Category: Carolina Panthers

And that went exactly as expected:

Just three weeks after plans were unveiled for renovations at Bank of America Stadium, the Charlotte City Council voted in favor on Monday on giving $650 million to help fund the project.

The stadium is nearly 30 years old, but Carolina Panthers and Charlotte FC owner David Tepper wants to give it new life.

In addition to $650 million from the city, the tentative agreement also requires Tepper provide $150 million upfront, with promises to invest hundreds of millions more over the next several years.

Yes, we are at the point in human history where a sports stadium that opened 28 years ago is unironically portrayed as needing “new life.” Sports economist Rod Fort was truly prescient when he said back in 2001, “I don’t see anything wrong, from an owner’s perspective, with the idea of a new stadium every year.”

As for the spending breakdown, the immediate split is indeed $650 million from the city on a stadium it didn’t build and doesn’t own, and $150 million from the team’s multibillionaire owner; the “hundreds of millions more” that David Tepper would be on the hook for amounts to about $250 million in present value, and that’s assuming he actually spends it, given that that part appears to be just a promise and not a contractual commitment. In exchange, Tepper would commit to keeping the Panthers in town through 2039, making it at $43.3 million a year the most expensive per-year lease extension deal in sports history. And, of course, Tepper gets to start “good faith” negotiations with Charlotte for a whole new stadium in 2037, because the old one will be 41 years old then and won’t have been renovated in a whole decade, no way to put new life into that, it should have gone to the Carousel years ago.

That should be enough to put the Panthers agreement comfortably in the discussion for “worst deal ever,” but the seven of 10 Charlotte councilmembers who voted for the plan remained bullish, with councilmember Tariq Bokhari gushing, “We’re going to see and explosion of economic impact in Uptown.” Mayor Vi Lyles added that the “yes” vote shows “what Charlotte is all about.” Couldn’t agree more, but maybe not quite in the way she meant it.

With the Charlotte city council set to vote on the proposed $650 million Carolina Panthers stadium renovation deal today, and likely to approve it overwhelmingly, Joe Bruno of WSOC-TV in Charlotte took a look at the meeting agenda, and hold onto your hats, we’re down a rabbit hole:

The city is eyeing 2046 for a new stadium for the Panthers and Charlotte FC…

According to the agenda, the city will start negotiating with Tepper Sports & Entertainment by April 1, 2037.

So what does that mean, exactly? Over to the Charlotte Observer:

The new stadium would be located in Charlotte and potentially be ready for the 2046 season, according to terms of the agreement set to be voted on Monday by the City Council. Terms say the negotiations would be about design and construction of the stadium and the “need for potentially new funding sources.”

So would this be a contractual guarantee of a new stadium, or just a promise to talk more about one in 12 years, or what? Agenda, you have anything more for us?

I would dispute “common” given that I’ve never seen a clause like this in another stadium/arena renovation agreement, but it’s certainly possible I’ve missed a couple.

In any case, while I’ll defer to lawyers on what this clause actually means in terms of a contractual promise, it’s likely more important in terms of priming the pump for Tepper’s next ask: He’s officially putting local residents on notice that once he gets this $650 million, the clock is ticking until his next demand for public cash. It’s a slightly risky gambit, since “fix my old stadium for me, then once that’s done I’ll ask you for a new one” is not the best sales pitch; if he already has the council vote in the bag, though, then if Tepper really does intend on coming back with his hand out again in a little over a decade, he can at least say he did warn everyone.

The Charlotte city council yesterday held its sole public comment period on its proposed $650 million Carolina Panthers subsidy before the day of its final vote, and apparently local residents had as hard time as me figuring out when and where exactly it was being held, because only 23 people showed up to speak. (It was also in the middle of a work day.) Of those, 15 were in favor, six were opposed, and two had mixed feelings, with comments ranging from that this would be an “investment [that] directly benefits our community” to “if [the current stadium is] good enough for Beyoncé, it’s good enough for half the city.”

That doesn’t tell us much about overall public sentiment, so I want to instead focus on this paragraph from the Charlotte Business Journal’s article on the public comment session:

While Tepper Sports is slated to pay 19%, or $150 million, of the four-year, $800 million renovation tab spanning 2025 through 2029, both parties calculate Tepper Sports’ investment at $688 million overall. That figure includes $117 million spent on improvements between 2018 and 2024 as well as an estimated $421 million more for anticipated stadium investments over the rest of the deal between 2029 and 2045.

A bunch of things here:

• “Both parties” here means Panthers owner David Tepper and city officials, I guess, but since those are the two who are both in favor of the stadium project, it’s not really as universal an opinion as this makes it sound.
• Crediting Tepper for $117 million in money he already spent on upgrades over the last six years is an odd way to calculate a deal — it’s not like he’s going to travel back in time and undo that work if he doesn’t get $650 million in fresh city money. Also, Charlotte taxpayers put in at least $25 million toward those renovations, if we’re counting past private spending shouldn’t we count past public spending too?
• It appears that the $421 million in future improvements would be spread out over time from 2029 to 2045, meaning Tepper would only have to set aside about $250 million now to pay them off, while Charlotte taxpayers would be on the hook for their $650 million right now. (I also can’t find confirmation that Tepper would be committing to all that spending as opposed to just “expecting” to do it, though I’m still digging for the actual language.)
• Tepper owns the stadium and would receive all revenues from it, while Charlotte would just get a commitment that the team would stay put for 15 more years.

This is an excellent example of how to torture numbers until they show what you want them to: In this case, that the public covering between 60% and 80% of future renovation costs for a privately owned and operated football stadium is somehow an even split. Not that it particularly matters — the public doesn’t get a vote here, only the council will — but it’s probably always a good idea to cover your butt so as to avoid getting shot in it.

So while the Charlotte city government isn’t revealing the responses to the comment form it set up for the proposed Carolina Panthers stadium renovation deal that would cost taxpayers $650 million, WFAE public radio got ahold of the results, and they’re not pretty:

A review of the responses shows that roughly 300 of the 450 people who responded online said they opposed the deal. The most common reason they gave: The city should not use public dollars to subsidize a multi-billionaire, David Tepper. People said he should “pay for his own damn stadium.”…

There were roughly 85 people who were enthusiastic about the project, saying it would raise the city’s profile.

There were roughly 70 who weren’t for or against it. They just said they wanted things like real grass instead of artificial turf or a canopy over the stands.

Now, this is a web poll, which is about the most unscientific thing possible, so we have no idea how well this represents Charlotte residents as a whole, or whether many respondents don’t even live in North Carolina or are dogs or whatever. Still, 300 comments opposed and 85 in favor is not a great ratio, which is no doubt why Charlotte economic development director Tracy Dodson avoided mentioning any numbers in her Monday presentation of the survey results, instead just saying that some people wanted the money used for other things, while others wanted to create opportunities for local businesses — the truth surely must lie somewhere in the middle!

At the behest of five of the 11 city councilmembers (Dimple Ajmera, Renee Johnson, Victoria Watlington, Tiawana Brown, and LaWana Mayfield), the council agreed to move up its single public comment period on the stadium plan from the same day as its June 24 final vote on the project to a week earlier, next Monday, June 17. So we should get a little better sense then of the actual mood of the local public.

Dodson, meanwhile, isn’t waiting to make her own public comments, raising even more eyebrows yesterday by insisting that the $650 million in hotel and restaurant tax money the city would spend on stadium renovations “isn’t going to Tepper Sports and Entertainment” but “is going to a community asset, the facility,” leading to this hilariously patient explanation from WFAE:

Under the plan, the city would spend $650 million worth of hotel/motel and prepared food and beverage taxes on the stadium, which is owned by David Tepper’s company. While the city might write a check to contractors, all of the resulting improvements would also be owned by Tepper.

The money would increase the value of the stadium, allowing the owner to generate more money from games, concerts and other events.

It would be like agreeing to pay for a new roof for your friend’s house. That friend would still own the house and the roof — even if you then claimed the money didn’t go to the friend because you paid the roofer directly.

It’s currently unclear which way the Charlotte city council is leaning on its vote, but maybe we’ll get more insights after Monday’s public hearing, which will last from … 3 to 5 p.m., really, they’ve only allotted two hours for this? It’s also still not on the city public hearing calendar, so unclear if it will be livestreamed, but I’ll post an update here if a link turns up.

The proposed Carolina Panthers stadium renovation deal is a weirdly constructed one: The city of Charlotte would pay off $650 million of an initial $800 million construction cost between now and 2029; team owner David Tepper would provide the other $150 million, plus $421 million after 2029 for what the Charlotte Business Journal calls “as yet publicly undisclosed future improvements and replacements of obsolete technology and other equipment.” And while Charlotte city officials at a hearing last night didn’t seem to be asking the big question — why would the public be on the hook for 81% of the cost of an initial renovation when Tepper would get all the revenues, especially in exchange for just a 15-year lease extension guarantee — they did ask another obvious one, that being: What if we spend the public money and then Tepper decides not to spend his?

[Councilmembers] Dimple Ajmera, Dante Anderson and Malcolm Graham, among others … asked for more details about what Tepper Sports’ future commitments entail and what kinds of penalties or claw-back provisions will be included in the contract.

Ajmera referred to “the elephant in the room,” alluding to Tepper Sports founder David Tepper abandoning an $800 million team headquarters project in Rock Hill in 2022.

The headquarters was more than halfway through construction when Tepper pulled the plug, citing unmet obligations by local government. Construction never resumed and the matter was resolved in bankruptcy court.

Yeah, so when you’re asking for a $650 million check from taxpayers, maybe having bailed on another project because you belatedly wanted more public money is not the best optics, as the kids say.

Still, the council as a whole seems set to approve the $650 million subsidy, with one, Ed Driggs, justifying it using the brain-breaking argument that using city hotel tax money “is not your property tax, this is not sales tax, these are revenues that are collected by the hospitality interest for the purpose of investment in ventures like this.” (For the record, other North Carolina cities like Asheville have used hotel tax money to pay for parks, and are considering using it for things like affordable housing and transit.) The city government has set up a website to collect public comments on the proposal (scroll way down here), but won’t disclose how many are positive vs. negative, and the city council didn’t allow any public testimony on the plan at last night’s hearing:

The council now says there will be at least one chance for public comment, on June 24, immediately before the council vote on the plan. There’s still a chance that the council could delay its vote until it comes back from its summer break in August, but Tepper says that would delay his construction schedule, which apparently was set based on getting city approval of his $650 million subsidy in a matter of just three weeks. Two-Minute Warning, check!