Category: Denver Broncos

Friday roundup: NC may earmark $700m for stadium for imaginary MLB team, Steelers could seek upgrade on “expiring” 25-year-old home

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we get to this week’s news roundup, some old business from last week: I shamefully forgot to give a shoutout to John Mozena for his outstanding liveblog of the stadium-related papers at University of Maryland-Baltimore County’s annual sports economics conference after I was unable to attend. Please check out John’s work at the Center for Economic Accountability and throw some coin his way if you like, or at the very least get some of his free “Pay For Your Own Damn Stadium” stickers.

Back in the present, you’re stuck with me, and I’m stuck with this week’s avalanche of news items:

  • The North Carolina legislature is debating whether to set aside unspecified hundreds of millions of dollars in its final budget for a stadium for a potential future MLB expansion team “in or near Wake County,” which would mean the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill “Triangle” area, as distinct from the Greensboro-Winston-Salem-High Point “Triad” area that voted down paying for a stadium to lure the Minnesota Twins back in 1998. The state has a $700 million Economic Development Project Reserve that it can designate for “high-yield” development projects, and while sports stadiums are nobody’s idea of high-yield in terms of actual measurable impact, there’s got to be somebody somewhere willing to write a consulting report claiming otherwise.
  • Former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Charlie Batch says team ownership is ready to get back on line for a new or renovated stadium now that their current home is 25 whole years old: “Thirty years is the expiration date. Guess what Acrisure Stadium is? Twenty-five years. So I promise you, conversations are happening behind the scenes to figure out kind of what the next move is as the Rooneys are looking for an upgrade in their stadium.” The next move, apparently, is to send your former-players-turned-YouTube-creators out to talk up how stadiums just straight-up become obsolete after 30 years and somebody has to build you a new one and see if that flies.
  • Illinois’ efforts to retain the Chicago Bears in the wake of team execs’ announcement that they’re absolutely, definitely (maybe) moving to Indiana remain very much undead, with Gov. JB Pritzker saying his state is ready to act but first needs “the Bears to focus on what they want,” adding, “they have not been clear about what is the bill that they need, and how do they need to look, and then, can they get the votes necessary to get it done in the House and the Senate.” State house stadium bill sponsor Kam Buckner noted that both that body and the state senate have passed competing bills — there’s also now a third one, filed by State Rep. Martin McLaughlin despite the legislature not even being in session, that would raise the size thresholds on a “megaprojects” bill to where it would only apply to an Arlington Heights stadium — and “the Bears have to decide what makes most sense for them, which one of those bills is the bill they can get behind and wrap their arms around that can help them remain here in the state of Illinois,” adding, “We cannot have a special session until we have a deal. You don’t call a special session to draw up a flight plan. You call a special session to land the plane.” The hope here seems to be that if Bears officials pick a favorite tax break bill and declare that it’ll be enough to get them to stay in Illinois, that’ll get legislators in both houses to vote for it, which is absolutely the kind of bootstrapping your own momentum thing that you try to do when you’re pushing legislation that just got nowhere.
  • Building a stadium district in Denver’s Burnham Yard railyards may be easier said than done for Broncos ownership, given little details like the land is mostly zoned only for industrial use. This is Broncos owner Greg Penner’s problem, of course, except that, as the lengthy Denver Post article on this only reveals down in its 28th paragraph, Penner could end up asking for TIF property tax breaks to pay for his larger development. “The track record for delivering on these promises by teams in development,” noted University of Colorado Denver economist Geoffrey Propheter, “is shaky. And that’s being super generous.” (Credit where credit is due to the Post: “The naked man, in retrospect, was the least of Sean Herman’s worries” is an excellent teaser lede, though still not quite up there with “The freighter captain, the cop, the guy from the private security firm, the Swiss Army major, and the reporter never saw the pirates coming.”)
  • Athletics owner John Fisher now says his mistake in announcing a stadium plan in Las Vegas was not talking to the media himself enough about it: “Not hearing from me, I think, led to frustration from, frankly, the media. Like, who is this guy? Is he hiding? Who’s the real John Fisher?” He then went on to tell The Athletic absolutely nothing about how he plans to make a $2 billion stadium (with $600 million in public subsidies) in what would be MLB’s smallest market work out, especially when his development partner Bally’s may bail on its part and leave Fisher to fund such additional amenities as a $100 million parking structure. Hearing from John Fisher, it turns out, also leads to frustration, who’da thunk it?
  • San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones would like Spurs minority owner Michael Dell (net worth: $246 billion) to pay for some or all of her city’s $489 million share of a downtown arena. Dell hasn’t responded to her request, and Stanford University Roger Noll says that’s likely because the multibillionaire knows spending your own money on new sports venues is a dumb idea — “the incremental benefits of having a new arena are not as big as the cost” — which is why it’s only worth it if you can stick taxpayers with the bill.
  • The Minnesota Vikings‘ 10-year-old stadium needs a new roof because it got damaged by hail three years ago, but insurance should cover it, or at least the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority does not believe “substantial use of public funds” will be required, which is slightly less reassuring than “insurance should cover it.” Anyway, it’ll probably never hail this bad in Minneapolis again, right?
  • The first of the Buffalo Bills‘ family of stainless steel buffalo statues has arrived, and fans are excitedly pointing out that bisons don’t really look like that! They’re not even usually made of steel!
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Friday roundup: Rays blink on June 1 stadium deadline, Illinois residents don’t want to break the bank to keep Bears

access_time personNeil deMause

Time to catch up on what else has been going on this week while we’ve been doing wall-to-wall Tampa Bay Rays coverage. But first, the latest in Tampa Bay Rays news!

  • With elected officials in Tampa still insisting on asking pesky questions about whether giving Rays owner Patrick Zalupski $2.1 billion or more in total stadium subsidies would leave the city and county with a budget shortfall if tax revenues fall short (or even if they’re just diverted from other uses), Rays execs finally blinked: CEO Ken Babby has backed away from his June 1 deadline for a deal, saying the team is now just “focused” on getting a “nonbinding” memorandum of understanding that would send a signal to the state that “the county, the city and the Rays are committed to this partnership.” (Zalupski added that even an MOU by June 1 isn’t absolutely necessary, but he wants one “real soon” thereafter, even if “it’s purely symbolic.”) Translation: Let’s get at least the state part of the deal done before Ron DeSantis leaves office, then we can come back and haggle over financial details for the city’s and county’s portions. It’s not clear if Tampa and Hillsborough County will be able to push for a less spendy MOU — or be willing to reject the plan entirely if they can’t — but score at least one point for elected officials refusing to fall for the two-minute warning.
  • A new poll shows that most Illinois residents oppose throwing a lot of state money at a Chicago Bears stadium to ensure the team doesn’t move to Indiana — or at least, it does if you include the 36.9% who want to allow the team to break their Soldier Field lease and build a new stadium in Illinois without any taxpayer funds, as well as those who want to force the Bears to keep playing there through 2033, are those even real options, this is a weird poll. Other poll findings: Opposition to funding most of a stadium’s cost with public money is consistent across the political spectrum, and Illinois residents outside the immediate Chicago vicinity don’t give a crap where the Bears play, with those in the southern half of the state “downright apathetic.”
  • Meanwhile, it turns out the clause in Illinois’ proposed tax break bill that would add “property tax relief” to any subsidy for a Bears stadium or other “megaprojects” wouldn’t be much relief at all: An average Illinois homeowner would only get $1.29 off their property tax bill as a result. (And that’s even if their overall property tax bill didn’t go up by more than that to cover lost revenues from the megaproject tax break.) The total cost of the megaprojects bill in future tax expenditures has yet to be calculated — and may be uncalculatable, since we don’t know how many future developments would apply or how much of a tax break they’d negotiate with local governments, but that doesn’t mean nobody should give it a try before the Illinois legislature goes ahead and votes on this thing.
  • And also meanwhile, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is trying to block a potential Bears move to the suburb of Arlington Heights by pressing Chicago-area state legislators to oppose the megaprojects tax break bill. State senate Legislative Black Caucus chair Willie Preston then said he’s on board to oppose it, then said he was misinterpreted, then said he would just like a megaprojeets tax subsidy that would let the Bears stay in Chicago somehow. Illinois Kremlinologists please report to the situation room, stat.
  • New Jersey has cut train fares to World Cup matches from $150 to $105, thanks to what Gov. Mikie Sherrill says are private companies that have “stepped up to lower the costs for ticket holders,” whatever that means exactly. (Sherrill has promised that New Jersey Transit’s $48 million in expected World Cup costs won’t come out of transit riders’ pockets, but the details of who’s donating what in exchange for what here are still very murky.) The price cut will be good for soccer fans, unless it ends up increasing the ticket prices that fans will accept now that they’ll be saving $45 on getting to the game, in which case it will only be good for FIFA.
  • A report by Oxford Economics says that World Cup cities should expect to see only a “modest bump” from fan spending this summer, says report author Barbara Denham, and no measurable impact at all on overall economic activity, noting “there’s a lot of displacement of tourism” as other visitors steer clear of cities that will be mobbed by World Cup fans. And that’s even if, of course, the World Cup mobs don’t steer clear as well: Add Seattle to the list of cities where fans are getting set to show up disguised as empty hotel rooms.
  • Houston Texans owner Cal McNair isn’t saying what kind of stadium renovations he’ll seek in advance of his team’s lease expiring at the end of 2032, but he did say he’s hoping they’ll be “transformative,” which is usually code for “a lot of zeroes after the dollar sign.”
  • A Minnesota legislator wants to apply the same ticket tax paid by Vikings ticket buyers to currently exempt buyers of luxury suites and earmark the proceeds to provide services to youth victims of sex trafficking. Bill opponents, clearly not eager to look like they’re siding with either luxury suite buyers or sex traffickers, have instead objected that she submitted her bill to the wrong committee.
  • Residents of Denver’s historic La Alma-Lincoln Park neighborhood are trying to work out a community benefits agreement with the Broncos owners to keep from being overwhelmed by traffic and displacement if the team builds a new stadium nearby. Community leaders say this will be the first legally binding CBA negotiated by an NFL team with a community group rather than a local government — something they might want to think carefully about, as history shows that it can be a problem if it comes time to enforce a CBA and none of the community group signatories are still around to do it.
  • New Orleans has just seized the lead in the race to be the first major sports city to be abandoned due to climate change.
  • And finally, RIP Gap cofounder Doris Fisher, who will now not be around to see if her middle son spends the family fortune on building a spherical armadillo.
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Friday roundup: Has Cleveland’s mayor actually found a way to make Guardians and Cavs owners help pay for own repair costs?

access_time personNeil deMause

No time for a lengthy roundup intro today, I’m too busy catching up with the latest problems resulting from sending Microsoft Outlook into space. Plenty of juicy bullet points, though, you can dig into those right now:

  • Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb is proposing establishing sales tax surcharge of up to 5% in and around the Guardians‘ stadium and Cavaliers‘ arena to help fund what could be $400 million in ongoing repairs and upgrades at the venues, expenses the city’s sports authority is required to cover under the teams’ leases but which it has no money for. Cleveland.com describes this as “Cavs and Guardians fans footing the bill,” but actually a lot of this could fall on the team owners, as fans are unlikely to put up with higher prices on tickets (or, to a somewhat lesser degree, hot dogs or souvenirs) just because taxes went up. One catch: Any “New Community Authority” would require any property owners to agree to join and be subject to the tax; the stadium and arena are owned by the sports authority, though, so it’s at least possible Bibb could force this on the teams over their objections. Lots of team prepare for such backdoor funding attempts by inserting “no ticket tax surcharge” clauses into their leases — I’m not spotting any in the Cavs and Guardians leases on an initial look, but feel free to search for yourselves.
  • NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell turned up the heat on the Chicago Bears stadium situation on Tuesday, declaring: “They need to find a solution for a stadium. … I think it’s really important that they come to a resolution on this relatively soon. … This is an important time to get this resolved sooner rather than later.” Okay, that’s less “heat” than “typical commissioner whingeing,” no reason to report on this as upping the pressure in any real oh come on, NBC Chicago.
  • Predatory lending tycoon Tom Dundon has been approved as the new owner of the Portland Trail Blazers, and he was not pleased at all that one of the first questions he got was why he hasn’t committed any of his own money toward an arena renovation that the team is seeking $600 million in public subsidies for. “No one’s ever told me I didn’t have skin in the game before,” snapped Dundon. “We don’t know each other very well. So, look, we’re going to negotiate and do a market deal.” Easy for him to say since he’s already landed the first $365 million in state funding, but at least maybe this will give local legislators a bit more backbone as they negotiating the remaining $235 million — especially since minority owner and venture capital succubus Sheel Tyle declared, “I don’t want people to be concerned or scared. We are committed to Portland, 100 percent. Full stop.” Somebody please alert Ron Wyden.
  • The Maryland legislature has killed legislation for the 2026 session to spend $217 million in public money on a stadium to host new Baltimore men’s and women’s soccer teams, partly because there’s community opposition to building it atop a public golf course that was the site of some of the first integration of the city’s public facilities. “When we introduced the legislation, the purpose was not to get it funded,” bill sponsor state Sen. Antonio Hayes told the Baltimore Banner, “the purpose was to keep the conversation going” — so you can rest assured we’ll hear about this again in the 2027 session.
  • Denver Broncos owner Greg Penner says he won’t be able to meet an “ambitious” 2031 target date for opening a new stadium without help from “a lot of key partners at the city level [and] at state level.” In particular, Penner still needs to finish acquiring land for the stadium — he said if the new stadium isn’t ready by 2031 he could just extend his lease at the old one, so it’s not clear why anyone would feel pressured by this deadline other than him, but this is just how team owners roll.
  • The Missouri legislature is considering cutting $2 million from its stadium maintenance budget and redirecting it to a fire department program in retaliation for the Kansas City Chiefs announcing they’ll move to Kansas in 2031 — though in the meantime, it would also reduce maintenance spending on the Royals stadium as well, assuming the Royals stick around.
  • World Cup participant countries typically get tax exemptions during their teams’ time spent in the host nation, but because Trump administration is only extending that courtesy to nations that have signed specific double-taxation agreements with the U.S., “It’s going to cost most non-European countries a lot of money to go to the World Cup” this summer, says tax consultant Oriana Morrison. And that’s before visiting fans pony up for the inflated cost of train tickets to the games in Massachusetts. Props to both the federal and local governments for finding ways to claw back some of the costs of hosting the World Cup, I guess, though taking it from the pockets of Haitians seems just slightly cruel and unusual.
  • Inglewood is spending $8.5 million to “revitalize” its downtown so that it’s more lively in advance of the 2027 Super Bowl and 2028 Summer Olympics, hey wait, weren’t Super Bowls and Olympics supposed to revitalize their surroundings? U.S. news media, we await your corrections.
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Friday roundup: Denver mayor says he’ll fight to the death to give George Lucas’s wife $170m for a soccer stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

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

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

Anyway, onward!

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

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s Friday, which means I had to take valuable time away from reading about the Mafia luring rich people into playing in rigged poker games in order to hang out with NBA players who scored 6.6 points a game so that I could instead sum up the rest of this week’s stadium and arena news, for you, because I care.

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Friday roundup: Stochastic parrot edition

access_time personNeil deMause

Guys! The AI industry needs our help! Nobody wants AI, and AI has lots of AI, so AI is paying AI to make more AI and sell it to AI and making it up in stock price, and that can’t end well! Let’s help out by asking poor li’l ChatGPT to write this week’s Friday roundup, I’ll check in and see how it does:

Friday roundup: Bears still begging, Thunder still building, and Jaguars still staircasing

[Not terrible, not great. Really the headline should reference the top items, and also what the hell is “staircasing” supposed to mean?]

It’s Friday, which means it’s time once again to spin the roulette wheel of public cash and see which stadium and arena schemes landed on taxpayers this week:

[“Spin the roulette wheel of public cash” is a terrible turn of phrase. Also, to complete the metaphor, the wheel should be “landing on” various schemes, not the schemes landing on taxpayers.]

  • San Diego’s Midway Rising plan to replace Pechanga Arena with a new 16,000-seat venue and a pile of housing and retail is inching toward a December 5 planning commission deadline, with the city still wrangling over traffic impacts, affordable housing quotas, and who gets the upside from the $3.9 billion redevelopment. Because nothing says “revitalization” like betting on a 1970s arena site to turn into a housing solution via sports subsidies.

[I haven’t written much lately about Midway Rising, which would replace the former home of the San Diego Clippers, among others, with one of those mixed-use district that are all the rage now, including a new arena. The whole project would cost $3.9 billion, and if ChatGPT knew that it could look back at old articles to understand this week’s, it would have found Voice of San Diego’s explainer about how the project would get an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District, which is basically a TIF that would kick back property taxes around the site to the developers. How much in taxes? Voice of San Diego didn’t say, and ChatGPT didn’t email property tax economist Geoff Propheter to ask, and Geoff hasn’t gotten to my email yet, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The last line, meanwhile, is a decent attempt at FoS-style snark, but points off for it not meaning anything.]

  • Oklahoma City’s new $900 million Thunder arena is still on track for a 2028 opening, after voters okayed a 1% sales tax to fund most of it. The latest renderings feature lots of glass and “urban integration,” which probably means the public will be paying for a very expensive window. Construction could start in 2026, with the city touting it as a 21st-century civic monument and critics calling it a half-billion-dollar bribe to keep the team happy through 2050.

[Oh come on, you link to fresh vaportecture and don’t even run the images, let alone clown on the woman in the short-shorts who is about to jog right into a stair railing? Also, how is it a half-billion-dollar bribe when the public is spending $850 million? Zero stars!]

  • The Chicago Bears are back trying to convince Illinois taxpayers to help fund their new domed stadium in Arlington Heights, which team execs insist is the “only viable” site. They already own the land, but are still pushing for $855 million in public infrastructure money, because no NFL owner can resist a good subsidy play before kickoff. If they can pull this off, they say they’ll even be nice enough to bid for a Super Bowl in 2031.

[This is not news. Or rather, it was news last week, which is when we covered it.]

  • Penn State’s $700 million Beaver Stadium renovation keeps creeping forward, promising better luxury seating and a closer-to-the-field fan experience, though the main takeaway seems to be that even college football programs are now acting like pro franchises when it comes to stadium arms races. There’s also an Adidas sponsorship wrinkle, just to make sure the project stays as corporate as possible.

[College football programs have been acting like pro franchises for a long time, but they’re outside the scope of this site because life is short. If all it cost to cover college stadiums was consuming every last drop of water on the planet, I guess I might consider it.]

  • The Albany Firebirds’ Arena Football League announced an expansion team in Saginaw, Michigan — the Michigan Arsenal — which will play at the Dow Events Center. It’s minor-league stuff, but still one more example of how arena football owners keep testing the limits of how many taxpayer-subsidized arenas are lying around waiting for someone to fill a few dates on the calendar.

[The — what? First off, the arena football league is now called Arena Football One, and the Firebirds are just one of its nine teams. The Arsenal will indeed play in Saginaw, in a stadium built in 1972. I don’t see anything to complain about here, or even to care about, unless you are an arena football fan in central Michigan, in which case today’s your lucky day, I guess?]

  • Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium is getting a new 4,400-seat indoor concert venue next door, courtesy of Panthers owner David Tepper’s entertainment arm. The new hall will slot nicely into his plan to turn every patch of Uptown into “TepperWorld,” assuming the city doesn’t mind another dose of infrastructure subsidies wrapped in the language of “music tourism.”

[Nobody is calling it “TepperWorld.” And most of the $650 million in public money Tepper got for his stadium development wouldn’t be for “infrastructure subsidies.” And “music tourism” is an actual term (people traveling to go see music, I’m doing it myself soon), though not one that’s particularly in play in Charlotte.]

And that’s the week in stadium boondoggles: one new dome, one giant glass box, one mega-housing-sports mashup, and a staircase in Jacksonville that somehow counts as “progress.” Same time next Friday — unless one of these cities goes broke before then.

[Giant glass box? Staircase? Either ChatGPT is drunk or I am.]

Okay, let’s shrug off the italics and see what other actual news the robots chose to ignore:

  • The Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency has reassigned the Cleveland Browns‘ proposed road upgrade plan back to committee, with one county commissioner saying, “So many questions out there in my mind that I don’t know how we move forward at this point.” But Jimmy Haslam is hungry for his $70 million in road money nowwwww.
  • North Kansas City Mayor Jesse Smith said in a press statement yesterday that he’s engaged in “substantial” talks with the Kansas City Royals owners over a new stadium and remains “committed to transparency throughout this process” but also that talks will be confidential for now, which is a lot of mixed messages, frankly. North Kansas City has a population of 4,467, so it’s probably a fair bet that most of the talks are around how to get the county and state to foot the bill for this thing, even more than they already are.
  • The New England Revolution‘s attempts to build a stadium in Everett already drew complaints from Boston officials that they’d need to be consulted on traffic and other impacts, and now four other cities — Malden, Medford, Chelsea and Revere — want in on those talks too. This is maybe going to be a while.
  • Port St. Lucie is spending $27.5 million on a minor league soccer stadium, and WPTV asked two local barbers how it would it affect the economy.
  • Not to be left out, Denver7 examined how a new Broncos stadium would affect the local economy by talking to a coffee company owner and a personal trainer.

And that’s the week in stadium boondoggles: Some stochastic parrots, hallucinated staircases, and terrible journalism. The future, in other words! Same time next Friday — unless the robots have taken over and are talking to themselves by then, and we can go spend all our time on music tourism until the economy collapses.

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One person’s red tape is another’s oversight: a Denver Broncos stadium story

access_time personNeil deMause

The Denver Post ran a big Sunday explainer yesterday on what Broncos management still needs to do to get a stadium deal done: negotiate a community benefits agreement, get the land rezoned, seek tax breaks, clean up contaminated soil. None of it is super-interesting unless you’re fascinated by environmental report minutiae (“Groundwater contaminants included additional total petroleum hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, lead, cadmium and polychlorinated biphenyls”), but I want to zero in on the nut graf, which comes just two sentences in:

There will be community negotiations. There will be an environmental cleanup. There will be planning and design. And there will be a whole lot of bureaucracy.

“Bureaucracy” is an interesting word. It was coined in the 18th century by French economist Vincent de Gournay as “bureaucratie,” a portmanteau word combining French and Greek terms to mean literally “government by desk.” De Gournay created the term to describe the system of professional managers installed by King Louis XIV to oversee his sprawling empire, which the economist saw as tyrannical and overbearing. (De Gournay’s main objection was that government regulations served to hamstring businesses — a position he promulgated, ironically enough, as an appointed member of the French bureaucracy.)

From the start, then, “bureaucracy” was an epithet: It’s what you call the rules when you don’t like them. When you do like them, they get different names: “oversight,” “regulation,” “management.” It’s a political term, in other words, which isn’t to say it shouldn’t be used — it describes a very real and exasperating phenomenon, as anyone who’s tried to file an insurance claim can testify — but rather that it’s important to pay careful attention to how and when it’s deployed.

In the Post’s case, by describing the stadium as facing bureaucratic “hurdles,” the story is framed as a collision between a promised future good — “a state-of-the-art stadium as well as housing and an entertainment district that would draw events and people year-round” — and the sadly necessary steps needed to get the sausages made. It’s not a bad article: It provides a useful reference for anyone who wants a laundry list of items that the Broncos need to check off their list before breaking ground on (and potentially collecting tax money for) a new stadium development. (It’s certainly preferable to the Post’s editorial last week that argued for the stadium project as “an announcement that all of Colorado can celebrate” after only talking to three people: the Broncos CEO and the Denver mayor and Colorado governor who are pushing for the deal.) But it also establishes the public image of the essential conflict here as between well-meaning sports developers and desk-bound paper pushers, as if Broncos owners Greg and Carrie Penner are just another couple of regular Joes struggling to renew their driver’s licenses.

We see this kind of framing all over these days, of course, most notably with assaults on government “inefficiency” that turn out to involve stopping research on cancer treatment. While keeping bureaucrats from bogging everything down in red tape is a noble goal, sometimes paper pushers are the best defense against letting people pursue really bad ideas, too, so it’s important to cast them as slightly more nuanced than mere obstacles to progress.

What should be the real takeaway here: The Penners are trying to build a big, complicated project that will require all kinds of environmental remediation and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars worth of discounted land and tax breaks. And at this point, the only thing that can stand in their way is a whole bunch of spiritual descendants of Louis XIV’s desk-sitters. It’s not an optimal situation, for sure, but then, you know what Churchill never said about democracy.

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Friday roundup: Pritzker demands Bears pay off $534m Soldier Field debt before approving stadium tax break, it’s on!

access_time personNeil deMause

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

access_time personNeil deMause

After years of hints and speculation, Denver Broncos owners Greg and Carrie Penner, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and Colorado Governor Jared Polis jointly announced yesterday that they had decided on a “preferred” site for a new domed stadium to open by 2031: Burnham Yard, a more than century-old freight rail yard that closed in 2016 and was bought by the state. And good news, everyone: “In the spirit of a true civic partnership, the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group will privately fund this investment and work with the community, city and state to reconnect historic neighborhoods — with no new taxes.”

If you’re noticing that that’s not quite the same as saying that this won’t cost taxpayers anything, good catch. There are a ton of questions remaining about the proposed Broncos stadium — aside from how many fireworks will appear above the eventual vaportecture once we actually get renderings of what the stadium will look like — and these include:

  • Denver’s 9News reports that the Penners “are privately funding the stadium, the land, the surrounding development and all construction costs” but that the city “will pay for public improvements with connectivity to the neighborhood in the form of roads, exit ramps, RTD and accessibility.” This “infrastructure” loophole has been used for lots of other stadiums, perhaps most memorably when the New England Patriots used state money to build a private highway off-ramp for season ticket holders to use. Mayor Johnston has already placed a measure on the November ballot that would include $140 million in city spending to reconfigure roads that cross the proposed stadium site; yesterday’s announcement didn’t provide any details about how much the city’s entire infrastructure tab would be.
  • The Penners say they have a “conceptual agreement” to buy the state land at the rail yard, but have not said what they will pay or whether it will be at a discount from market value.
  • While the Penners are promising to pay for stadium construction, they haven’t promised not to seek any tax breaks to help underwrite their private costs. Will they still seek tax increment financing to allow them to siphon off future sales or property taxes and use them to pay off their stadium construction debt, as they hinted at in July? It’s not in the press release, so probably not even worth mentioning in the news articles! (UPDATE: The Denver Post says yes, probably.)

So, a lot still to be determined! And the Penners haven’t even formally committed to going through with the deal, either, just expressed an interest in going ahead with a stadium at Burnham Yard, maybe, if they feel like it. But by announcing a site and a “no new taxes” promise now, they can hope to anchor people’s expectations for a new stadium being in the works for 2031, leaving only the mere details about how to get it done. Good thing we have a vibrant free press that won’t fall for that kind of manipu — oh dear oh dear oh dear.

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Friday roundup: Commanders vote, Bengals lease, A’s stadium cost all up in the air at this time

access_time personNeil deMause

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

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

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