Category: NFL

How much is Cleveland’s mayor giving up in exchange for $80m Browns payout?

access_time personNeil deMause

Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb and the Cleveland city council are fighting over whether the council will get to rework Bibb’s settlement of the Browns stadium standoff, and I almost wrote about it yesterday but didn’t because 1) I slept late, 2) my regular computer is in the shop and it takes me forever to type anything on the old one, and 3) it didn’t seem like that big a deal, Bibb’s proposed payoff (described as $100 million but really more like $80 million in present value) may not be amazing but it’s whatever. Until this:

How did the entire Plain Dealer editorial board miss that the "$100 million deal" with the Browns obligates Cleveland to commit to funding an unspecified amount on infrastructure improvements to support the Brook Park stadium?

— J.C. Bradbury (@jcbradbury.com) 2025-10-27T11:45:14.479Z

Hmm? Jimmy Haslam has asked for $70 million in state money for road improvements for the Brook Park stadium site — this on top of $600 million in state money for the stadium itself, and despite saying openly that he’ll keep the team in the state even if he doesn’t get it — but is he asking for city money too? I asked Bradbury, and he pointed me to this in the Browns’ press release about the Bibb agreement:

Parties to mutually support infrastructure plans related to road and air travel with respect to both the Brook Park stadium mixed-use project, the modernization of Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport, the development of the Cleveland lakefront, including the redevelopment of the Burke Lakefront Airport property.

I think that means that Haslam and Bibb will both “support” the infrastructure plans as in work together to get them approved by the state, not support them with actual cash. (While I could certainly see Haslam wanting city cash toward road improvements, it’s hard to see him offering to put his own money in.) So this probably isn’t a commitment of more city money. Though Bradbury certainly has a point that somebody in the media should ask Bibb to clarify this, something that reporters interviewing Bibb and other reporters doing the same and those writing explainers seem not to have done.

And either way, Bibb agreeing to team up with Haslam to lean on the state (and the council) to okay the Brook Park deal isn’t great. The council has say over city spending, so Haslam getting to give the city a payoff and then demanding how it be used (to rehab the waterfront where their current stadium stands) is a sucky precedent. As is the notion that an $80 million payoff can not only buy the city’s silence, it can buy its support of state highway spending when Clevelanders pay Ohio taxes, too.

The bigger problem here, though, is how this entire deal is being negotiated: The Haslams get to lock in each level of subsidy, then go for more, whereas the public is at best fighting to hold the line. Even if Cleveland getting $80 million in exchange for dropping its legal challenges turns out to be maybe an okay tradeoff, the Browns owners get to keep haggling for more subsidies as long as they want — Bibb revealed last week that team negotiators wanted any settlement contingent on getting Cuyahoga County to put money into the Brook Park stadium, and while the mayor successfully resisted that being a condition, the Haslams still plan on pushing for county money on top of state cash anyway.

The city council, at least, seems intent on closely examining Bibb’s proposed agreement, saying Monday night that it will subject the legislation to four separate committee votes. Here’s hoping that at least one of those committees will use its time to investigate the fine print.

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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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Missouri official tags ballot measure to repeal $1.5B stadium subsidy with language warning it would make Chiefs move

access_time personNeil deMause

A Missouri law firm is trying to get a pair of ballot initiatives on the November 2026 ballot to overturn the $1.5 billion in Kansas City Chiefs and Royals stadium money the state legislature approved in June, and instead direct the same amount of money to fund Medicaid in the wake of federal cuts. But we can’t even talk about that, or at least the Missouri news media can’t, because right now everyone is focused on Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ summary language for the ballot measures, which is uh:

“Shall Missouri law be amended to repeal the ‘Show-Me Sports Investment Act,’ which provides state bonds, appropriations, and tax credits for professional sports stadiums and related events, thereby likely causing the Kansas City Chiefs to move their stadium from Missouri to Kansas?”

Leading the Missouri Independent to add:

There is no mention of the Royals, an omission that sparked a flurry of questions — and criticism.

Excuse me, I have other questions! Like why is the secretary of state editorializing in ballot initiative language about how the Chiefs need subsidies or they’ll move to Kansas, when 1) it’s not at all clear that team owner Clark Hunt is serious about a move or just using it as leverage and 2) Hoskins didn’t also warn of, say, the likely consequences of a “no” vote on Medicaid funding levels. (I’ll skip asking about why it says the Chiefs would “move their stadium” like they would back a truck up to it and tow it across the border.) Seriously, dude, what’s your deal?

When asked by The Star why the question mentioned the Chiefs and not the Royals, Hoskins’ spokesperson Rachael Dunn said the language focused on the “clearest, most immediate potential consequence based on information available at the time of review” and was not based on any internal knowledge of either teams’ plans.

So the Chiefs moving to Kansas is “clear” but not based on any “internal knowledge,” meaning Hoskins got it from watching TV, probably? It’s just how policy is made these days.

Hoskins’ office also said that the initial draft summary is just the “first bite at the apple,” with advocates able to take Hoskins to court if they disagree with the language — something that Brad Ketcher, the lawyer who is working on the ballot measures, said is tantamount to intentionally writing a crap summary to force proponents to waste time in court: “Hoskins is all but admitting that he drafted flawed language with an eye toward slowing the measure.”

Slowing the measure could end up a key factor, as there is also the question of whether the Chiefs and/or Royals will finalize their stadium funding before the ballot measure can be voted on: Don’t forget that the St. Louis Cardinals previously got public stadium money despite local referenda barring sports subsidies, because courts ruled the money had already been allocated by the time voters voted. But, sure, let’s debate whether the ballot language should also warn that the Royals will move to Greensboro, that’s an excellent use of everyone’s time.

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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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Illinois bill would require sports projects to include independent analysis, public hearings, repayment of lost tax revenue

access_time personNeil deMause

In the midst of all the Chicago Bears stadium drama, in which team owners are still requesting around $1 billion in infrastructure spending and tax breaks, Illinois state representative Kam Buckner has quietly introduced the Stadium Transparency and Responsible Spending (STARS) Act, which would require that any sports construction or renovation projects costing the public more than $25 million:

  • Have its subsidy agreement posted online for at least 30 days before it can be enacted.
  • Receive a “neutral cost-benefit analysis of the agreement” by the state Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, with the cost footed by the sports franchise seeking the subsidy.
  • Hold at least two public hearings in the affected community.
  • Reimburse in full all public schools, public libraries, or public fire, police, or emergency service for any loss of property taxes as a result of the deal.
  • Contain a clawback provision where the sports franchise must repay all subsidies, plus 5% annual compounded interest, if it relocates or fails to meet its stated community or economic commitments.
  • Provide annual reports on the number of jobs created, tax revenue generated, and community benefits delivered.

Can it pass? Who knows! Front Office Sports reports that Buckner “intends for this to be at least the start of a broader conversation around the stadium financing,” which makes it sound like more like points to be haggled over than the likely final form of any legislation. But that’s still a start, especially given how often sports projects get rushed through the approval process without much public oversight. And there’s nothing stopping other states from modeling similar legislation on Buckner’s bill — hint, hint, legislators in other 49 states.

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Cleveland mayor okays Browns’ Brook Park move in exchange for $80m in future payments

access_time personNeil deMause

After fighting tooth and nail to derail the Cleveland Browns owners’ attempts to move to a new stadium in nearby Brook Park, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb abruptly called a truce yesterday, agreeing to stand down from all lawsuits and support the team’s move in exchange for $100 million in team payments spread over the next 30 years:

  • $25 million in cash by December 1.
  • $30 million in demolition costs for the Browns’ current lakefront stadium, to be paid once the Browns relocate in 2029 or so.
  • $5 million a year from 2029 to 2033.
  • $2 million a year for “community benefits” projects from 2030 through 2039.

In exchange for all of the above payments — actually worth closer to $80 million in present value, since some of the money won’t arrive for another 15 years — the city would withdrew its two lawsuits against the Browns’ move, one charging team owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam with violating the Modell Law barring teams from moving if they received public funds, the other with violating their lease provisions by negotiating a move.

On first glance, this isn’t a terrible deal for Cleveland: Even $80 million is still real money, and it’s far from certain whether Cleveland would have been able to extract a better settlement in court. Meanwhile, the Browns stadium would become Brook Park’s problem — and the state’s, of course — while Browns fans could still go watch the team just a short drive away. And while the city would lose a sliver of tax revenue on Browns spending that would no longer be subject to Cleveland taxes, it would also regain control of lakefront land that could be used for something more productive than a football stadium that’s dark 355 days a year.

The deal still needs signoff from the city council, whose members have questions: Councilmember Kris Harsh asked whether $30 million would be enough to cover the stadium demolition, Michael Polensek demanded a spreadsheet showing present value of the future payments, and Brian Kazy attacked the idea of cutting a deal with the Haslams at all, telling Bibb, “You have lied with the dogs, and now you have fleas.” (Technically, he’s lain with the dogs, but only because English is stupid.) Council president Blaine Griffin declared himself “disappointed” by the agreement, and said he and other lawmakers are exploring their “legal obligations.”

Meanwhile, there’s still Dennis Kucinich’s Modell Law suit out there, so even if Bibb gets the city council on board, it’s not entirely clear sailing for the Haslams. Still, they can probably focus more of their attention now on figuring out how to get more city and county money as well as $70 million in state money for transit upgrades — though yesterday’s settlement announcement also notes that the Browns and Cleveland will “collaborate on a new road network” to serve both the stadium and the nearby airport, without specifying who’d be footing the bill for that. Looks like I have questions, too!

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Friday roundup: Spurs owner wants arena subsidies so he can be “scrappy,” A’s owner gets closer to unlocking county stadium cash

access_time personNeil deMause

Some weeks, when all the work of this website feels like an endless repetition of the same stories over and over and over again, I try to remind myself that while the general shape of the stadium swindle has remained the same over the last 30 years — boy meets stadium dream, boy uses standard playbook to demand that someone else to pay for stadium dream, elected officials cough up the dough to boy — there have been some discoveries and innovations along the way: The Casino Night Fallacy. The grift that keeps on giving. The kitchen sink gambit. Reusable entourage. Sure, it would be nice for whatever showrunner is in charge of this accursed timeline to quit reusing the same plotlines — helicopter registration fraud was a surprise season-ending twist, but that was three years ago already — but if nothing else we’re getting a deeper understanding of the intricacies of how sports billionaires funnel taxpayer money into their own pockets, and who can put a price on that? Other than the literal price of “billions of dollars of tax money a year,” obviously, but enlightenment doesn’t come cheap.

Also, no one has taken away our god-given right to point and laugh (yet), so may as well enjoy it. And on that note, here’s some fresh meat for your inner Nelson Muntz:

  • San Antonio’s KSAT-TV asked Spurs owner Peter Holt why he can’t just pay for his own arena his damn self, and Holt said “it’s a great question” and San Antonio’s small market size has “pushed us to be scrappy” and “the underdog” and “we want to continue [our] partnership with the county and the city” and the arena project will use “visitor taxes that have no impact on our local citizens” and “there’s no extra fees.” That’s neither really an answer nor exactly true, but Holt is already off and not-answering whether the team would potentially move without a new arena: “You know, we’re not focused on this election not passing. I mean, I think our belief has always been, whether it’s on the court or off the court, we have excellence and we have winning in our DNA. And so we’re confident and optimistic that this will pass, and that’s our plan.” It’s easy to be confident when you’re spending $2 million on ad campaigns to convince voters to go your way, but just in case, may as well employ the “You don’t want to find out what’ll happen if you make Dad mad” strategy as well.
  • The Clark County Commission officially approved the Athletics‘ ballpark development agreement for Las Vegas(ish), which is mostly notable because it allows A’s owner John Fisher to finally tap into $380 million in public funds that was approved way back in June 2023. Or at least Fisher can get the money once he sets a guaranteed maximum price for the stadium and spend $100 million out of his own pocket first, maybe that’s what all the concrete pillars are about? Would Fisher really shell out $100 million of his own money in order to get $380 million in public money in hopes all that will somehow unlock another $1 billion or so of somebody else’s money? He’s done dumber things before, don’t put it past him!
  • Interim Jackson County Executive Kay Barnes says she doesn’t see herself as “taking on any kind of strong initiative” on major issues during her short time back in office, but that’s not stopping her from saying she wants to see stadium projects for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals move forward, she’s not made of stone, people.
  • The St. Petersburg city council is looking at ending the city’s Community Redevelopment Area (i.e., a TIF that kicks back property taxes to developers) for the Historic Gas Plant District now that the Tampa Bay Rays aren’t using it for a stadium development, probably. “I was very hesitant to do this,” said council chair Copley Gerdes. “More and more, I’m becoming open to it.” What’s next, hugging?
  • A couple of big-market MLB teams might be showing openness to increased revenue sharing to make MLB TV deals more like the NFL’s, which would reduce budget disparities between rich and even-richer teams but also make it easier for teams to threaten to move from big markets to smaller ones like in the NFL. Color me skeptical — big-market team owners have never willingly given up revenue before, and this could all just be openness to new kinds of TV deals while still trying to preserve the biggest slice for themselves, but we’ll see where things go once negotiations for the next collective bargaining agreement begin in earnest after next season.
  • Yes, the latest owner of the Ottawa Senators is still hoping to build a new arena at LeBreton Flats and still hoping for a taxpayer “investment” to help him along, let’s all check back in another decade or so and see if anything has changed.
  • Camden Yards’ public owners won’t get any money from the Los Angeles Rams renting out the stadium for practice before their game in London, just like they didn’t get any money when Paul McCartney played there, who needs money when you have a pro baseball team whose owner wants money more than you do?
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Browns owners want $70m in state road upgrades on top of $600m in state stadium money

access_time personNeil deMause

The Cleveland Browns owners’ campaign for a new stadium in Brook Park has been a weird one, and not just because of the ever-changing funding scheme that ended up with the state raiding a pool of unclaimed private money it’s been holding. The order of operations has also been weird: First team owner Jimmy Haslam said that if he didn’t get state approval for $600 million in public money for a Brook Park stadium, he would just keep the team in Cleveland; then after getting the state money, he moved ahead with the Brook Park plans while still waiting to see if he could get another $600 million from the city and county.

And now, defying all the conventional wisdom about how savvy negotiators operate, he’s asking the state for $70.3 million for a pile of transit improvements for the Brook Park site, on top of the money he’s already received:

  • I-71 Northbound (NB) Exit Ramp Improvements
  • I-71 Southbound (SB) Exit Ramp Improvements
  • Snow Road/Ring Road Connector
  • SR-291 (Engle Road)
  • Ring Road Improvements
  • Pedestrian Bridge
  • GCRTA Transit Station

All of this is pretty standard operating procedure for stadium asks, but it does raise the question: Why should the state of Ohio pay for any of this if the Haslams say they’re building the stadium regardless? Sure, it will make it easier for fans to get to Browns games, but that’s really a Browns problem — if the Haslams want to build a stadium in a site without sufficient traffic and transit access, they can pay to improve it, Ohio has other budget matters to worry about.

The Ohio Department of Transportation is expected to decide by the end of the year whether to approve the $70.3 million expense, which would come out of $150 million that the agency has budgeted for construction projects next spring. (Other projects competing for the same money include one for rebuilding light-rail tracks between Downtown Cleveland and the eastern suburbs.) Browns officials and Brook Park Mayor Edward Orcutt said that because the stadium site was formerly an auto plant that employed 16,000 workers, the needed upgrades are “relatively modest”; nice attempt at anchoring there, need to remember to use that myself next time I’m asking for $70 million.

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Chiefs owner still mulling all stadium options, seeking to increase $750m public price tag

access_time personNeil deMause

Kansas City Chiefs executives have been pretty quiet about their stadium plans since June, when they asked for and got a one-year extension on Kansas’s offer of sales tax subsidies. Yesterday, though, team president Mark Donovan broke the silence to reveal a bit about the Chiefs’ plans, which are not to decide on any plans just yet:

Donovan said his team met again last week with Populous, the Kansas City-based international architectural firm tasked with designing the option of a renovated GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. They provided another set of renderings for that possible project.

The other possibility: The Chiefs this week will enact a six-week process seeking applicants to design a possible new closed-roof stadium in Kansas….

“That’s one of the things this opportunity creates — we can look at the best in the world, not just the NFL, in terms of venues,” Donovan said. “That’s one of the reasons to go to a competitive bid — to see what we can do.”

So the Chiefs could renovate their current stadium, or could build a new one somewhere in Kansas, the design of which will be chosen over the next six weeks, even if the location will remain TBD. They’ll only consider renovating, though, if next April Jackson County voters approve the same sales tax hike that they rejected for funding Chiefs and Royals stadiums in April 2024. Meanwhile, while the Kansas subsidy offer is good through next June, Kansas legislators have said they won’t consider any stadium proposal that doesn’t arrive by the end of this December — though they also said that about this June, and then granted an extension anyway, so we’ll see.

The Chiefs, at this point, are the dog that’s caught half the car: They have that Kansas STAR bond offer in hand — which is projected to be worth $700 million or more, if the stadium project can generate enough sales tax revenues to kick back that much to the team — plus a $750 million approved in June by the state of Missouri. But with a potential stadium price tag of $3 billion, Chiefs owner Clark Hunt is continuing to shop around for county and possibly city subsidies as well, because why not? It does make one wonder if the Chiefs really need a new or renovated stadium if the only way to make one profitable is to get taxpayers to cover more than $1 billion of the costs, but that’s apparently not the kind of thing asked in polite newspaper articles these days.

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Bears execs now likely demanding $1B+ from Arlington Heights for stadium project, fine print reveals

access_time personNeil deMause

Snuck into one of last week’s economic impact reports for a proposed Chicago Bears stadium in Arlington Heights was an eye-popping number: “To jumpstart the full redevelopment potential of the 326-acre Arlington Park site, the Bears are seeking public funding for $855 million needed for district infrastructure,” wrote consultants HR&A. Among the projects to be funded by the $855 million — the source of which remains unclear, though a tax increment financing district has been suggested — would be, according to the Chicago Tribune’s Robert McCoppin, “entrance and exit ramps from near Route 53 and changes to the adjacent Metra train line.”

Adding a nearly billion-dollar ask in the fine print of a consulting report is a choice, and it was notable enough to catch the attention of the Tribune editorial board, which weighed in today with an editorial asking the question, “Are the Bears’ high-priced demands for ‘infrastructure support’ just another form of subsidy?” Its verdict: Yeah, probably.

This page has supported the principle that government generally bears some responsibility to pay for legitimate infrastructure in order to support development sizable enough to generate a big number of jobs and major economic growth. But at some point, depending on the scale, that infrastructure tab begins to morph into subsidy. At $855 million — and let’s be honest, the cost likely will be higher — we think the Bears already are at that point.

As we have discussed here innumerable times, calculating the public cost of a development project is as much art as science, and one of the biggest judgment calls is on things like infrastructure. The best definition of a “subsidy” is a special dispensation that most people normally wouldn’t get: If you build a house, the local government often covers the cost of building the street out front, the sewer connections, etc. Though not always: In many cases developers will pay development impact fees to cover the public costs of infrastructure.

“Normally,” clearly, is doing a lot of work in that definition. (As is “legitimate” in the Tribune editorial.) Which is why sports developers, and developers in general, will often try to sneak in stuff that is not normal at all, like new highway exits or new train stations, arguing that it’s not really a subsidy because the public will get use out of it. Another way of looking at it, though, is that developers are looking to get land cheap because it has lousy transit access and then get the government to pay to improve it, providing a huge private windfall.

So determining whether something should be counted as a subsidy is less a matter of scale than of whether the Bears are trying to get taxpayers to cover something the team would normally be expected to. And that certainly looks to be the case here, though it would be nice to see an itemized list of the whole $855 million, something that team execs haven’t yet divulged.

And on top of that, of course, there’s the “tax certainty” that the Bears are trying to get as part of a state “megaproject” bill, which would allow them to lock in reduced property taxes on the entire stadium development site. How that would mesh with a TIF district to pay for the infrastructure is, once again, unclear — the whole point of a TIF is to kick back new property taxes from a development to the developer, but if property taxes are capped there won’t be much if anything to kick back — but on a multi-billion-dollar development it could be substantial. At the very least, it’s safe to say that Bears execs intend to ask for well over $1 billion in publicly provided stuff, which is a lot for a project that the team’s own extremely rosy projections say is expected to bring in $69 million a year in new state, county, and local tax revenues, a best-case scenario that would still leave the public losing money if the subsidy total tops $1.1 billion.

All of which was enough to get the Tribune editors to take a rare (for newspaper editorial boards) look into hidden tax subsidies for stadium projects, and props to them for doing so. Either the Trib’s hedge fund goon owners are singularly dedicated to robust economic analysis of development projects, or this is just what happens to media coverage when the local political establishment isn’t on board, you make the call.

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