Category: Tampa Bay Rays

Stop the presses: Rays stadium site search continues to search for stadium site

access_time personNeil deMause

Baseball’s winter meetings are on this week in Orlando, which means lots of opportunities for reporters to hobnob with team execs and fill column inches with whatever comes out of their mouths. So you probably could have predicted that Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times, who has made an art form of this or at least a job description, would be on hand, in this case giving Rays co-owner Ken Babby 13 full paragraphs to explain that the ownership group’s plans for a new stadium by 2029 are making progress, even if not in any particularly definable way:

“We are exploring sites. We are meeting with architects. We are meeting with public officials,” Babby told the Tampa Bay Times at Major League Baseball’s winter meetings. “We are conducting a lot of analysis on how you go about building a development in a ballpark that meet the criteria that we talked about (including a plot of at least 100 acres). We’re visiting a lot of other parks, a lot of other stadiums, understanding what’s possible with different structures.”…

“We discussed what we thought a construct of a public-private partnership could look like. And have really enjoyed our conversations with folks both in the city and the county, both sides of the bay. We’ve been really focused on building those relationships.”…

“We believe that to build a state-of-the-art development, it’s going to require at least that kind of acreage [that the Atlanta Braves got for their Battery project] and it’s also going to require a great public-private partnership. We’re going to do our part. We’re not out there looking for anything that’s unfair or unjust. We want to build something that is truly a win for the community. And that’s building a district, building a community, driving jobs, creating billions of dollars of economic impact.”

That’s a lot of positivity — building relationships! a win for the community! — but no details at all, beyond that the Rays owners are considering sites throughout the Tampa Bay area (which we knew) and are “fully focused on opening a new ballpark in April of 2029” but know that’s “an ambitious timeline.” Even the requirement that any stadium site come with enough space for a Battery-style development came with a hedge: “While it’s not the only site and dynamic that we love, it’s certainly been a wonderful blueprint.”

All of which is fine and to be expected: When a friendly reporter sticks a microphone in front of you and presses record, it’s a team owner’s job to natter on about how much momentum their proposed stadium project has, even if it doesn’t have a site or any money identified to pay for it. It’s a bigger question whether Topkin is doing his job by letting Babby say all this stuff unchallenged — the only other quotes in the story are from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred — but now that the Times is letting other reporters actually report the news, it’s a bit less egregious.

The bigger problem here is letting team owners set the news agenda in the first place. Yes, the Rays’ lease at Tropicana Field runs out after the 2028 season (originally 2027, but it got automatically extended after a hurricane blew the roof off and sent the Rays to a minor-league stadium in Tampa for a year), but as we’ve seen before, leases can be extended — and in fact, St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch has already expressed an interest in doing so for the Rays, saying “the bones of the Trop are super strong, so once we get the electronics and the roof done, the Rays could be there for a decade.” So there’s no real urgency here, especially when it’s not at all clear that a new stadium itself would do much for the Rays’ finances — a new stadium with a pile of public subsidies might, but then the problem you’re solving isn’t so much “Where can the Rays play?” as “How can the Rays owners increase their profits via taxpayer money?” For that, you might want to talk to some taxpayers, or at least some of their elected representatives, but none of those seemed to be hanging around the baseball Winter Meetings, so you’ll just have to guess what they think of all this, sorry!

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Friday roundup: Denver mayor says he’ll fight to the death to give George Lucas’s wife $170m for a soccer stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

I had a birthday this week, and nothing says “Yes, you’ve been writing this blog since you were 32 years old and you’re apparently going to have to keep at it well into old age, you got a problem with that?” than becoming a Field of Schemes supporter! There are both one-time and recurring payment options, many of which give you the chance to get one of just ten remaining copies of this Vaportecture art print before they’re gone forever, so act now!

Or just keep on reading and commenting, honestly, that at least makes me feel like this entire project has been worth something, even if the central problem it has detailed shows no sign of slowing down. I remain inspired by the Straight Dope‘s tagline “Fighting Ignorance Since 1973 (It’s Taking Longer Than We Thought),” though the fact that the Straight Dope stopped publishing in 2018 without declaring victory over ignorance is sobering, admittedly.

Anyway, onward!

  • Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has heard the NWSL expansion Denver Summit owners’ threat to pursue a “parallel path” in unspecified neighboring cities at the same time as trying to win over a city council not crazy about handing them maybe $170 million in cash and tax breaks, and he knows just how to respond: by offering to do whatever it takes to get Summit co-owner (and Broncos co-owner, and wife of billionaire George Lucas) Mellody Hobson to build in his city. “Over my dead body will I let the Broncos stadium leave Denver,” said Johnston on Wednesday. “Over my dead body am I going to let the Summit stadium leave Denver. We want that site to be here.” Noooooo, that’s not at all how you haggle, you’re doing it all wrong! It remains to be seen whether the Denver city council will take up Johnston on his “dead body” offer.
  • Residents of Kansas’s Johnson County are “seething” over the possibility of the Kansas City Royals building a stadium there, according to the Kansas City Star, though the Star also reports that a poll found 53% of residents support the idea and 40% oppose it. But also 40% of respondents said the Royals should stay put at Kauffman Stadium vs. 26% who wanted them to move to Kansas, a good seethe is so hard to find these days.
  • How did New York Mets owner Steve Cohen take his plans to build a casino next to his stadium from distant longshot to likely winner? One part, two local anti-casino activists write in the New York Daily News, involved hiring two community board members (one now the councilmember-elect for the district) as consultants, while also holding fundraisers for the local state assemblymember. The main reason for Cohen’s success may still be that the state senator who was his main opponent also turned out to be the most disliked person in Albany, but throwing money around to local officials couldn’t have hurt, either.
  • Buffalo Bills fans appear to have given up and bought the hated personal seat licenses required to get tickets at the new publicly funded stadium scheduled to open next year, with nearly 90% of the PSLs reportedly having sold. All of the $250 million in proceeds so far will go toward paying Bills owner and superyacht captain Terry Pegula’s $1 billion in stadium expenses, none of it toward paying New York state and Erie County taxpayers’ $1 billion in stadium expenses, because standard business practice something something.
  • It’s still not clear where Athletics owner John Fisher will find the $1.4 billion he needs to build an entire ballpark in Las Vegas, but he’s certainly building something: Construction crews started pouring concrete for the lower deck this week. There’s been no word when he’ll hit the $100 million spending mark that will allow him to access $380 million in public money, let alone what he’ll do once that money runs out as well, but if nothing else Fisher is committing to the bit.
  • The owners of Sacramento Republic F.C. have only just started building their new soccer stadium, and they’re already seeking permission to expand it from 12,000 to 20,000 seats, just in case they ever want to.
  • Asked how new Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski is doing at coming up with plans for a new stadium, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred somehow managed to say, “With respect to the go-forward issue, Patrick and his group are hard at work getting the lay of the land in the Tampa Bay region to find out what their options are.” Language is always evolving, and Manfred is truly an inspiration in breaking new ground about where it will go in the future, or as he would say, the go-forward time.
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Friday roundup: Rays plan return to upgraded Trop, soccer stadiums in every city not working out so well

access_time personNeil deMause

This was a light posting week, as I was traveling and the airline mayhem as the result of the government shutdown … didn’t actually affect me at all, my flight was uneventful and actually landed ahead of schedule. The cab ride from the airport hit a lot of traffic, though!

Stadium and arena news was light as well, presumably everyone was distracted by one scandal or another, but there’s still plenty to chew on:

  • The Tampa Bay Rays confirmed that they’ll return to Tropicana Field next spring after roof repairs are done, along with “an expanded main videoboard, new video displays behind home plate and along both foul poles, a new sound system and updated suite interiors.” The city is, as required in the team’s lease, paying for $59.7 million in repairs ($7.65 million has been covered by insurance); the team owners are paying for upgrades, though they haven’t revealed how much they’re spending, and determining things like whether replacing the interior of a flooded luxury suite with a nicer interior is a repair or an upgrade could get dicey, hopefully someone either in city government or in the local media is keeping an eye on that, please?
  • “Can Soccer Stadiums Revitalize American Cities?” asks the New York Times, with the big reveal being: Nope. “Mixed-use development components, particularly ones that include housing, are often delayed or, to date, are incomplete,” reports the Times. “And those projects, experts say, don’t always bring in the revenue and economic activity that are promised.” Ian Betteridge is shocked, shocked.
  • The owner of the Des Moines Menace is seeking state money for a $95 million soccer stadium for that minor-league USL team as well as a yet-to-be-created women’s pro soccer team, and the Des Moines Register is asking if it will revitalize Des Moines like soccer stadiums have other cities, guess they couldn’t get past the Times paywall. (Psst, use archive.ph.)
  • The Los Angeles City Council officially voted to oppose the Dodger Stadium gondola project, with one councilmember calling it “an insult to our communities, and the process has been an insult to our collective intelligence,” yup, that tracks. The ultimate decision is up to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which wrapped up its public comment period on the proposal yesterday.
  • The Philadelphia 76ers arena plan for the edge of Chinatown is dead, but the controversy over how the site will be “revitalized” lives on, with Sixers owner Josh Harris planning to start demolitions soon and neighborhood advocates saying that’s only “going to make the situation worse with no real guarantees that it will get better.” But blight is good for getting development projects approved, so it could end up being better for Harris, why doesn’t anyone ever think of the poor little rich boy?
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Friday roundup: Spurs owner wants arena subsidies so he can be “scrappy,” A’s owner gets closer to unlocking county stadium cash

access_time personNeil deMause

Some weeks, when all the work of this website feels like an endless repetition of the same stories over and over and over again, I try to remind myself that while the general shape of the stadium swindle has remained the same over the last 30 years — boy meets stadium dream, boy uses standard playbook to demand that someone else to pay for stadium dream, elected officials cough up the dough to boy — there have been some discoveries and innovations along the way: The Casino Night Fallacy. The grift that keeps on giving. The kitchen sink gambit. Reusable entourage. Sure, it would be nice for whatever showrunner is in charge of this accursed timeline to quit reusing the same plotlines — helicopter registration fraud was a surprise season-ending twist, but that was three years ago already — but if nothing else we’re getting a deeper understanding of the intricacies of how sports billionaires funnel taxpayer money into their own pockets, and who can put a price on that? Other than the literal price of “billions of dollars of tax money a year,” obviously, but enlightenment doesn’t come cheap.

Also, no one has taken away our god-given right to point and laugh (yet), so may as well enjoy it. And on that note, here’s some fresh meat for your inner Nelson Muntz:

  • San Antonio’s KSAT-TV asked Spurs owner Peter Holt why he can’t just pay for his own arena his damn self, and Holt said “it’s a great question” and San Antonio’s small market size has “pushed us to be scrappy” and “the underdog” and “we want to continue [our] partnership with the county and the city” and the arena project will use “visitor taxes that have no impact on our local citizens” and “there’s no extra fees.” That’s neither really an answer nor exactly true, but Holt is already off and not-answering whether the team would potentially move without a new arena: “You know, we’re not focused on this election not passing. I mean, I think our belief has always been, whether it’s on the court or off the court, we have excellence and we have winning in our DNA. And so we’re confident and optimistic that this will pass, and that’s our plan.” It’s easy to be confident when you’re spending $2 million on ad campaigns to convince voters to go your way, but just in case, may as well employ the “You don’t want to find out what’ll happen if you make Dad mad” strategy as well.
  • The Clark County Commission officially approved the Athletics‘ ballpark development agreement for Las Vegas(ish), which is mostly notable because it allows A’s owner John Fisher to finally tap into $380 million in public funds that was approved way back in June 2023. Or at least Fisher can get the money once he sets a guaranteed maximum price for the stadium and spend $100 million out of his own pocket first, maybe that’s what all the concrete pillars are about? Would Fisher really shell out $100 million of his own money in order to get $380 million in public money in hopes all that will somehow unlock another $1 billion or so of somebody else’s money? He’s done dumber things before, don’t put it past him!
  • Interim Jackson County Executive Kay Barnes says she doesn’t see herself as “taking on any kind of strong initiative” on major issues during her short time back in office, but that’s not stopping her from saying she wants to see stadium projects for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals move forward, she’s not made of stone, people.
  • The St. Petersburg city council is looking at ending the city’s Community Redevelopment Area (i.e., a TIF that kicks back property taxes to developers) for the Historic Gas Plant District now that the Tampa Bay Rays aren’t using it for a stadium development, probably. “I was very hesitant to do this,” said council chair Copley Gerdes. “More and more, I’m becoming open to it.” What’s next, hugging?
  • A couple of big-market MLB teams might be showing openness to increased revenue sharing to make MLB TV deals more like the NFL’s, which would reduce budget disparities between rich and even-richer teams but also make it easier for teams to threaten to move from big markets to smaller ones like in the NFL. Color me skeptical — big-market team owners have never willingly given up revenue before, and this could all just be openness to new kinds of TV deals while still trying to preserve the biggest slice for themselves, but we’ll see where things go once negotiations for the next collective bargaining agreement begin in earnest after next season.
  • Yes, the latest owner of the Ottawa Senators is still hoping to build a new arena at LeBreton Flats and still hoping for a taxpayer “investment” to help him along, let’s all check back in another decade or so and see if anything has changed.
  • Camden Yards’ public owners won’t get any money from the Los Angeles Rams renting out the stadium for practice before their game in London, just like they didn’t get any money when Paul McCartney played there, who needs money when you have a pro baseball team whose owner wants money more than you do?
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New Rays owners vow to get taxpayer-subsidized stadium district by 2029

access_time personNeil deMause

New Tampa Bay Rays owners Patrick Zalupski, Ken Babby, and Bill Cosgrove held their first press conference yesterday since buying the team, and a lot of it was focused on plans for a new stadium in the wake of the collapse of former owner Stu Sternberg’s stadium plans, in the wake of the more literal collapse of the Tropicana Field roof. Zalupski said he and his fellow owners intend to have a “new forever home” open by March 2029 — a timeline he described as “aggressive, and perhaps audacious” — at a site yet to be determined. “We’re looking at everywhere,” added Babby. “We don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves to one location or site.”

So far that’s just the expected rhetoric, complete with an arbitrary, unreasonable target date: Getting a stadium funded and built within three and a half years is crazy talk when you haven’t even figured out yet where you want to build it. Though for a site that’s as yet unidentified, Zalupski had a lot to say about it:

The new site will be a roughly 100-acre development with hotels, office and retail spaces, restaurants, bars and more, Zalupski said, adding that the stadium will be fully enclosed. The site will host 150 to 180 events per year, including concerts. Zalupski said he views the Atlanta Braves stadium, Truist Park, as a model.

A reference to the Atlanta Braves stadium district is expected as well, as that’s become a common demand of sports team owners since The Battery opened in Cobb County in 2017. The Braves owners are raking in profits from the new real estate development — money that isn’t subject to MLB revenue sharing — with the help of subsidies that are costing county taxpayers $15 million a year, and who wouldn’t want that? In fact, the new Rays owners seem intent on outdoing The Battery: A hundred acres would be even bigger than the Braves’ 75 acres, and Zalupski may not stop there, saying, “We want a great location and as much land as we can get.”

So the new Rays owners want access to a huge plot of land — bigger than the entire Gas Plant District site in St. Petersburg that Sternberg had previously targeted for a stadium and a whole lot of other stuff — and haven’t said what if anything they propose to pay for it. But what about straight-up government cash payments, will they be asking for any of those?

Hillsborough County Commissioner Joshua Wostal said he has not yet spoken to anyone from the new ownership group but has heard from others that the Rays are seeking $1.1 billion in public subsidies.

That $1.1 billion figure is extreme hearsay, obviously, and should be taken with appropriate grains of salt at least until such time as Wostal gives some idea who these mysterious “others” are. But Zalupski did say that it was “critical to have a public/private partnership,” which is generally code for “we want the public to cover a lot of our costs” — and $1.1 billion wouldn’t be much more than Sternberg was seeking, if you count the public land he was set to get at a steep discount.

Tl;dr: The new Rays owners want a lot of land, and a lot of money for building stuff on it, and are looking for a government entity willing to hand it over to them — and in time to open a stadium by spring 2029. “Audacious” seems like a good word for that, yes, but never underestimate the power of mediocre white billionaires to get their way.

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Zalupski completes Rays purchase, now has to figure out which city to shake down for stadium money

access_time personNeil deMause

The sale of the Tampa Bay Rays to Patrick Zalupski and friends for $1.7 billion is now official, and the Tampa Bay Times is on it! Here’s what their three staff writers on the story are reporting:

With no official plan for a new stadium and Tropicana Field still under repair, the new owners have big questions to answer.

Well, yes, though Tropicana Field is set to no longer be under repair by next spring, so that’s less a big question than “Can they find someone willing to build them a stadium, and would whatever subsidy it came with be enough to make it worth spending a pile of their own money moving from one part of Tampa Bay to another?”

“This is exciting for the Tampa Bay area,” Pinellas County Commission chairperson Brian Scott said Monday. “It opens up exciting new possibilities for the future of baseball.”

No idea what that is supposed to mean, other than “We sure are glad to see the back of that guy.”

“There’s an awful lot of opportunity for them if we can find the right home and the right deal for the team and the city,” said Tampa City Council chairperson and Tampa Sports Authority board member Alan Clendenin.

Likewise, though Clendenin being from the Tampa side of the bay means this could have the added subtext of “Sure would love to have the Rays in Hillsborough County, not that there’s much public money available to make that happen.”

The sale of the team also includes the Tampa Bay Rowdies, a United Soccer League franchise. The professional soccer team plays at Al Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg. It’s unclear whether the Rowdies would stay at their waterfront home or move wherever the team goes.

“Rowdies May or May Not Join Rays in Stadium That Isn’t Planned Yet” would have been a hilarious headline, and I am sad to see the Times chose not to run with that one.

Zalupski and his group of buyers are purchasing a team without a permanent home.

Can anyone truly be said to have a permanent home? Yes, the Rays’ lease expires after 2028 (moved back a year after the hurricane damage made Tropicana Field unplayable for 2025), but every team’s lease expires eventually, at which point the options are always the same: extend it or move somewhere else. Zalupski is in the same boat that Stu Sternberg was the last decade or so, really: He has a stadium to play in, but no one loves it much, but also a new stadium would come with most of the same problems as the old one unless someone can figure out how to build a stadium that doesn’t get overly hot or rained on all the time and is in the exact middle of the bay. And for a price that would earn Zalupski more profits, so no fair proposing this.

Depending on the timeline for a new stadium, the owners may seek a short-term lease extension at Tropicana Field.

Given that it’s September 2025, and it takes close to three years to get a stadium built after it’s planned, and nothing is being planned right now, that “may” seems to be an understatement if anything. Surely Zalupski is going to want to leave the lease expiration hanging to push local governments to offer new stadium deals, but it’s hanging over his head too, perhaps even more so since he’d be the one with nowhere to play if it runs out too soon. A set of year-to-year extension options would be nice for him, but if St. Pete officials are smart they would drive a hard bargain before offering those, since it would reduce their leverage and get them absolutely nothing in exchange.

“They’re going to have to build and make relationships and contacts with people throughout the region to decide what’s the best place for the ballpark in order to make the Rays successful over the long haul,” [MLB Commissioner Rob] Manfred said at a Front Office Sports summit in New York.

As usual, Manfred wins the prize for using the most words to say the least, which comes down to “They need to figure stuff out soon.” Though he does manage to do the standard commissioner thing of making the decision seem like “The team owner needs to decide where to put a new stadium” rather than “The team owner needs to figure out how much a new stadium would cost him and if it would be worth it,” which is the actual calculus at work, but which is less useful for creating a bidding war among different governmental bodies.

The article then helps out making site selection seem like the main hurdle by launching into a list of possible sites, including Tampa’s Ybor Harbor (currently targeted for a women’s soccer stadium but that could change), the Dale Mabry Campus of Hillsborough College, WestShore Plaza, the Florida State Fairgrounds, the former Tampa Greyhound track in Sulphur Springs, or somewhere in Orlando, according to Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan, though he may have just been using it to try to light a fire under his fellow Hillsborough elected officials:

“If for any reason we’re unable to get over the finish line, then the team may ultimately be in Orlando,” he said this month. “It’s Tampa’s to lose.”

Sure must be nice to be a billionaire and to have local elected officials levying move threats against their own cities and counties on your behalf! You don’t even have to pay them except maybe for some free tickets, it’s the best.

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Manfred declares “clean slate” on Rays stadium hunt, hedges somewhat on expansion plans

access_time personNeil deMause

The sale of the Tampa Bay Rays to a group headed by a group led by Jacksonville home builder Patrick Zalupski isn’t finalized yet, but that isn’t stopping MLB commissioner Rob Manfred from Manfredding like crazy about how it’s a new day in Florida:

“I think that there are opportunities in the Tampa area that can be exploited in order to get a new stadium and keep the team,” Manfred said.

“With new ownership, I think you have to assume it’s kind of a clean slate. That they’re going to decide about location. They’re going to have to build and make relationships and contacts with people throughout the region to decide what’s the best place for the ballpark in order to make the Rays successful over the long haul.”…

“They’re going to have the same options that the prior owner had in terms of one side or the other,” Manfred said.

It’s back to square one! To Year Zero! Zalupski and his fellow owners (still largely TBD) will have to start from scratch building “relationships” with “people throughout the region” — presumably Manfred here means elected officials — but has the same options as outgoing owner Stu Sternberg did, which were 1) an offer of $1 billion from St. Petersburg that Sternberg backed out of and which St. Pete officials then officially withdrew, or 2) the vague idea of a stadium in Tampa that nobody wanted to pay for. When you haven’t even gotten started, the possibilities are endless!

It is, of course, possible that Zalupski or one of his fellow owners has some ideas for how to spend a billion dollars or two on a stadium to move from one part of the Tampa Bay area to another and make it pay off, or even how to make Tropicana Field work better for the time being. That’s not Manfred’s goal, though, which is to get the Rays settled in a new stadium so he can finally pursue his long-awaited plans for MLB expansion, which he doesn’t want to do until the Rays (and Athletics) are sure they don’t need any potential expansion cities as move threats. So optimism is the word of the day, as is “options,” because he knows the only way to shake loose public stadium money is with a bidding war, even if nobody particularly seems interested in bidding. Though Manfred seems to have backed slightly away from his commitment to expansion at all, now saying it’s only a decision whether to expand:

“That decision, how easy or hard it is, depends in part on how much central revenue you generate, right, and how the owners are going to react to creating two additional shares of that central revenue,” Manfred said. “Assuming you get over that hump, that they want to expand, then it’s where, right? Which two cities?”

Could “how much central revenue you generate” be a reference to MLB’s still-not-actually-complete TV deals, and whether expansion fees would be worth handing out slices of an uncertain revenue pie? Leading Manfredologists are still debating the meaning of this statement, somebody check whether he was speaking in capital or small letters!
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Friday roundup: Pritzker demands Bears pay off $534m Soldier Field debt before approving stadium tax break, it’s on!

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s not that often that one news story gets a place of pride ahead of the Friday morning bullet points, but I’d say this one qualifies: Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has said that before he’ll consider granting the Chicago Bears owners tax breaks on their proposed Arlington Heights stadium, he wants them to pay off the remaining $534 million debt on Soldier Field first:

“We need the Bears to pay off what’s owed on the existing stadium. That’s going to be a really important feature of whatever happens.”…

The governor noted that the state works with a lot of private businesses on property tax incentives, but when it comes to the Bears, “if they want a … bill or some other help, we’re going to make that a pre-requisite.”

On the one hand, this is kind of a dumb number to choose: As we’ve covered here before in detail, remaining stadium debt is just bookkeeping, and has more to do with how a city chose to finance a project than with the actual cost to taxpayers. On the other: Sure, hell yeah, if Bears execs are going to demand a pile of future tax breaks, come right back at them with a demand for cash up front. This is what hardball negotiations look like when you have leverage, and it’s nice to see an elected official get serious with the haggling, even if you can quibble over the details.

If the Bears owners don’t want tax breaks, noted Pritzker, they’re welcome to move wherever they like. No reply yet from team execs, but you have to imagine they’re trying to count votes to figure out how to get a Pritzker-proof majority in the state legislature, which looks like an uphill battle. Or they could, you know, build their new stadium without any public assistance at all, though the last time that option was presented to them they started shopping around for other sites in or new Chicago where they might get somebody else to help pay the bill, we could yet see this again.

Okay, enough about the Bears, let’s move on to the speed round:

  • After saying last month that his new stadium plan would require “city and state support for infrastructure and programmatic build out,” Detroit City F.C. owner Sean Mann has now put a price tag on that support: $88 million in property tax breaks toward a $193 million total project cost. (Mann previously said the stadium would pay full property taxes, but apparently had his fingers crossed behind his back at the time.) That’s $88 million for a team in the second-tier USL Championship, which is, I’m not going to say a record because that would take a lot of research to confirm on a busy morning, but I think we can all agree “a lot.”
  • How’s development around Worcester’s new Red Sox minor-league baseball stadium going, seven years after Worcester-based economist Victor Matheson warned that new housing could end up just cannibalizing development that would have happened anyway? Even worse than that, it turns out, as much of the land around the stadium remains undeveloped, and since tax revenues from that land were supposed to be siphoned off to pay off the stadium, now Worcester is having to dip into its general fund to cover those costs instead. Somebody please check in with the Worcester Chamber of Commerce to see if they still think that their project will be different.
  • Prospective Orlando MLB expansion team co-owner Rick Workman has bailed to become a minority owner of the Tampa Bay Rays, leading prospective co-owner John Morgan to bail as well, saying: “The fix is in. What I believe will now happen is this group will seek a sweetheart deal in Tampa, while stringing the prospects of Orlando as a bargaining chip. Get lots of free land and entitlements and make a real estate profit on the surrounding land at the taxpayers’ expense.” That was always the most likely scenario, especially since it seems like MLB expansion is going to put off until next decade sometime, but it’s bracing to hear a wannabe owner say the quiet part loud.
  • The Denver Post editorial board says the Broncos owners’ plans for a new stadium at Burnham Yard is “an announcement that all of Colorado can celebrate,” before noting several paragraphs later that the team hasn’t said if it will pay fair market value for state-owned land, siphon off stadium property or sales taxes, or receive any other tax subsidies. Editorial writing sounds real easy, no editors or fact-checkers telling you you’re not making any sense, just say whatever you feel like and hit publish, that’s the life!
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Friday roundup: Commanders vote, Bengals lease, A’s stadium cost all up in the air at this time

access_time personNeil deMause

The D.C. council’s verdict on the $6.6-billion-plus Washington Commanders stadium subsidy still seems to be up in the air at this time: The council now plans to vote today, giving councilmembers a whole 24 hours to read the final stadium bill, which was just released yesterday, after the council had concluded hearings about it without most councilmembers themselves being present, as one does. Councilmember Robert White has already said he plans to vote against the bill and hopes he can get four others to go along with him and block the needed two-thirds majority; council chair Phil Mendelson seems confident that he has the votes to pass the thing, but we’ll all find out together in a few hours.

Meanwhile, let’s pass the time by taking a spin through the other stadium and arena news that unfolded, or didn’t, this week while we were all waiting for the denouement to Bowser‘s Folly:

  • The Cincinnati Bengals‘ new lease remains up in the air after Hamilton County commissioners yesterday approved it, but Bengals execs haven’t signed it yet because they’re still reading the final version. We’ll just have to wait and see whether team officials are willing to accept $700 million–plus in county stadium upgrade funding, or if they plan on asking for even more.
  • The Las Vegas A’s stadium cost is still up in the air, with estimates now around $2 billion, up from $1.75 billion, according to owner John Fisher. Does Fisher have the money to pay to do more than move some dirt around? Did he before? Only he and his accountants, and maybe Rob Manfred, know.
  • The legality of Missouri’s offer of state money for Kansas City Chiefs and Royals stadiums is up in the air, after two Republican Missouri state legislators and one citizen activist have sued to block it, arguing that it has too much stuff in it and is unconstitutionally targeted to benefit specific companies and is “a bribe” to keep the teams from moving to Kansas. Whether any of that is actually illegal, it’ll be up to the courts to decide.
  • Denver Broncos stadium plans are still up in the air, but Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said yesterday, “We’re working hard on a deal, and I think we’re close.” Where the stadium would go and who would pay how much for it remains up in the air.
  • The final city cost of repairing the Tampa Bay Rays‘ Tropicana Field is still up in the air, with current estimates standing at $59.7 million plus whatever it costs for new video production equipment, plus tariffs, plus any other sundries. Will the St. Petersburg city council keep approving additional costs? You already know the non-answer to that.
  • The economic impact of a new San Antonio Spurs arena development remains up in the air after consultants said it would be worth $18.7 billion over 30 years, then it turned out they were only clown consultants. Whatever fools the San Antonio Express-News is good enough for government work!
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Friday roundup: The world is increasingly an ocean of stadium disinformation slop, and sea levels are rising

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been another exhausting news week, so if you need a pick-me-up, please enjoy some videos of how I spent last weekend. Sometimes we all need a musical reminder to hang on to your humanity.

Once you’re sufficiently fortified, here’s what else happened this week in the world of sports stadium and arena shakedowns:

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Field of Schemes