Category: MLS

Friday roundup: NYC approves $780m NYCFC stadium in Queens, still doesn’t know what it’ll cost the public

access_time personNeil deMause

I keep meaning to find a place to mention it, and here is as good as any: sports economists J.C. Bradbury, Dennis Coates, and Brad Humphreys have taken up the task of updating Judith Grant Long’s epic database of stadium and arena deals, and the results are online as a CSV file. There are likely still going to be some debates about specific figures — the Buffalo Bills stadium is listed with an $850 million public cost, for example, because that’s what the New York Times said, but that leaves out state and county money set aside for future maintenance and upgrades — but it’s still a hugely useful resource for getting ballpark estimates (sorry) of both total and taxpayer costs. Bookmark it now, or just click the “Data” tab here anytime to find it!

That’s enough about that, let’s get to the news, oh the news, so very much the news:

  • The New York city council approved NYC F.C.‘s plan to build a Queens stadium across the street from the Mets‘ stadium, which is expected to cost $780 million and open in 2027. While construction costs are being covered by the team’s owners, Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner and Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, it’s still unknown exactly how much the city will be giving up in property-tax breaks and discounted rent (the city Independent Budget Office estimated $516 million) or how much the city will be spending on infrastructure for the project (which includes housing and other stuff too, so it’d be tricky to determine exactly how much of infrastructure costs should be charged to the stadium). Ah well, plenty of time to figure that out after the agreements are all signed! Queens councilmember Shekar Krishnan cast the only dissenting vote, declaring, “We are not facing a stadium crisis in this city. We are facing a housing crisis, an inequality crisis and a climate crisis. Now we’re looking at a proposal that gives away public land worth hundreds of millions of dollars in public financing for a commercial soccer stadium. What is the benefit for the people of New York City?” You mean the joy of visiting Naming Rights Sponsor Stadium isn’t enough?
  • Patrick Tuohey of the Show-Me Institute wants to know what happened to the 2022 Populous study of the Kansas City Royals‘ stadium that projected it would cost more to repair than replace, thanks to “concrete cancer,” since it’s been taken down from the KC Ballpark District website. Good news and bad news, Patrick: The report is still there on the Wayback Machine, but it provides no sourcing at all for its figures. It does print them in very large type, though, and how could anything in a 48-point font be wrong?
  • Jackson County legislator Sean Smith polled his constituents about why they voted how they did on the Royals and Chiefs stadium tax surcharge referendum last week, and determined it’s because nobody listened to their concerns and engaged in too much “fear-based campaigning” by threatening the teams would leave. Smith didn’t release any detailed results of his survey, though, so it’s left as an exercise for the reader to imagine what the public’s concerns were, exactly.
  • Adding insult to injury department: Workers for the Oakland A’s weren’t told by team management that the franchise was relocating to Sacramento next year and that they would all be laid off as a result, they saw it on the TV news. “Thank you for ruining our lives,” said one A’s bartender only identified by CBS Sports as Tony. (Also, the layoffs have reportedly already begun, because John Fisher has clearly determined you don’t need concessions workers when you’ve so effectively alienated your fans that no one will come to your games.)
  • The Atlanta Braves claim that a new survey found their stadium-in-the-middle-of-suburban-nowhere ranks 13th out of 30 teams in “walkability,” and we don’t even need to debate whether it’s a dumb survey because it turns out 13th actually means 21st because it turns out the dumb survey people don’t know how to break ties.
  • “Can Minor League Baseball Survive Its Real Estate Problems?” asks the New York Times, but those problems were created by MLB when it bought and contracted the minor leagues and then forced cities to scramble to upgrade stadiums to avoid being left without a chair when the music stopped. Try to keep up, New York Times! Even without a sports department!
  • D.C. United wants to build a stadium for a minor-league affiliate in Baltimore, and the Baltimore Banner article on how “there hasn’t been enough information shared about the project” doesn’t even try to ask how much it would cost or who would pay for it, this has not been a great week for journalism. Here are some tips, guys, start with those!
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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

access_time personNeil deMause

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: If you hate giving public money to sports billionaires, 2023 really sucked

access_time personNeil deMause

Welp, that’s another year in the books. In 2023 we saw the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens owners finalizing more than $600 million each in renovation subsidies, with the O’s on track to get hundreds of millions more in development subsidies; the Milwaukee Brewers pushing $435 million in renovation subsidies through the state legisltature; Nashville approving a record $1.26 billion subsidy for a new Tennessee Titans stadium; Alexandria, Virginia and St. Petersburg, Florida each proposing to break that record with new sports venues that could come with $1.5 billion public price tags for the Washington Capitals and Wizards and Tampa Bay Rays respectively; Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman kicking the tires on every possible location across two states to see who’s most likely to cough up tax dollars for a new stadium; the Chicago Bears owners kicking even more tires in even more places; Tempe, Arizona overwhelmingly voting down $500 million for a new Arizona Coyotes arena while Oklahoma City overwhelmingly voted in favor of $850 million for a new Thunder arena; and, of course, the Oakland A’s announcing their move to Las Vegas in exchange for $600 million in tax money, unless the Nevada teachers union wins its lawsuit or referendum or A’s owner John Fisher decides paying for even two-thirds of a stadium is too rich for his blood.

That’s not a great year, there, at least not if you were hoping that this site could celebrate its 25th anniversary with any signs of the great stadium swindle slowing down. Oh, we got to poke fun at Jeremy Aguero for being a lobbyist in economist’s clothing, but pointing and laughing gets unsatisfying after a while. Here’s hoping for a 2024 that involves delivering fewer sacks of tax money to billionaires, though I wouldn’t get your hopes up all that much. And hey, Field of Schemes supports dark mode now (click the little crescent moon at bottom right to try it out), and there’s a new set of fridge magnets for subscribers — sometimes you’ve just got to celebrate the one amazing victory but as often as not not.

Here’s a smattering of year-end news for everyone, thanks as always for reading and donating:

  • Everyone was talking for a minute about that Associated Press article about how there’s lots of public money going into stadiums and arenas for private sports teams, but honestly it was kind of scattershot and not anything you didn’t already know if you regularly read this website, or honestly even if you read that first paragraph above. There are some nice enough quotes from economist Rob Baade (“It’s not as if the concrete is falling down and people are in grave danger if they attend a game”) and J.C. Bradbury (“When you ask economists should we fund sports stadiums, they can’t say ‘no’ fast enough”), but if you want to skip the entire thing, you have my permission.
  • The British Columbia “crown corporation” (what they call quasi-public government agencies in Canada) that owns B.C. Place says it needs upgrades to host the 2026 men’s World Cup after getting $514 million in upgrades to host the women’s World Cup in 2015. No price tag yet, but the stadium owner warned that without renovations Vancouver “wouldn’t have been able to attract Taylor Swift” — hey, that’s Montreal’s line!
  • It’s now been 25 days since the A’s owners canceled a planned reveal of new stadium designs on the grounds that two Nevada state troopers had been shot several days earlier, I’m sure it will no longer be too soon any year now.
  • Indy Eleven‘s stadium is being built on a literal graveyard, this should go well.
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Friday roundup: Royals and Chiefs subsidy compromise rumors, Rays name fight looming, plus more gondolamania!

access_time personNeil deMause

It must be Hanukkah, because there’s miraculously already more than a week’s worth of stadium news! (Don’t think about it too hard, just go with it.)

  • Both Kansas City Chiefs president Mark Donovan and Royals president of business operations Brooks Sherman met with Jackson County executive Frank White this week, presumably to discuss putting a referendum on the ballot in April for a sales-tax surcharge extension to fund new or renovated stadiums for the two teams. Fox4 reports that “a source close to the situation” says the team owners might be willing to give up park levy money and insurance coverage they get from the county currently — the insurance money, you may recall, is what had the county figuring a new Royals stadium alone could cost more than $1 billion in present value costs, so this could potentially trim the subsidy demand to more like $500-700 million, which is better without actually being good. More unconfirmed rumors as events warrant.
  • Tampa Bay Rays president Brian Auld has announced that the Rays have no intention of changing their name to St. Petersburg Rays after moving from St. Petersburg to next door in St. Petersburg. The St. Petersburg city council is set to vote next week on a requirement that the team do so in exchange for getting at least $600 million in city money for a new stadium; Auld had previously warned that “Serious people recognize that putting this entire project at risk over a 25-year-old name of our organization is probably not something worth doing,” which sounds like a threat to me, plus a personal attack by calling councilmembers unserious, it would definitely be disallowed if Auld had tried to post it here in comments.
  • Not only is the Los Angeles Dodgers stadium gondola dream not dead, but it has a new price tag: $385-500 million. Plus another $8-10 million a year to operate it. The environmental impact report that gave the new projections says the money could be covered by private bond financing (which isn’t actually a way of covering anything, just a way of borrowing), sponsorships (uh, sure), naming rights (uh, suuuuuure) and fares (though trips to and from Dodgers games, which are most of the point of the thing, are supposed to be free). The report acknowledged that there’s suspicion that the whole gondola scheme is just an excuse to develop the parking lots around the stadium — which former Dodger owner Frank McCourt, who is behind the gondola idea, still owns — but says there’s no proof of McCourt’s plans to proceed with “a larger, more grandiose project in the future,” so just try not to think about that, and focus on the glory that is gondola.
  • Add the Soldier Field parking lot to the list of potential stadium sites Chicago Bears ownership is considering. No indication of whether or how that would work any better than building on the current stadium site, but at this point the team is just kicking tires on any site it can to hope one comes with a huge pile of public cash, which hasn’t worked so far, but they only need to find one sucker to be successful, so can’t fault them for trying. (Except for 100% faulting them for extracting public money for private profit, that’s the whole point of this site, haven’t you been paying attention?)
  • So it turns out it’s the state of Maryland that wants to separate the Baltimore Orioles‘ new lease from its new development agreement, that makes more sense than the other way around. It sounds like the whole issue is more about lack of time to get the documents finalized before next season starts than the state actually looking for some kind of leverage to negotiate a better deal; the O’s may go to a month-to-month lease in the meantime, the better to keep everyone on tenterhooks until they get all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted on their
  • Plans for a new NYC F.C. stadium in Queens cleared a community board vote after the city agreed to build a new police precinct there, which was apparently the board’s main demand. Still unclear: Who will pay for hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure costs and whether the team will get hundreds of millions of dollars in property tax breaks, maybe if we’re lucky we’ll find out before the city council grants final approval in the spring, but don’t count on it.
  • Jon Styf at The Center Square wrote a report on economic impact consulting reports for sports venues and interviewed both J.C. Bradbury (who called them “fantasy reports”) and me (who called them an attempt to “put across B.S. as fact”). He left out my explanation of the clear plastic binder effect, but you can’t have everything.
  • A high school football team that had to play all its games on the road because first its home field was destroyed to make way for a new New York Yankees stadium and then the replacement field that opened years later fell apart and was left unplayable has won the state championship! I can’t actually tell if this story is supposed to be heartwarming or scandalous, let’s go with both.
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Friday roundup: Fresh A’s vaportecture incoming, OKC readies for $850m arena vote, Revolution stadium hits snag

access_time personNeil deMause

I don’t even know where to start with this week, but suffice to say that this keeps rolling on, with no end in sight. At least, for the second consecutive day, Henry Kissinger remains dead.

And, like death and union-busting, the great stadium swindle shows no signs of going away anytime soon:

  • New Las Vegas stadium renderings for the Oakland A’s are due to be released on Monday, and A’s owner John Fisher is even scheduled to show up. (Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz notes that “Fisher is known for not interacting with fans and making public appearances to discuss his baseball team,” which is a polite way of saying that he don’t like people.) Ha ha, the Las Vegas Sun illustrated its article on this with the June stadium renderings that Fisher’s honchos immediately declared to not actually be what the stadium will look like — LOLSun, go read Snel’s coverage instead, if only for his awesome photo filenames. Meanwhile, Nevada Independent sports business reporter Howard Stutz warned that Fisher still has a lot of hoops to jump through before he can move the team — the referendum, the lawsuit, the finding another billion dollars — and “we’re not going to see much other than public meetings and different announcements over the next year,” so enjoy the dogs and ponies for now.
  • Elsewhere in A’s news, Fisher hasn’t officially notified Oakland that he plans to leave town, in order to postpone a $45 million payment to Alameda County for purchasing half of the Oakland Coliseum property. San Jose Mercury News columnist Daniel Borenstein notes that “county supervisors never bothered to require that the team stay in Oakland as a condition for acquiring the rights to the Coliseum property,” whoops, that would have been an idea, somebody make a note of that for next time.
  • The Oklahoma County Democratic Party held a panel discussion in anticipation of next week’s voter referendum on spending $850 million on a new Thunder stadium while team owners spend $50 million. Party affirmative action officer Nabilah Rawdah said the funding mechanism would be “a regressive sales tax,” which, yup, all sales taxes are regressive, and would cost city residents “around $1,200 per person,” which, yup, math. Central Oklahoma Federation of Labor president Tim O’Connor countered, “JOBS!!1!,” because he got an agreement that the project will use union labor. (Yes, it is possible to hate union-busting and to accept that actually existing unions are maybe not their most perfect selves right now.)
  • Plans for a New England Revolution stadium in Everett, just north of Boston, hit a speed bump in the Massachusetts state legislature when the plan was removed from a state budget bill in conference committee. The Boston Globe notes that the stadium would cost $600 million and “no public money is being sought — for now,” which is maybe not the most reassuring; the memorandum of understanding is only seven pages long and doesn’t provide any details on the project finances, more like a memorandum of misunderstanding, amirite?
  • They’re still talking about that damn Dodger Stadium gondola five years later — LOLgondola, don’t make me send Alissa Walker in there.
  • Baltimore Orioles owner John Angelos may now sign a new lease and work out the details of his insanely lucrative 99-year development rights agreement later, after insisting he wouldn’t sign one without the other, wut? Guess he’s convinced now that the state is happy to give him everything he wants and he doesn’t want figuring out what he wants to get in the way of having a stadium to play in next year, guess the state had leverage after all, somebody make a note of that for next time.
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Friday roundup: Manfred’s A’s-move mumblings, plus Sixers get upset when community shows up to community meeting

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s a bit of a crazed day over here, so apologies in advance if this roundup is more perfunctory than usual or arrives at an unusual hour.* (I don’t know yet, haven’t finished writing it!)

Here’s what’s happening:

  • I already recapped Rob Manfred’s post-Oakland-A’s-to-Vegas-approval press conference in an update yesterday, but “In terms of the public support that was available, the waving of a relocation fee made that support stronger. … That’s the best I can do for you on that one” is a keeper in the MLB commissioner’s long litany of word salads. As I wrote yesterday: Rob Manfred, saying the quiet parts loud since 2015.
  • Weirdest headline of A’s-to-Vegas week goes to Utah’s Deseret News, which ran with “Could Salt Lake City face more competition for an MLB team?” (Though Salt Lake is at least a bigger TV market than Las Vegas, I’ll give it that.)
  • The Philadelphia 76ers held their first community input meeting on their proposed arena yesterday, and promptly ejected some community members for providing input (via signs reading things like “‘Privately-Funded’? State/Federal $$ is still public”) that they disapproved of. People wearing “PRO-JOBS PRO-UNION PRO-ARENA” T-shirts were allowed to remain.
  • Bruce Murphy in Urban Milwaukee wrote a long postmortem of the finalized Brewers subsidy deal, and the tl;dr is: The team is profitable and soaring in value and nobody actually studied how much in upgrades the stadium actually needs, yet team owner Mark Attanasio didn’t even have to lobby hard to get the state legislature to hand him everything he wanted (less a few million dollars off the public price tag that he kept ratcheting up as things went along). Even more tl;dr: WTF, Wisconsin legislature?
  • Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman still hasn’t made the decision between two possible stadium sites that he promised would come back in September, and now he’s maybe considering a third site? That’s his prerogative as a member of the bourgeoisie, of course, but it’s also our prerogative to then wonder if he’s just trying to throw more rumored bidders into the game to try to get Kansas City and North Kansas City to up their antes.
  • Construction unions are pro-construction of pretty much anything including soccer stadiums, local newspaper gives them op-ed space to say this, film at 11. The same paper reports that “new details” of said NYC F.C. stadium were revealed this week, and … nope, no actual new details, other than Mayor Turkish-Bribes (alleged) asserting that it will be the “first fully electric sports stadium in Major League Soccer,” and he does know electricity!

*Sure did! Enjoy your late-Friday roundup, and see you Monday.

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Friday roundup: No public ballot for Rays stadium, more questions about A’s Vegas move

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we get to the week’s stadium and arena news, let’s pause to appreciate that New York’s nutso mayor Eric Adams‘ campaign staff have been revealed to be under investigation for illegally accepting donations from the government of Turkey. Which I guess sort of qualifies as stadium news given Adams’ boosterism of that NYC F.C. stadium that could cost city taxpayers $800 million in infrastructure spending and tax breaks, but mostly: Yes, Turkey. Also his chief fundraiser and campaign consultant who is at the heart of the investigation is apparently 25 years old? This is going to make a great Netflix documentary in a couple of years.

But enough about my city, how’s yours doing?

  • The St. Petersburg city council voted 5-3 yesterday to hold a public referendum on spending about $600 million on a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium — which means the referendum won’t happen, because the motion required a two-thirds supermajority. Also it would have been only advisory, anyway. Council chair Brandi Gabbard, who opposed the public ballot measure, said she was afraid it wouldn’t be possible to explain the stadium deal in the 75 words available, which is certainly a novel line of reasoning.
  • Former Miami Marlins president David Samson says there is still “a deal to be done to keep the A’s in Oakland” because Las Vegas has “several issues that are not worked out yet” like whether A’s owner John Fisher actually has the money for his share of the project. Meanwhile, former Oakland A’s VP Andy Dolich says it would be a mistake for MLB to approve the relocation of the team from a large market to what would be baseball’s smallest. Not that either of them holds clout with the current crop of MLB owners, or they would still have jobs with them, but it’s keeping hope alive in Oakland, anyway, in advance of a likely vote by owners on relocation sometime this month.
  • Here’s an article about how a special tax district for Indy Eleven‘s new $1 billion stadium wouldn’t really cost taxpayers anything because it would just be a “special tax” that will be levied on soccer fans. And here’s an article explaining that the district would actually divert existing sales and income tax revenues from a large swath of downtown toward the USL team. The city-county council is set to vote on the tax district later this month; let’s hope they’re reading all the news coverage first and not just WRTV’s.
  • The Arizona Diamondbacks just got blown out in the World Series, and former team owner Jerry Colangelo thinks this makes it an excellent time to build them a new or renovated stadium, because “there’s a good vibe.” Gotta capitalize on vibes like this!
  • The Oklahoma City Thunder arena has been “the centerpiece of OKC’s innovative self-help effort, producing energy and economic impact that academic studies cannot predict, but 30 years of OKC success prove,” according to some downtown business development dude who was given a “guest column” in the Oklahoman to make this case. He adds that tearing it down and building a newer one would “create new and currently unimaginable opportunities,” which, that’s certainly an interesting choice of adjectives there.
  • Kansas City Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt says he’s waiting to see what the Royals decide about a new stadium before deciding what to ask for in terms of a new or renovated stadium for his team. “If the Royals do decide to stay in Jackson County, that’s going to be an issue that we’ve got to resolve,” Hunt said, which is maybe a hint that he’s hoping they’ll move to the county next door so he can get all of the future sales tax proceeds? That would have been a good followup question, if the reporters covering this had asked any, oh well.
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As NYCFC’s $780m stadium enters approval process, no one sure how much it’ll cost city or where fans will park

access_time personNeil deMause

New York City F.C.‘s long-awaited $780 million entered the city ULURP land use process last week, setting off a clock that is supposed to lead to votes by the local community board (that one’s only advisory), borough president, city planning commission, and city council by next April. And one potential hurdle seems to have been cleared: Queens borough president Donovan Richards, who had previously said he might hold up the plan until the city reinstates a local street food market, now says he’s reached a tentative agreement on the market.

If that removes one unknown, there are still a passel of others, even as final votes to rezone the land and approve the stadium project could start as soon as December. I’ve finally finished going through the draft environmental impact statement that is required for projects going through ULURP, and there are still a bunch of outstanding questions:

  • It’s “expected” that NYC F.C. fans will park at the Mets stadium across the street, but Mets owner Steve Cohen hasn’t agreed to that yet, presumably because he’s still hoping to use it as leverage to extract approval of the casino he wants to build next door. The DEIS includes an “alternative transportation scenario” in which NYCFC would run shuttle buses from parking lots in College Point on the other side of Flushing Bay, which is, yes, an alternative, but not a good one.
  • Also TBD, according to the DEIS, is “approval of City capital funding of infrastructure improvements,” which Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer last year guesstimated as being “typically in the $200 to 300 million range,” though Mayor Eric Adams’ administration wouldn’t provide further details. There’s no date for the city council to vote on that, but it’s certainly possible that the rezoning votes will all take place first, making the project a bit of a fait accompli by the time the city money goes up for formal approval.
  • The stadium will sit on city land, but will pay no property taxes and only a nominal rent of $30 million worth (present value) of future payments over 50 years. (This assumes that the Willets Point land will still be usable in 50 years, which, uh, might want to check the latest headlines, guys.) The city Independent Budget Office earlier this year estimated that the cost of those tax breaks could end up being worth a whopping $516 million (totaling $1.7 billion in individual lost taxes over half a century). That would bring the potential city subsidy to an even more whopping $800 million or more.

The particulars of ULURP mean that very little of the massive amounts of paperwork needed end up being about money, with far more attention being paid to things like potential adverse impacts on local activities. (The additional housing to be built alongside the stadium is “not expected to result in a significant adverse impact on public libraries,” you’ll be pleased to learn.) This doesn’t mean that the stadium’s potential $800 million public subsidy can’t be raised at the public hearings to come — people can, and will, raise pretty much anything and everything — but it’s not technically part of the scope of the ULURP oversight. Once hearing dates are set I’ll post them here, so we can all follow along together the process of sausages being made.

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Friday roundup: Tempe faces probe for spying on arena opponents, WI trims Brewers subsidy ask to mere $557m, plus new adventures in logical fallacies

access_time personNeil deMause

 

 

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Friday roundup: O’s lease, Brewers doubletalk, A’s lawsuit, Bears gibberish

access_time personNeil deMause

Today’s Friday where you are, right? I’ve completely lost track, honestly. Some things happened this week, or maybe last week, but they definitely happened, let’s talk about them:

  • The Baltimore Orioles owners announced a 30-year lease extension on Camden Yards last night by putting it up on the scoreboard between innings, that’s totally normal, yup. Actual details like what if anything the team got on top of the $600 million in state money approved last year will have to await a Friday news conference.
  • Wisconsin state representative Rob Brooks, who co-authored the bill to give Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio even more money than he asked for, now says that he doesn’t want the city of Milwaukee to give Attanasio $7.5 million a year, but just $5 million a year. “If they come up with the things they’ve counted they can do and we think we can do, I do think it will be around $5 million,” said Brooks, which, sorry, what? You really gotta show us some actual legislative language, man, this trying to describe things using your words thing just isn’t going well at all.
  • “Representatives with ties to the A’s” have sued the teachers’ union–backed group Schools Over Stadiums over their proposed Las Vegas A’s stadium referendum “not fully describing the petition’s ‘substantive impacts’ on the project,” according to SOS. Who? What impacts? “This is a developing story. Check back for updates.” Pro journalism tip, Las Vegas Review-Journal: Try to answer at least some of the five W’s before hitting publish. (The Las Vegas Sun has a bit more info, adding that the suit is from registed lobbyists Danny Thompson and Thomas Morley and is objecting to the referendum petition trying to overturn just the funding part of the stadium bill and being “argumentative,” but doesn’t explain why either of those things would disqualify it from the ballot.)
  • Arlington Heights is still talking to Chicago Bears execs about a new stadium, and so is the mayor of Chicago, and that could mean that they’re about to approve a ton of subsidies or agree to a deal that doesn’t require a ton of subsidies or not agree to anything, really. “It’s what the people of Chicago elected me to do is to bring people together,” said Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. “Being collaborative, compassionate and competent, those are the hallmarks of my administration. It’s what I expect, quite frankly, all leaders to possess.” Is there some sort of brain worm they inject mayors with at their inaugurations that make them talk like this?
  • Michael Baumann of FanGraphs writes that the Tampa Bay Rays and Kansas City Royals owners are both trying to get new stadiums by claiming it would let them start spending money with the big boys, but “we all know this is bunk.” He also complains that new baseball stadiums are too disconnected from their neighborhoods and too tall and too generic (all true), and then headlines the whole thing “The Jewel Box Under End-Stage Capitalism,” to which I can only say promises, promises.
  • The Chicago Tribune is worried that if the Bears don’t win games, no one will want to give them stadium money, and WCPO is worried that if the Cincinnati Bengals don’t win games, no one will want to give them stadium money, and both are probably right, but is that really the part to be worried about?
  • Sports management professor Mark Rosentraub still thinks Saskatoon needs a new arena, this time to remain “competitive” for concerts, LOLRosentraub.
  • Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke may pull his stadium from consideration for hosting 2026 World Cup games because FIFA won’t let him have enough of a cut of the vig. Sometimes when elephants fight, we can just get an entertaining elephant fight, maybe?
  • The Athletic noticed that A’s owner John Fisher, during his recent interview with ESPN, said (in ESPN’s words) that his San Jose Earthquakes‘ stadium “is already outdated compared to newer MLS stadiums” and “lacks the capacity and premium seating that drives the kind of revenue needed to compete for championships.” The stadium is eight years old.
  • “I don’t really like owning teams,” New York Knicks and Rangers LOLowner James Dolan told The New York Times, adding, “Being a professional sports owner in New York, you’re not beloved until you’re dead.” This may be overly optimistic, but sure, he’s welcome to try.
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