Category: Memphis Grizzlies

Tennessee considers siphoning off another $320m in tax money for Grizzlies arena renovations

access_time personNeil deMause

When we last checked in on the Memphis Grizzlies, owner Robert Pera had just gotten allocated $350 million in state money for renovations for their not-yet-20-year-old arena, to be shared with the Liberty Bowl, then immediately turned around and had the city’s new mayor (and Grizzlies season ticket holder) ask for more public money if Pera is going to extend his lease past 2029. And now, state legislators think they’ve found some more cash under the sofa cushions:

The bill, introduced by state Sen. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis, and state Rep. Antonio Parkinson, D-Memphis, would direct more revenue from the city and county hotel/motel tax to the Memphis Sports Authority if needed. The allocation would bridge any funding gap related to FedExForum renovations that are projected to cost at least $550 million.

After spending $120 million of its state cash on the Liberty Bowl, Memphis has $230 million left over to upgrade the Grizzlies’ arena. Akbari and Parkinson haven’t indicated exactly how much money would be siphoned off from the hotel/motel tax, but if it really would bridge “any funding gap” and the funding gap is currently $320 million, we can make an educated guess.

The hotel/motel tax money is currently designated for “tourism and tourism development,” though it’s mostly being used for paying off the arena’s initial construction costs, plus acting as a slush fund for things like expanding the city’s convention center; the state legislators behind the bill also didn’t indicate how they would backfill paying for anything the tax money would otherwise cover. Pera has reportedly been interested in redoing the arena’s seating to have more lower-bowl seats and fewer upper-bowl seats because he can charge more for lower-bowl ones — which at a $550 million cost may seem like an awfully expensive way to raise ticket prices, but if you can get the public to pay for the expense, all the rest is gravy.

As for why Tennessee should want to give the local billionaire $550 million so that he can increase his profits a bit, city councilmember Chase Carlisle warned in December that Pera had put the city “on notice that we need $550 million” or else “we have to start seriously considering our options.” (It must be so nice to be a billionaire and have elected officials to make your non-threat threats for you.) So far there’s been no hint of how much of a lease extension Pera might agree to in exchange for his demand for public funds, but given that he got the first $230 million in exchange for agreeing to absolutely nothing, it’s probably best not to get your hopes up.

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New Memphis mayor: Thanks for $350m in state cash for Grizzlies renovations, please send more

access_time personNeil deMause

The city of Memphis has formally accepted $350 million in state money, first announced back in February, that will go toward $500 million in renovations to the Grizzlies‘ arena and $220 million for the Liberty Bowl, after a brief interruption involving Memphis legislators kicked out of the state house who were then re-elected. We can now move on from this, noting only that $720 million is a lot of money to spend on upgrading two sports venues, one of which isn’t even 20 years old yet, but at least Memphis is now set [screeee]

Unfortunately, Memphis has to go back to the state for more money, as $600 million still won’t be enough…

“We want to makes sure the Grizzlies stay in Memphis, and we want to make sure that the University of Memphis is able to move to a bigger conference,” [mayor-elect Paul] Young said. “And you know we have a limited amount of funds to achieve those goals. I want to work with them to figure out how can we get the capital stack such that both projects can be executed.”

That’s from the TV station ABC24, which also reports (according to Jon Styf at Center Square, I can’t find the original) that money from a hotel/motel tax, a county car rental tax and kickbacks of all sales taxes at the arena to paying for arena upgrades will provide $250 million on top of the $350 million in cash from the current state budget. But still, Grizzlies season ticket holder Young wants more for team owner Robert Pera. Which means the total cost of the two stadium renovations counting city spending would now be more than $720 million.

More than $720 million is even more than $720 million, obviously, but there’s another concern here, which is: “make sure the Grizzlies stay in Memphis,” really? You mean the city went and approved half a billion dollars in renovations to the team’s arena and didn’t even get a commitment from the team’s owner that it’ll stay in exchange past the lease extension to 2029 that it agreed to last year? Or is Young’s claim here that the city doesn’t know if it can fulfill its share of the promised renovation funding — the city and team are supposed to put up $334 million collectively, but still nobody seems to be reporting the breakdown, almost a year since it was first announced — so without more state cash, the whole deal will fall apart?

I’ve been reporting here on how the record for per-year cost of paying teams to extend their leases keeps getting broken, but giving the Grizzlies $500 million in exchange for no lease extension at all would be, let’s see, get out the calculator, an infinite amount of money per year of new lease. That’s a record that’s going to be tough to beat — though I suppose paying a team owner to actually make his lease shorter would top it, and you just know some mayor will figure out a way to do that eventually.

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Friday roundup: More funny numbers on A’s-to-Vegas, Browns stadium renovations, and the economic impact of Peanuts

access_time personNeil deMause

I don’t know what got into this week, but it seems like everything at once suffered rapid unscheduled disassembly: We had Wisconsin elected officials squabbling over which exact $350 million to give to the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, an endless back-and-forth between economic analysts over whether a new Arizona Coyotes arena would be a revenue boon to Tempe or a money pit, a car dealer announcing he was going to build a $2 billion hockey arena on Atlanta’s far northern outskirts for an NHL team that doesn’t exist, Nashville rolling back a rent hike it had just approved for the Tennessee Titans because “competitive potential,” Erie County giving the Buffalo Bills owners total control over their community benefits spending so they could earn a tax break for it, and, last but by no means least, Oakland A’s execs declaring that the team was now fully focused on a new stadium in Las Vegas that would involve more than $500 million in public money, burning (maybe unintentionally?) its bridges in Oakland in the process when Mayor Sheng Thao immediately cut off talks for a new stadium there, declaring, “I am not interested in continuing to play that game.”

With a news week like that, surely nothing else happened of note, right? I wish — then I could have slept in this morning. But events just keep on occurring, so let’s get to the rest of the list before anything else blows up:

  • Speaking of the Las Vegas A’s plans, A’s president/registered Nevada lobbyist Dave Kaval declared that 70% of ticket sales would be expected to be locals, while hired economist (ed. note: not actually an economist) Jeremy Aguero of Applied Analysis said the A’s would draw about 400,000 new visitors to Vegas each year. Let’s see how the math checks out on that: If a new A’s stadium were to hold 35,000 people as planned, that’s a maximum of 2,835,000 attendees a year even if they sell out every game. If 30% of those are out-of-towners, that’s 850,000 people — meaning the A’s would have to produce perpetual sellouts and have half their tourist fans come to Vegas specifically to see baseball for those numbers to make any sense at all. Given that there’s no sign that Florida spring training, to pick one example, brings any measurable number of new visitors, and that Vegas is an even bigger tourist draw already than Florida in March, this might just be a slight overestimate — the first of many in the coming campaign for public stadium funds in Vegas, I’m sure!
  • If the A’s do leave Oakland, the owner of the USL Oakland Roots and USL W Oakland Soul wants to build a temporary soccer stadium in the Oakland Coliseum parking lot. No details on size or cost or funding, but it is projected to last ten years, at which point the Roots and Soul will presumably threaten to move to Las Vegas.
  • Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb says he won’t use “general new fund dollars” for renovations to the Cleveland Browns stadium but rather will “be creative.” Will this mean tax kickbacks that are diverted before they ever hit the general fund, on the Casino Night Principle? Will it mean asking the county and state for money from their general funds instead? Bibb didn’t provide spoilers, but we’ve all seen this movie before.
  • If you were worried that the Memphis Grizzlies owners would really lose state subsidies because Memphis reinstated a state legislator who the state legislature had tried to throw out, nope, the state legislature went and approved the subsidies anyway. How much of the $350 million in state money will go to Grizzlies arena upgrades and how much to the University of Memphis’ stadium will be “released by the city at a later date.”
  • Charlie Brown should’ve demanded a new stadium for his baseball team.
  • And finally, I’m going to be on WPRO radio in Rhode Island tomorrow at noon to discuss none of the above (well, maybe Charlie Brown), but rather the Pawtucket USL stadium plans that are rapidly falling apart. Listen in here, and learn whether I sound energized or half-dead or just Weltschmertzig after a week like this.

 

 

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Tennessee reportedly threatens Grizzlies funding if Memphis wants to keep the elected officials it elected

access_time personNeil deMause

I was literally just sitting here thinking “Too bad I can’t write about the craziness in Tennessee where the state legislature kicked out two members and now they’ll probably just get reappointed anyway, since it has nothing to do with stadiums.” And then:

FOX13 also learned that Memphis could lose funding for some major projects if [Rep. Justin] Pearson is re-appointed. According to Shelby County Commissioner Erika Sugarmon, leaders in Nashville threatened to withhold millions of dollars in state funding for projects in the Memphis area if commissioners were to reappoint Pearson.

“We are also being threatened by the state to take away funding, needed funding to run our schools, to run our municipalities,” Sugarmon told FOX13. “You know, and so, for example, FedExForum, the promised $350 million, they’re talking about snatching that away.”

So, okay, to recap:

  • On March 27, a shooter killed six people at a parochial school in Nashville.
  • On March 30, a large group of protestors, including a large contingent of students, entered the public galleries of the Tennessee state capitol and sang “This Little Light of Mine” and “All You Need Is Love,” because apparently nobody has written any good peace songs since the 1960s.
  • State Rep. Justin Pearson tried to talk about gun control during discussion of an unrelated bill, and house leaders called for a recess, during which Pearson and state Rep. Justin Jones joined in chants of “Gun control now!”
  • On April 6, Republican house leaders introduced resolutions to expel Pearson, Jones, and state Rep. Gloria Johnson for behavior that “reflects adversely upon the integrity and dignity” of the chamber. (Previous behavior not considered worthy of disciplinary action included one legislator who peed on a fellow legislator’s chair.) Pearson and Jones were both expelled, while Johnson was spared by one vote; asked why, she said, “I think it’s pretty clear. I’m a 60-year-old White woman, and they are two young Black men.”
  • With Pearson and Jones kicked out of the state house, it was up to Memphis and Nashville, which elected them in the first place, to pick replacements. Both the Shelby County Board of Commissioners and the Nashville Metropolitan Council are expected to reinstate Pearson and Jones.
  • Shelby County commissioner Sugarmon and Pearson both said they’d been told that state legislative leaders would take away state funds for local projects in Memphis and Nashville if Pearson and Jones were reinstated, with Sugarmon specifically mentioning $350 million for Memphis Grizzlies arena upgrades and Liberty Bowl stadium upgrades.
  • Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton, who was behind the expulsions and who compared the gun control protests to the armed attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, issued a statement saying, “The governor has proposed $350 million for the Memphis stadiums in the budget; the speaker has been and will continue to be supportive of these projects. The House hasn’t entered into budget negotiations with the Senate at this time. He is hopeful the funding will remain in when the final budget is presented on both floors.”

All of this is, of course, bonkers. And while it’s not entirely clear who exactly is threatening what around the Memphis sports subsidies — not to mention the $500 million state Tennessee Titans subsidy that is currently on the table, since the Titans play in Nashville — the mere possibility that somehow protests over a school shooting may lead to pro sports owners losing state cash because of a throwdown over whether elected officials can be reappointed by elected bodies after being unelected by other elected bodies is, well, I already said “bonkers,” but it applies to this part, too. The Shelby County Commission meets to discuss Pearson’s reappointment on Wednesday at 1:30 pm CT; this should be fascinating to watch for anyone with an interest in sports, democracy, or peeing on the furniture.

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Tennessee gov offers $350m to Grizzlies and Liberty Bowl, and more could be on the way

access_time personNeil deMause

How it started:

Memphis to TN: While you’re handing out stadium money, how’s about $684m for Grizzlies arena and stuff? —October 19, 2022

How it’s going:

Gov. Bill Lee announces $350M to renovate FedExForum and Liberty Stadium —February 7, 2023

To recap in a little more detail: Back in October, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland asked for $350 million in state money toward $684 million in projects that would include renovations to the Grizzlies‘ 18-year-old arena, a new soccer stadium for the USL team 901 FC, and upgrades to the University of Memphis’s Liberty Bowl. (The rest was to be paid for by Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Press-Release.) Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has now obliged, though the Commercial Appeal says it “appears” that the $350 million would only be for the Grizzlies and Liberty Bowl projects — with the latter budgeted at an estimated $150-200 million, that would leave another $150-200 million for the Grizzlies to use on moving seats from the upper bowl to the lower bowl, where they might not be much closer to the court but they can be made more expensive.

Strickland, meanwhile, has his eyes set on getting his hands on even more cash to distribute to the local sports team owners:

Along with the $350 million, Strickland and Memphis have requested to increase the allowance for Shelby County to create a 5% hotel/motel tax, up from the current 3.5% tax, as well as asking the state to extend an allowance for a county car rental tax through 2053 and extend a deal where all sales taxes collected at FedExForum are kept by the Grizzlies through 2053.

How much that would amount to is unclear; Jon Styf, author of the above-linked Center Square article, says all we know so far is what’s in this screaming-bro-bedecked presentation, which spells out the additional tax increases but not what they would add up to or be used for.

The money still has to be approved by the state legislature, but House Speaker Cameron Sexton, at least, has already said he’s down with it. One hopes there will be time for some questions, like Will the Grizzlies at least be agreeing to a lease extension in exchange for all this public cash? and Who’s going to pay for the rest of the costs? and Why should Tennessee taxpayers be footing the bill for this anyway? and Just because Nashville is jumping off a bridge does it mean Memphis should too? One doesn’t hope too hard, mind you, given past history, but it’s important to keep at least minimal expectations for democracy even if we’re constantly disappointed.

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Memphis to TN: While you’re handing out stadium money, how’s about $684m for Grizzlies arena and stuff?

access_time personNeil deMause

Now that the Tennessee Titans owners have finalized their $1.2 billion (or so) subsidy request for a $2.1 billion stadium, to go on top of the subsidies sought by the $100 million+ in subsidies being given to the Chattanooga Lookouts and Tennessee Smokies owners for minor-league baseball stadiums, we can at least put a total price tag on how much Tennessee taxpayers will be expected to cough up to make their local sports teams wait what

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and his administration are seeking millions from the state of Tennessee, including $350 million in cash, for significant renovations to FedExForum, planned renovations to Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium, enhancements to AutoZone Park and replacing the long-shuttered Mid-South Coliseum with a soccer-specific stadium to house 901 FC. The total project cost is $684 million.

Well, that came somewhat out of nowhere. The Grizzlies and Memphis just agreed in April to rework the team’s lease to buy out the owners’ out clause in the event of low ticket sales for $44.8 million in city and county payments over the next seven years before the lease expires in 2029. But “significant renovations” for the Grizzlies’ 18-year-old arena haven’t been mentioned before now, let alone building a soccer stadium for Memphis 901 F.C., the local USL team. (The work on redoing the stadium that is home to the University of Memphis and the Liberty Bowl was announced in May, without details of who would pay for it.)

The Memphis Commercial Appeal reports that Mayor Strickland, who clearly has never had to think about how his naming conventions would go over with a classroom full of middle-schoolers, was set to reveal his “Big Ask” at a city council hearing last night — but there’s no sign of whether that happened either in the local press or on Twitter, so we’re going to have to do some heavy tea leaf reading here. That “including $350 million in cash” means the other $334 million will have to be either in bonds that the state would pay off somehow, bonds that the city would pay off somehow, or bonds that the team would pay off somehow, any of which could involve additional tax breaks. (Here’s a podcast where the writer of the Commercial Appeal article claims that the city wants to keep another 30 years’ worth of state tax revenue it’s currently using to pay off the initial cost of the Grizzlies arena, which he calls not “a very big lift.”) The University of Memphis football upgrades have already been given a $150-200 million price tag, and most USL stadiums are in the $30-40 million range, so we’re looking at probably upwards of $400 million in state money to be handed over for the Grizzlies, which is a lot for an arena that is younger than a whole bunch of TikTok stars. Or it could be more, or less — we’re going entirely based on what a city mayor told a local newspaper here, so those numbers could be wildly inaccurate.

And speaking of questionable things Strickland told the Commercial Appeal:

“It is truly not just about business or entertaining or the culture of the city,” Strickland said Monday. “It’s not just about tax generation or economic impact. It’s all that and more… Your city identity is tied to sports teams.”…

“Sports, tourism and the economic impact of sports is significant. ..It deserves investment and deserves state investment. And none of it would really be possible without the state going through these big surpluses,” Strickland said.

There’s an element of “Don’t be left a cold Omaha if the Grizzlies leave” here, but possibly the more important insinuation is the big about “big [state] surpluses.” There are very much overtones there of “Hey, you’ve got the money, you agreed to give $500 million to Nashville for a Titans stadium, how about a little for us in Memphis, if by ‘us’ you mean our billionaire NBA owner.” This is by now Exhibit Z in the case that giving federal money to state governments without enough strings attached or even building up big rainy-day funds by cutting state spending can be a terrible idea, because they’ll just give large gobs of any windfall to whoever is standing nearby with the nicest suits and biggest lobbyists, no matter what it was actually supposed to be spent on.

Hardiman, the Commercial Appeal writer, said Strickland told him he expected to have an engineering plan by the end of the year, with the goal of having renovations done by 2026. If Hardiman got anything more out of the mayor about where the money would come from or of what kind of commitments the Grizzlies would be agreeing to in exchange — a lease extension? a lease extension that they can’t just break if ticket sales suck like the old one? — he didn’t say, either in his article or on the podcast. (Yes, I listened to the whole podcast so you didn’t have to. You can thank me on Patreon.) More news to come, I hope, though I know better than to promise it’ll be anytime soon.

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Friday roundup: Grizzlies lease has secret out clause, judge orders do-over in Nashville stadium vote, reviewers agree Rangers stadium is super-butt-ugly

access_time personNeil deMause

Normally the end of June is when news around here starts slowing down for the summer, but as no one needs reminding, nothing is normal anymore. There isn’t even time to get into sports leagues trying to reopen in the midst of what could be an “apocalyptic” surge in virus cases across the South and West, because busy times call for paralipsis:

  • The Daily Memphian has uncovered what it calls a “trap door” in the Memphis Grizzlies‘ lease that could let the team get out of the agreement early if it has even a single season where it doesn’t sell 1) 14,900 tickets per game, 2) all of its 64 largest suites, or 3) fewer than 2,500 season club seats. (There is at least a “force majeure” clause that should exclude any seasons played during a pandemic.) That could force the city to buy up tickets in order to keep the lease in force, the paper notes, and though talks between the team and city are underway to renegotiate the deal, you just know that Grizzlies owner Robert Pera will want something in exchange for giving up his opt-out clause. Pera has so far said all the right things about not wanting to move the team, but then, he doesn’t have to when he has sports journalists to spread relocation rumors for him; if savvy negotiators create leverage, city officials really need to learn to stop handing leverage to team owners when they write up leases, because that really never works out well.
  • In a major victory for local governments at least following their own damn rules, opponents of Nashville’s $50 million-plus-free-land deal for a new MLS stadium won a court victory this week when a judge ruled that the city violated Tennessee’s Open Meetings Act by approving the stadium’s construction contract at a meeting held with only 48 hours notice, when the law requires five days. The city’s Metro Sports Authority can now just hold another meeting with normal notice and reapprove the contract, but still it’s good to see someone’s hand slapped for a change for hiding from public scrutiny.
  • The reviews of the Texas Rangers‘ new stadium that received $450 million in subsidies so the team could have air-conditioning are in, and critics agree, it looks like a giant metal warehouse, or maybe a barbecue grill, or maybe the Chernobyl sarcophagus. Okay, they just agree that is is one ugly-ass stadium from the outside; firsthand reports on whether the upper-deck seats are as bad as they look in the renderings will have to await fans actually being allowed inside, which could come as soon as later this summer, unless by then Texans are too busy cowering in their homes to avoid having to go to the state’s overwhelmed hospital system
  • Amazon has bought naming rights to Seattle’s former Key Arena (Key Bank’s naming rights expired eons ago), and because Amazon needs more name recognition like it needs more stories about its terrible working conditions, it has decided to rename the building Climate Pledge Arena, after an Amazon-launched campaign to get companies to promise to produce zero net carbon emissions by 2040, something the company itself is off to a terrible start on. The reporting doesn’t say, but presumably if greenwashing goes out of style, Amazon will retain the right in a couple of years to rename the building Prime Video (Starts At $8.99/Month) Arena.
  • The NFL is still planning to have fans in attendance at games this fall, but it’s also going to be tarping off the first six to eight rows of seats and selling ads on the tarps as a hedge against ticket-sales losses. Even when and if things return to normal, I’m thinking this could be a great way for the league to create that artificial ticket scarcity that it’s been wanting for years, n’est-ce pas?
  • Amid concern that the New York Islanders will be left temporarily homeless or forced to move back to Brooklyn in the wake of the Nassau Coliseum being shuttered, Nassau County’s top elected official has promised that “the next time that the Islanders play in New York it will be in Nassau County.” If my reading-between-the-lines radar is working properly, that probably means we can expect to see the Islanders’ upcoming season played someplace like Bridgeport, Connecticut.
  • New Arizona Coyotes president Xavier Gutierrez is definitely hitting the ground with all his rhetoric cylinders running, telling ESPN: “When I took the job, [owner] Alex Meruelo told me finding a solution for where we should be located was priority one through five. I thought it was one through five, and he quickly corrected me and said, ‘No, it’s priority one through 10 for you.'” Shouldn’t that really be one to 11?
  • Here’s an actual San Diego Union-Tribune sports columnist saying voters did the city a favor by turning down a $1.15 billion-dollar Chargers stadium plan, because the city would be having a tough time paying it off now what with the economy in shambles. Of course, $1.15 billion still would have been $1.15 billion even if San Diego had the money, but budget crunches do seem to have a way of focusing people’s attention on opportunity costs.
  • Speaking of which, here’s an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about how it’s hard for Cobb County to pay off the construction debt on its Atlanta Braves stadium what with tourism tax revenue having fallen through the floor, though at least the AJC did call up economist J.C. Bradbury to let him say that it doesn’t really matter which tax money was used because “there’s no found money in government.”
  • Both of those are still way better articles, though, than devoting resources to a story about how holding baseball games without fans is going to lead to a glut of bags of peanuts, for which Good Morning America has us covered. Won’t anyone think of the peanuts?!?
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Friday roundup: Graceland seeks arena money, Marlins and Cards seek spring-training stadium money, guy in Raleigh seeks MLS stadium money

access_time personNeil deMause

In no particular order, or as we call it in New York, Mets style:

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Tennessee taxes visiting players, gives money to Grizzlies, Predators

access_time personNeil deMause

Grantland’s Zach Lowe explores the strange case of Tennessee’s jock tax, which unlike most such taxes — which are meant to grab a share of salaries earned by visiting athletes playing in your state — is a flat $2,500 per game, up to a maximum of three games a year. And it only applies to NBA and NHL players. And, in a case of Grantland burying the lede a bit, the tax doesn’t actually go to Tennessee at all:

Except the money doesn’t go to the state — another of Tennessee’s jock tax quirks. It goes to the operators of the [Memphis] Grizzlies‘ arena, who happen to also own the franchise, Klempner says. The state doesn’t see a dime, at least not directly. The theory is that arena operators will use the extra cash to spruce things up, draw more celebrated acts, and spend in other ways that will ultimately bring more visitors and money to the Memphis area.

“The state is collecting this money on behalf of a private entity,” [interim head of the NBA players’ union Ron] Klempner says.

The Tennessee jock tax, which also benefits the operators of the Nashville Predators arena (who are, surprise, surprise, the owners of the Predators), was first created in 2009 under somewhat mysterious circumstances: contemporary reports don’t mention that the money would go to the arena operators rather than the state. NBA and NHL players have been griping about the tax ever since, though, and it’s no doubt more of those complaints, from Klempner among others, that prompted this latest Grantland story.

It probably shouldn’t be surprising, in any case, given that Tennessee elected officials already gave the Grizzlies owners a non-compete clause that let them drive a neighboring city-owned arena out of business, plus accidentally gave them a parking garage, and gave the Predators owners $2 million a year in sales tax subsidies without telling their city landlords. Maybe Tennessee newspapers might want to start reading the fine print before these deals are actually signed into law, you think?

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Memphis Chamber: Grizzlies arena is Grrrr-eat!

access_time personNeil deMause

The Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce has issued a study claiming to show that the public construction of the FedExForum ten years ago to lure the Grizzlies from Vancouver has been a huge windfall for the city of Memphis. As My Fox Memphis reported the story:

The construction of the FedExForum was hotly debated ten years ago but with its opening, came an NBA basketball team, countless college hoops games, and more than 100 special events every year.

The Memphis Chamber commissioned a study that said all of that combines for an annual $223 million revenue generating impact.

“I think that settles the argument of whether of not it was going to be too costly for our community to attract an NBA team here,” said John Moore with the Memphis Chamber.

Uh, yeah, actually not. First off, that $223 million in annual “revenue generating impact” is actually economic activity — the sum total of all dollars spent in and around the Forum each year, including “the impact of all spending by the Memphis Grizzlies, by the operation of the FedExForum, and all visitor spending, as it flows through the Shelby County economy” — meaning that a big chunk of it is the Grizzlies’ $67 million player payroll, even if Zach Randolph never spends a dime of his salary in Shelby County. The actual city and county tax revenues generated by the Forum are far less: $5.3 million a year, or less than a third of the annual cost of paying off the Forum’s $250 million in construction debt.

Reading the report itself, it also doesn’t appear that the Chamber accounted for the substitution effect, meaning that much of that $5.3 million in new tax money may just be cannibalized from other spending that would have taken place in Memphis even without a basketball arena. There’s also no discussion of the opportunity cost of missing out on what else could have been done with $250 million in public bonds — the Chamber estimates that the total number of jobs created by the project is 1,534, which comes to more than $150,000 per new job, which on the economic impact scale is somewhere between “dismal” and “vomitous.” At that rate, the city would have been better off selling bonds to hire more schoolteachers, or just cutting everybody’s taxes by $10 million a year.

On second thought, maybe the study really does settle the argument of whether the arena was too costly. Just not the way Moore meant it.

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