt is never going to have to cover.
As for why Cheek was before a legislative committee, that’s because:
The group appeared in front of the committee to make an appeal to “modernize” Senate Bill 5, the 2003 bill lawmakers passed that would carve out $150 million for a stadium in income taxes paid by a team’s players and executives.
“Modernize,” eh? What’s that mean, exactly?
“We asked legislators to revisit SB5, originally passed in 2003, and update the law to better reflect the current revenue generated by players’ salaries and the rising costs to build a world-class stadium in downtown Portland,” Cheek said. “This would not be a new tax on Oregonians. We look forward to working with the legislature to make Oregon Better with Baseball.”
So, the modernized bill would presumably increase the amount of borrowing Oregon would take on, in anticipation of more state income taxes players would pay given that salaries are higher now than in 2003. Cheek doesn’t appear to have revealed details of how much tax money the project would require, other than saying that the stadium would cost around $2 billion total — and that this wouldn’t really be taxes that would cost Oregonians anything, because player income taxes would be free money the state treasury wouldn’t get otherwise, which is not exactly true.
Anyway, on to the vaportecture, I know you’re all excited to see that:
Daytime fireworks, gotta respect the classics! Also, that indeed appears to be some kind of sliding translucent roof, though whether it’s overlapping panels or some kind of accordion-like structure is hard to tell. Either way, when extended it would still leave large openings on the ends, which should be good to protect fans and players from most rainy weather, but not necessarily be the “365 days a year” experience that Cheek is promising.
Aside from fans displaying a weird affinity for waving flags in the middle of an inning and the only scoreboard being unseeable for fans in the left field corner, not much more to say about this one, so let’s move on to:
More flags! And a whole bunch of extremely het couples of various kinds and bicycle models. Are those people planning to bring their bikes into the stadium? I sure don’t see any bike parking before you have to ascend the steps to the turnstiles. Speaking of which, all those fans in wheelchairs are going to have a heck of a time with those steps, though there does seem to be some sort of ramp (with no railings) that they can use to wind their way up to the entry level, if they dare.
And while I get that showing rendered people mostly from behind avoids the problem of having to show particular faces, having all those fans wear t-shirts with giant Old English P’s on the back does imply some weird things about fashion trends in the year LOL2027.
This is a nice enough view showing the proposed stadium’s setting along the Willamette River, but I mostly appreciate it for its new innovation: daytime spotlights! Those are going to be really impressive, so long as you outfit them with 3.86 x 1026-watt bulbs.
So to recap: An ex-Nike executive wants to build a $2 billion stadium in Portland, Oregon for a team that doesn’t exist with owners that haven’t been identified using money that hasn’t been quantified, but in any case he wants the state legislature to allocate more of it than the last time someone made these promises 22 years ago. The daytime spotlights are probably still the most implausible part of this whole deal, but it’s close.
Oregon officials mull upping state tax kickbacks to lure the Rays (or somebody) to Portland
With the Tampa Bay Rays‘ new stadium plans dead or mostly dead or pining for the fjords or whatever pop culture reference you prefer, it’s time to speculate wildly on other cities that might want to take St. Petersburg’s place to offer up a steaming pile of money for a new stadium. Up first: Portland, Oregon, where would-be team owners the Portland Diamond Project (led by retired not-even-close-to-billionaire Nike executive Craig Cheek) want to revisit the $150 million in player-income-tax kickbacks that were approved two decades ago to try to lure the Montreal Expos, and invited over a ton of city and state elected officials, as one does, to discuss upping that dollar amount for bring an expansion or existing team to town. How’d that go over?
- State Sen. Lew Frederick: “How would people respond? The present state treasurer and the incoming treasurer were there—she [Elizabeth Steiner] will have a lot of say. If there’s a bill, the argument will be the same as it was in the past. Could we be leveraging the tax money for something else other than baseball?”
- Incoming state treasurer Elizabeth Steiner: “Selling bonds backed by the new salaries—that’s revenue we wouldn’t get if we didn’t get the team. In principle, I’m supportive but I’m not willing to commit until I see all the details.”
- State Sen. Mark Meek “I can’t wait.”
Feel the excitement! The initial $150 million cap on stadium bonds was in 2003 dollars, to be fair, so expanding it would make a kind of sense in that player salaries have gone up since then; on the other hand, state budget analysts at the time said player income taxes would only be enough to pay off about half of a $150 million bond, so maybe it wouldn’t actually make sense at all. A lot of the “revenue we wouldn’t get if we didn’t get the team” calculation would depend on whether the entire roster could be encouraged to live in Oregon and pay its 9.9% state income tax rate or if the state would only be able to charge income tax for days when the team was playing at home.
Plus, as always, there’s the substitution effect problem: How much of that income would be earned, and have taxes paid on it, somewhere else in the state if MLB never arrived? Part of players’ salaries are paid from out-of-state sources like national TV contracts, obviously, but part comes from local fan spending. If even some Oregonians fund their baseball ticket purchases by cutting back on other sporting events, or going out to eat as much, or some other local entertainment option, then the state loses income tax proceeds from Trailblazers players or sous chefs or pumpkin boat mechanics, which has to be factored in.
All this math will need to be hashed out in the state legislature, and even then it needs to be seen how much money a stadium would cost and how much of the tab Cheek and company would pick up themselves. The proposed site, the Zidell Yards south of downtown, is in a tax increment financing district, so it could get potentially get property tax kickbacks as well. (Here are some images of what the stadium could look like, or at least could have looked like when it was slated for an entirely different site in 2018.)
Portland mayor-elect Keith Wilson, at least, is apparently unworried about where to find a billion dollars or so, and already thinks his city is neck-and-neck at the finish line:
“I’d say this is as close as we’ve come. We feel confident it’s down to us and one other city. And we’re making a solid play.”
One other city? Give us a hint — does it rhyme with Schmeensboro?
Friday roundup: Houston readies stadium upgrade cash, Oakland Coliseum buyers seek new payment plan
Thanks for your patience while I’ve been traveling this week (and watching Mets playoff games at 3 am), though honestly it’s been a pretty slow news week as well. Not completely dead, though, so let’s get to the weekly roundup:
- The Houston city council is refinancing its bonds for the Astros and Texans stadiums and Rockets arena, which will let it spend an additional $150 million on renovations. The Houston Chronicle says the money is expected to be allocated as part of lease negotiations — the Texans’ is up in 2031, the Rockets’ is up in 2033, and the Astros’ not until 2050 — but also that the bond money is expected to “be split between the three venues evenly,” so maybe the city plans to set aside $50 million for each team, then see what it can get in lease extensions for that? The Houston Business Journal also reports that the Astros and Rockets leases require “renovations to maintain the first-class status of the venues” — the Astros can terminate their lease in 2035 if the additional spending isn’t made, though there’s no estimate provided of how much maintaining “first-class status” is expected to cost. Friends don’t let friends sign state-of-the-art clauses, let’s just leave it at that.
- The city of Oakland has rearranged the payment schedule for the African American Sports and Entertainment Group to supply $105 million for the city’s half of the Oakland Coliseum, and the Oakland police union wants answers, calling the change in timetable “strange and weird.” Apparently the new payment schedule also still needs to be approved by the city council before it’s final, so I’m going to go ahead and say that the whole thing is strange, though “weird” will have to wait until we have further information.
- Destruction from Hurricane Helene is expected to cut into hotel tax revenues earmarked for paying off the Tampa Bay Rays‘ new $1.3 billion stadium, though it’s too soon to predict by how much. Sports economist Geoffrey Propheter notes that if bond buyers balk at purchasing bonds because the tax revenues don’t seem sufficient, Pinellas County could have to allocate more public money to reassure them and keep interest rates from soaring, this should be fun.
- If the prospective owners who want to get an expansion franchise in Portland, Oregon are successful, and if they then are able to build a stadium where they want, it could have the side benefit of shoring up the approach ramps to a neighboring bridge so they don’t collapse in an earthquake. Neither the earthquake nor the expansion team appears imminent, but this is still news, apparently, so consider yourself informed.
If there’s anything else up, it can get discussed in the comments, or else wait till Monday when I’m back on a normal schedule. See you then!
Friday roundup: More shouting about Virginia arena traffic, plus rumors of A’s (temporary) death and Coyotes-to-Utah
Happy Friday! (Happiness provided separately.) While I have you here, is it a good time to remind you that Field of Schemes is on Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, Post, and whatever Elon Musk is calling his thing these days? And that by following FoS in any or all of those places, you can get notifications of new posts as soon as they happen — and not only that, by reacting to posts on those sites, you can help get more attention for Field of Schemes, because that’s how social media likes work, it’s a popularity contest where your votes make the things you like more popular? No, that isn’t what you want to hear right now, you just to read the weekly news recap? Okay, ignore all that for now, you can always come back to it later.
- Alexandria held a public meeting last night on traffic and transit plans for its proposed Washington Capitals and Wizards arena, and people came with all sorts of questions about the traffic and transit plans, who’da thunk it? The teams’ owner and the Virginia Department of Transportation issued a new “concept plan” for traffic and transit that mostly seems to be about how arenas generate traffic mostly at peak times (duh) and the state would be spending $200 million to mitigate this through various stuff (okay) — though honestly it’s hard to get much out of the plan beyond its dedication to all-caps type, seriously don’t do that unless you want to make it harder for readers to comprehend what you’re saying … oh.
- Former D.C. councilmember Jack Evans wrote a whole op-ed for the Washington Business Journal saying that the Alexandria arena deal would be a terrible one because it involves “extremely risky” TIFs, which isn’t necessarily wrong but is hilarious if you remember who Jack Evans is and why he’s now a former councilmember. (If you don’t remember Evans, just luxuriate in the part where he cites the more than 20 TIF deals he consummated while on the council as evidence that he knows how awful they can be.)
- Slate’s David Faris, meanwhile, thinks D.C. should let the Wizards and Capitals leave and let Virginia stick itself with the arena costs, because the teams and their limited economic impact aren’t worth it. Mostly I want to call attention to Faris’s suggestion that stadium and arena deals are subject to “a sports version of Fenno’s paradox — the political science finding that people generally like their own representative while disapproving of the job Congress is doing” — which I’m not sure is actually the case, since in my experience people tend to get the maddest about their own cities’ sports subsidies, but it’s an interesting concept.
- Could the Oakland A’s disband for three seasons, leaving MLB with only 29 teams, then emerge fully formed in Las Vegas as a beautiful expansion butterfly? You could take my word for it (hahaha no), or you could read Awful Announcing’s lengthier consideration of the possibility (the players’ union would have to sign off on losing 40 major-league jobs for three years, fewer teams would mean fewer games and would affect TV contracts, hahaha no).
- The actual likeliest locations of the A’s until their Vegas stadium is ready (if their Vegas stadium is ever ready, add Ken Rosenthal to the list of doubters) is thought to be either Salt Lake City or Sacramento, but either would require temporarily rejiggering the A’s TV rights situation, which “is gumming up a resolution,” writes ESPN’s Jeff Passan. I know A’s owner John Fisher claims he fell in love with Las Vegas and really wants to move there, but it does seem more and more like he stumbled into committing to a move through his stadium czar Dave Kaval’s loose lips and is only now trying to figure out how it will actually work.
- Could the Arizona Coyotes move to Salt Lake City as soon as “immediately”? Rumors say so, and just because the same rumors said so last summer and nothing happened then doesn’t mean they couldn’t be right now, right?
- “Levi’s to pay 49ers, Santa Clara $170M to make stadium signs slightly bigger” is a funny headline, but it’s not actually true, since Levi’s will be paying the San Francisco 49ers and Santa Clara $170 million for a ten-year extension of their naming rights deal, which is only partly motivated by wanting to make their stadium signs bigger before the 2026 Super Bowl and World Cup. Good on the city for getting at least a share of the naming rights money when many cities don’t, that’ll help make up for the money they’re losing from the team owners winning their case that they only have to pay half of the property taxes on the stadium.
- State Treasurer Dereck Davis said, “I feel lied to,” after learning that Baltimore Orioles owner John Angelos had agreed to sell his team just weeks after promising he wasn’t going to sell his team in order to get a new sweetheart lease deal from the state, that seems a very valid feeling to have. Maybe the state should have put a poison pill clause in the lease making it null and void if Angelos went back on his word? Oh well, too late now, maybe next time.
- The people who want to bring an MLB expansion team to Portland, Oregon might buy a golf course to use for a stadium that would be paid for somehow for a team that only exists in their dreams. At least they’ll always have their outfield tram renderings.
- A bill to lure the Chicago Bears across state lines to Indiana now has two sponsors in the state house instead of one. Further updates as events warrant.
Friday roundup: D-Backs owners sad no one is throwing money at them like in Milwaukee
The tchotchkes are in the mail! Repeat: The tchotchkes are in the mail! If you don’t get yours by the end of next week, please drop me a line and I’ll look into it.
And speaking of next week, I’m going to be traveling then, so expect to get your news updates somewhat irregularly and possibly at odd hours. In the meantime, here’s a pile of rounded-up news to slake your thirst for stadium and arena knowledge:
- The Arizona Republic reports that the Diamondbacks owners still want to renovate Chase Field, but that “the organization thus far has been unable to find the sort of public/private partnership to make that happen,” which is a very creative way of saying “we keep waiting for somebody to leave a suitcase full of unmarked twenties on our doorstep, but it hasn’t happened.” Team CEO Derrick Hall told the paper: “We don’t have our hand out, but if you look at some of the other situations very similar to ours — like Milwaukee, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore — in each case they are getting strong investments from the public, from a mixture of city/county/state, and we just aren’t.” Hall added: “I’m starting to get concerned with the timing. I don’t think the city officials in particular understand the urgency of our lease, which expires in 2027.” That’s urgent for someone, clearly, but it’s not the city of Phoenix that would face having to go play in the street. Hall did say that the team would put in “more than” 75% of a potential $500 million price tag, though he also said he’d be interested in getting “land we can develop,” so be sure to read the fine print of any eventual proposal.
- The state of Wisconsin and city of Milwaukee are now looking at spending $600 million in public money over 20 years to upgrade the Brewers stadium that a 2018 study found needed a maximum of $84.5 million in improvements, reports Urban Milwaukee’s Bruce Murphy. Milwaukee residents overwhelmingly oppose the plan, but the Republican leadership in the legislature is currently looking at just taking tax money away from the city and giving it to Brewers owner Mark Attanasio, which is exactly how democracy is supposed to work, A+ work there guys.
- The House Oversight Committee approved a bill to let Washington, D.C. keep control over the RFK Stadium site, while defeating an amendment that would have prevented D.C. from using public funds to build a new Commanders stadium there. The politics is a little complex here, though, with some Congressmembers arguing against using public money while defending D.C.’s right to use public money, so there’s a lot more haggling to go where this came from.
- The development team behind the Philadelphia 76ers arena plans released a report it commissioned on the economic impact of the project; please pick a random three-digit number and add six zeroes to it and you’ll be as close to accurate as the report. In related news, the 76ers’ developer partner is apparently kind of a dick.
- Missed this one last week: The New York city council has approved a new operating permit for Madison Square Garden, but only for another five years. This can will apparently be kicked down the road until Penn Station gets renovated, or the sun burns out, whichever comes first.
- The temporary cricket stadium in a Bronx public park is dead, with the 2024 men’s T-20 Cricket World Cup matches now to be held in a temporary cricket stadium in a Long Island public park instead.
- The Associated Press declares the four front-runners for eventual MLB expansion to be Charlotte, Nashville, Portland, and Montreal, though then also mentions Salt Lake City and Austin, so it looks like they’re mostly going by Googling “baseball expansion cities” and taking whatever’s on the first page of hits.
- “Local tourism agency releases PowerPoint on how cool a new sports arena would be” is exactly the kind of journalism I expect from 2023, deep sigh.
A’s owner to visit Portland, someone check if the Oakland city council is panicking yet
Last week Vegas, this week Portland:
NEW | Oakland @Athletics staff reportedly headed to Portland, OR next month as they explore possible moves. The team is meeting with Las Vegas this week, a representative confirms to me. @KTVU https://t.co/bOR7RKpXtz
— James Torrez (@JamesTorrezNews) May 24, 2021
“Faking a Move” is, of course, Step 2 in the stadium-grubbers’ handbook, aka Chapter 4 of Field of Schemes, aka “The Art of the Steal.” University of San Francisco sports economics researcher Nola Agha tells KTVU-TV that “they are putting pressure on the city of Oakland to pass any legislation that’s necessary to continue to build at Howard Terminal,” but also “at the same time, it’s tradition for professional teams in the United States to move where the owners get the best deal.”
Which, yes, I know what Agha means, team owners definitely do sometimes move in search of a better stadium deal. But they far more often don’t move after seeking a better stadium deal, and it’s not always because they’re offered a better deal by their current hometown: As just one example, see the New England Patriots not moving to Hartford in 1999 despite a sweeter stadium pot there. (Pats owner Robert Kraft did get the NFL to create its G-3 stadium funding program by making the threat, but the cash on offer from Connecticut was still more.) As I said last week, this is almost certainly A’s owner John Fisher both doing due diligence on his other options, while simultaneously gaining ammunition to convince Oakland officials to hold their noses and approve something close to his $855 million infrastructure demand — he doesn’t have to decide how serious he is about moving until after everyone has laid their cards on the table.
Anyway, if you’re an A’s fan, gird yourself for more headlines like this over the coming weeks and months, as Fisher jets off on fact-finding trips to Nashville, Vancouver, Monterrey, and Perth, because how far is too far to go to escape a stadium whose lights literally won’t stay on? (Yes, A’s president Dave Kaval said that “we can barely keep the lights on some nights” at the Oakland Coliseum, apparently a reference to a game where a bank of lights went out and they delayed the game briefly until they realized they could see okay by the other lights.) There’s a vote in the Oakland city council on the A’s plan tentatively scheduled for July 20; if carbon emissions shoot up in early July thanks to all the air traffic flying in and out of Oakland, that’s surely a small price to pay for ensuring that democracy works to achieve the right outcome for the local billionaire.
Friday roundup: Newspapers love stadium propaganda, like really love it, like would marry it if they could
One thing that both cheers and puzzles me is all the comments that surely elected officials are about to start saying no to stadium and arena shakedowns, even as they keep on saying yes. I’m not entirely sure whether it’s a dedication to optimism or a commitment to burn down the system and start anew, but I’ll just say what I’ve been saying in this situation for 20-odd years now: I hope you’re right and I’m wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.
And now that I’ve put the Neil back in nihilism, on with the news:
- Two guys in Oregon want to build a Major League Baseball stadium in the Portland suburb or Gresham, and build it entirely out of wood, and I’m sorry, I kind of stopped reading after “iconic all-wood stadium,” but I did see there’s a rendering of people petting dogs and roller blading outside a stadium, because who doesn’t like dogs and roller blading?
- Sports columnist Mike DiMauro of The Day, which I know is a newspaper in Connecticut but which always just makes me think of this, has written one of those “What’s taking so long to throw public money at a sports project, dagnabit?” columns, complaining of the “tediousness” of inaction on renovating Hartford’s arena, which is “creaky” and “squeaky,” and that the problem is the “fundamental moral outrage” of the “Chorus Of Aggrieved Taxpayers” that is leaving renovations “moving forward with the acceleration of an arthritic snail.” (Snails, of course, are invertebrates, so wouldn’t be affected by arthritis. Lucky snails!) Asks DiMauro, “What other Hartford-area project is of more benefit to a wider range of people than a bustling downtown arena?” Try not to answer all at once.
- Construction of F.C. Cincinnati‘s new stadium is complete, and the team’s press release includes a photo of it empty that is a bit drab with no lens flare or people pointing at the sky, but makes up for that with some impressively purple prose about such things as how “the back shelving of the club’s bar was inspired by the jaw-dropping five-story stacks of the Old Cincinnati Library. If that’s not worth $97 million in taxpayer money, what is? (Try not to answer all at once.)
- Still not random enough stadium cheerleading for you? How about a local TV news exclusive video of St. Louis stadium construction workers doing stretches in unison?
- The Palm Springs Desert Sun reports that Oak View Group wants its proposed $250 million arena in Palm Desert to be powered by solar energy and entirely carbon neutral, but complains it’s being stymied by the local power company, which is … sorry, no room for a comment from the power company, need to leave space for the note about the Desert Sun’s upcoming “informational webinar series” in partnership with Oak View Group about its new arena, something that is no doubt entirely unrelated to the four different OVG execs and architects quoted in the story.
- The Calgary Flames arena project may require chopping down a 125-year-old elm tree, but it’s okay because someone took a 3D photo of it first.
- Two Arlington Heights–area state lawmakers say they wouldn’t want to use public funds for a new Chicago Bears stadium in the suburban city, while one says he “probably” would. Given that “no public funds” can be defined pretty much however elected officials like these days, not to mention that no one is actually proposing to build a stadium in Arlington Heights, this maybe seems like a waste of a reporter’s time, but … oh, never mind, they just let the intern whose Twitter bio brags about their “bad sports opinions” write it, it’s all good.
- And finally, we have the Sacramento Bee’s report that Sacramento Republic FC is showing it’s serious about moving up to MLS by … changing the name of its stadium from one corporation to another? That’s what it says in the team’s press release, anyway, gotta get that right into print, that’s what journalism is all about!
Friday roundup: San Diego okays $1B arena complex, Manfred floats neutral-site World Series, and that time the Twins ran stadium ads featuring a kid who’d died from cancer
I am way too tired this morning from waiting for tranches of vote counts to drop to write an amusing intro, so let’s get straight to the news:
- San Diego voters have approved Measure E, which removes a 30-foot height limit on buildings in the Midway District, which will allow the construction of a $1 billion-or-so new arena complex, which it’s still not entirely clear how it would be paid for, plus there’s still a lawsuit against it, so tune back in later.
- MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has told Sports Business Daily that holding the World Series at a neutral site every year is not “completely off the table” because “you can plan, you can take out travel, you can pick sites that eliminate weather problems.” Marc Normandin notes that this is probably just a trial balloon — “Manfred says a lot of things to gauge the reaction of them, and then attempts to move forward with the things he thinks he can get away with or that are worth MLB’s time regardless of fan reaction” — but also points out that MLB could require cities to bid for the World Series like they do the Olympics, or at least use hosting rights as a carrot for cities to build new stadiums (like they already do with the All-Star Game), which is likely a way bigger factor than how early John Smoltz gets to book his plane tickets.
- The MLS expansion team Charlotte F.C. is no longer looking to build a new headquarters at the former Eastland Mall, apparently as a Covid-sparked cost-saving measure. As a result, the city of Charlotte is cutting its subsidies to the team (at least for now) from $110 million to $39 million. There needs to be a new agreement worked out between the team and the city, but also the city council is voting on it on Monday, so maybe it’s already worked out?
- The Toronto Raptors could play the 2020-21 season in Newark to get around U.S.-Canada travel restrictions, because at least Newark is in the East. The safety of playing basketball indoors without a bubble remains unclear, but that big German indoor concert study shows that maybe it’s actually safe so long as there’s good ventilation and everyone wears masks and distances, which basketball players aren’t going to do, so never mind.
- D.C. United fired its security company to save money and then asked team staffers to take unpaid shifts sitting in the arena watching security cameras, which is very much not a good look. Adding “Volunteering to assist with security will certainly be looked favorably upon (and vice versa)” really didn’t help.
- Hotels in Tampa Bay are excited about the upcoming Super Bowl, even if it’s at reduced capacity, because absolutely nobody is staying at hotels in Tampa Bay right now.
- Portland’s sports-owner-friendly mayor Ted Wheeler was re-elected, and this guy is really happy because yeah sports!!!
- As if the San Francisco 49ers battle with the city of Santa Clara over their stadium operations isn’t weird enough, now the team has signed a parking agreement with the city and then asked the city to tear it up, which is both weird and probably illegal.
- SB Nation’s Minnesota Twins blog looks back at that time team execs ran an ad warning that if they didn’t get a new stadium and the team left town, outfielder Marty Cordova could no longer visit eight-year-old cancer patients. Also the kid in the ad had already died by the time it ran. That did not work out well, but the Twins still got their publicly funded stadium a decade later by doing an end run around the city and getting the county to pay for it, so all’s well that ends well or something.
Friday roundup: Congress gets riled up over minor-league contraction, Calgary official proposes redirecting Flames cash, plus what’s the deal with that Star Trek redevelopment bomb anyway?
Happy Thanksgiving to our U.S. readers, who if they haven’t yet may want to read the New Yorker’s thoughtful takedown of the myths that the holiday was built on. Or there’s always the movie version, which has fewer historical details but is shorter and features a singing turkey.
And speaking of turkeys, how are our favorite stadium and arena deals faring this holiday week?
- Add the Tri-City Dust Devils to the list of minor-league teams in the middle of getting publicly funded stadium upgrades that may now get eliminated by MLB’s push to slash the size of the minors. The U.S. House of Representatives has formed a task force to oppose the plan, which normally isn’t exactly the kind of thing that makes anyone quake in their boots, but since this move has managed to piss off both Democrats and Republicans with minor-league teams in their home districts, there’s at least a slim chance it may actually mean something.
- Meanwhile, a Minnesota state representative wants to build a new $42 million minor-league baseball stadium in Shakopee just outside Minneapolis-St. Paul. The would-be Metro Millers would join the St. Paul Saints in the independent-league American Association, except that the MLB minor-league contraction plan would reportedly shift the Saints to being an affiliated team — except that Saints general manager Derek Sharrer says MLB hasn’t yet contacted his team about it. Happy not-thinking-things-through-before-announcing-them week, everybody!
- Calgary city councillor Evan Woolley was set yesterday to table a proposal to repeal the Flames arena deal and instead use the city cash that would go into it to fund light rail, a new downtown police station, and affordable housing. But I can’t find any indication in the media of whether he did so or how it went over with the rest of the council — I even scrolled through the Calgary Herald city hall reporter’s Twitter feed, so dedicated am I to bringing you all the facts — so instead let’s focus on how “table” is its own antonym depending on whether you’re speaking American or Canadian.
- The mayor of Inglewood is comparing the new Los Angeles Rams and Chargers stadium to the Genesis Device in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan that destroyed entire planets in order to reconfigure them for human colonization, and doesn’t seem to get the irony, but then, neither did The Wrath of Khan.
- 59% of Washington, D.C. residents would like the city’s NFL team with the horrible name to build a new stadium on the old RFK Stadium site, but 52% oppose using city funds to pay for it. WTOP sports reporter Dave Preston sums this up pretty well: “Of course fans want to root for their home team at home but when it comes to paying for it, people don’t want to. Why would they?”
- The Arena Football League has officially gone bankrupt, putting an end to that entire “maybe we’ll just play the entire season on the road!” thing that was floated last month. I’m pretty sure no arenas were actually built or refurbished specifically for the AFL — the last six teams in existence were Albany, Atlantic City, Baltimore, Columbus, Philadelphia, and Washington — but losing six home games will … okay, this clearly doesn’t matter to anyone who isn’t an arena football fan, and if there were arena football fans they wouldn’t have needed the talcum powder.
- The New York Yankees are again looking to refinance the debt on their ten-year old stadium, and since it’s technically city debt that the Yankees are paying off in order to get a tax dodge from the IRS, they’re having to ask the city to refinance it for them. Which, maybe the city could take this opportunity to ask for some of the $691 million it spent on the stadium? Just an idea!
- Speaking of the Bronx, 161st Street BID executive director Cary Goodman — who, full disclosure, when I was in high school I briefly worked for on a presidential campaign where our candidate dropped out before getting to the primary in our state, which was a valuable lesson in the frustrations of electoral organizing in a two-party system — is proposing that any new NYC F.C. stadium in the Bronx be owned by local residents, which sounds like a great idea until you realize that stadiums don’t make any money, teams that play in them do.
- Canada’s federal government has no interest in paying for a new Ottawa Senators arena, which should come as no surprise, but props to Canadian Minister of Infrastructure Catherine McKenna for putting it very Canadianly: “Well that’s not something we normally fund.”
- Nobody wants to buy Golden State Warriors tickets now that the team is terrible, but ha ha too late, suckers, you already bought them last year when the team was good! The San Francisco 49ers were clearly onto something when they pioneered the “sell all your seat licenses right before your team takes a nosedive” strategy. Also, the Rams and Chargers are clearly doing this all wrong.
- The wannabe MLB owners in Portland got another six-month extension on trying to figure out how to build a stadium on Port of Portland property, which good luck with that since still nobody knows how it would be paid for or how fans would get to and from games there. Maybe they can instead shoot for a more manageable target, like figuring out what the heck the people are supposed to be doing in this picture?
