The Virginia Beach city council found out last night how much a new “privately funded” arena would cost the public, and the answer is: a lot.

On Tuesday, City Council learned that it could cost $52.6 million to $78.8 million to pay for the utilities, road improvements, and traffic patterns in the area.

Add in $7 million a year in tax kickbacks that the developer would be demanding, and that’s a total public cost (in present value) of between $160 million and $185 million. For an arena that will cost $200 million to build.

City councilmembers, naturally, were taken aback by the high price tag:

Council members seemed thrilled with the idea and thought it was time to move forward.

Sigh.

The city of Virginia Beach could release information today on how much infrastructure costs would be for a proposed $200 million arena, according to an article in today’s Virginian-Pilot. More on that tomorrow, then; in the meantime, here’s how the Virginian-Pilot again completely screwed up its reporting on Virginia Beach’s two arena proposals:

The council voted in May to begin negotiating with USM instead of rival development group W.M. Jordan, which included politically influential developer Bruce Thompson. Those negotiations are continuing, and the city won’t release cost estimates.

The Virginian-Pilot obtained both proposals in February and reported that each arena would cost about $200 million. The key difference is that W.M. Jordan wanted taxpayers to pick up nearly all of the costs, while USM said it would obtain private financing.

Oy gevalt. No, no, that’s not the key difference at all. As was discussed back in May, the W.M. Jordan plan would have provided $10.5 million a year in public money to pay off arena bonds, whereas the USM plan is set to provide $7 million a year in tax kickbacks so that the developer can pay off arena bonds. Which is indeed better — 7 is less than 10.5, last I checked — but is not at all the difference between “taxpayers picking up nearly all of the costs” and “private financing.”

Anyway, the Virginia Beach city council is set to receive a consultant’s report today on infrastructure costs, so we should learn more about the city’s total outlay then. Though if USM is smart, it will offer to pay for the infrastructure costs now, and have the city repay them later, since apparently no one in the local media is clever enough to see through such advanced accounting tricks.

Monday was the deadline for proposals to build a sports arena in Virginia Beach — I know, I’m kicking myself for not finishing my application on time, too — and two different developers threw very different hats into the ring. In one corner, developer W.M. Jordan Co. sent in its arena plan that was first floated in November; what was then only vaguely described as a “public-private partnership” turns out to be a plan for the city to pay 75% of the construction cost and get “repaid” by increased taxes from additional visitors.

If that doesn’t float your boat, the competing plan is simultaneously more promising for the city and even more crazy:

“We agree that a major arena is the right decision for Virginia Beach and are exploring options that are best for our community, such as shifting the risk from the City and citizens to private investors,” [ESG Companies VP Andria] Kilmer told WAVY.com in November. “We are finalizing our analyses in anticipation of making a proposal that will be for a locally-owned, privately-financed arena which incorporates national and international players to provide Virginia Beach with an iconic world class venue.”…

 

The $200 million or so needed to build the project will come from a bank in China. ESG would pay the loan back over time.

This apparently would not be an EB-5 cash-for-green-cards plan (or if it is, ESG isn’t saying), but rather a direct loan from a Chinese bank. The hook for the bank is apparently that construction would be overseen by the Beijing-based China Machinery Engineering Corp., which appears to mostly build coal-burning plants.

Of course, the fact that a bank would be fronting the money doesn’t say much about how the loan would be paid off, and ESG hinted that the public could still be on the hook for some of that: It mentioned a possible contribution of city hotel tax revenue, plus there’s a complicated lease deal for the arena (ESG would own it, but lease city-owned land, but ownership would revert to the city after 40 years) that makes it unclear to me whether they’d be in line for property tax breaks.

You can see details of the two proposals here (ESG) and here (W.M. Jordan), though since the ESG proposal hasn’t been fully made public yet, in their case “details” just means “clip art of hockey player silhouettes.” (And W.M. Jordan offloaded all their financial details into a separate “volume two” document that doesn’t appear to be online.) The Virginia Beach city council was set to meet last night to hear presentations on the two plans (according to WAVY-TV, at least), but I can’t find any reports on what, if anything, was discussed there, either. Maybe they avoided holding a real meeting by having half their members stand in the hall. All the kids are doing it!

Sorry for two days of nothing but Atlanta Braves news, but it kind of took over my brain, along with that of the rest of the sports media. (Here’s my latest for Sports on Earth on the whole mess; more on that a bit later.) But surely something else less crazy must be going on in the sports stadium and arena world, right?

Richmond, Virginia mayor plans ballpark on site of slave cemetery

No, no, I said less crazy. Come on, anybody?

The concept of building an 18,000-seat arena at the Oceanfront [in Virginia Beach] that fell apart earlier this year is back with a new player.

Okay, that’ll have to do. Virginia Beach, you’ll recall, last year proposed building a $426 million arena with $391 million in public money, possibly to lure the Sacramento Kings, before the whole thing fell apart when it turned out the state of Virginia wasn’t eager to give them $150 million to help pay for the thing. Then last month there was talk of mysterious Chinese investors, and yesterday the Virginia Beach city council actually voted on, um, something?

W.M. Jordan Co., one of the region’s biggest construction firms, has submitted to the city a proposal with partners to build an arena next to the city’s convention center…

“In talking with various folks, we felt an arena would work without a franchise,” said John Lawson, president and CEO of W.M. Jordan.

He said an existing arena might help attract a team to Virginia Beach, and the building would be constructed so it could be modified to accommodate a team. He said it could open at the end of 2016.

Okay, that’s nice and all that a construction company wants to construct something, but who’s going to pay for this exactly?

Lawson declined to provide financing details about the proposed public-private partnership that would be used to build it. He said that information will come out later. He did say in an email it would be “substantially” cheaper.

“I’m very confident when the financial details are made public that the public will easily understand the financial arrangement and be supportive,” Lawson said.

Oh, one of those proposals. This really is the week for that sort of thing, isn’t it?

If there’s anything to the “substantially cheaper” thing, it sounds like W.M. Jordan may be looking at something along the lines of Oklahoma City’s arena, which was first built for a bargain-basement $89 million without luxury suites or other facilities for a big-league sports team, then later got a $112 million upgrade when the Thunder came to town. It’s not a terrible idea for a small market, though given the economics of concerts vs. sports, Virginia Beach might be better off just skipping the team and booking as much music as it can. Not that that’s still likely to pay off an arena’s construction costs, but at least Katy Perry pays rent.

Not to leave any stones unturned, the Virginia Beach council gave anyone else who feels like building an arena 60 days to submit their own proposals. Because you never know when some more mystery Chinese investors might be lurking out there, just waiting to build an arena for the nation’s 44th largest TV market.

Let’s see, what’s the last thing you would expect to see in the news this morning? Zombie invasion? Harry Reid and John Boehner starring in a new buddy-cop movie? Word that Virginia Beach is reviving its crazy arena plans that it declared dead almost a year ago? (Okay, that’s almost the same as “zombie invasion.”)

Yep, you guessed it: According to city councilmember Bill DeSteph, who is running for the state house of delegates, two groups are interested in maybe proposing building something! And one of them includes a Chinese investor! And it wouldn’t cost the city anything, except tax credits, which of course cost the city! And “just about everybody in this room would support it”!

Since that’s clear as mud, let’s check in on Mayor Will Sessoms, who was the force behind last fall’s attempt to lure the Sacramento Kings by building them a new arena that would be paid for by cough cough, sorry something must’ve gone down the wrong pipe, what were we talking about again? What say you, Mayor Sessoms?

Mayor Will Sessoms said a group of Chinese businessmen has expressed interest in investing in a Virginia Beach project but has not taken any formal action.

Sessoms said possible projects they might be interested in include an arena, an entertainment project at the old Dome site and light rail.

He said he met some of those potential investors briefly at a recent luncheon but could not recall their names or companies they represent.

Alrighty, then. Wake me when the zombies are here.

So those Virginia Beach arena plans aren’t quite as dead as we were led to believe. Apparently there’s still a bill kicking around in the state house, and it passed a subcommittee yesterday and moved on to committee, which is no assurance of anything but is still more progress than anyone expected a couple of weeks ago.

What the bill says, and what legislators say it says, is a hilarious lesson in the rhetoric of public subsidies. From the Virginian-Pilot’s report:

When talks with the [Sacramento] Kings were under way, the proposed deal included $150 million in state support. But Del. Bob Purkey, R-Virginia Beach, said today that local lawmakers made it clear to city officials “there was no chance in hell” of a direct state contribution.

Instead, [Del. Ron] Villanueva’s bill allocates state income and sales tax revenue generated by an arena to pay off the construction bonds.

So, instead of a “direct state contribution,” under Vilanueva’s bill the state would take state money collected at arena events and use it to pay off the cost of construction. (Yes, that’s a TIF.) And just to drive the point home, a legislative staff analysis says that the cost to the state treasury “would likely be significant.” But that’s not a state contribution, oh no. Heaven forfend!

None of the coverage of the new bill discusses how much money would be raised by this TIF, but keep in mind that Seattle’s arena sales tax kickback is only expected to be worth $5.8 million (that’s total, not per year), and income tax kickbacks usually don’t amount to that much either — even if you assume a $70 million NBA payroll, and that Virginia could collect its 5.75% income tax on the entire year’s earnings, not just the part of the year the NBA season was underway, that’s still only about $4 million a year. But, hey, you gotta start somewhere. And at least now the Virginia Beach arena advocates know that some legislators consider some tax dollars to be more public than others.