Category: Arizona Coyotes

Friday roundup: Rays, Coyotes, A’s fiascos keep on fiascoing

access_time personNeil deMause

All kinds of news of the week to cover this morning, and I already lost a couple of hours getting up early to yell at my senator’s window about this fiasco. Let’s start with the Tampa Bay Rays‘ own fiasco, and then work backwards:

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Tempe officials called arena opponents “CAVE people” when they thought no one was listening

access_time personNeil deMause

Tempe Mayor Corey Woods and the city council have not been coming out looking good after their failed campaign to give Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo about $500 million in tax breaks for a new arena: After Tempe residents resoundingly voted down the plan, the state attorney general found the city officials had illegally conducted private meetings with a consultant that it paid $32,258 to investigate arena opponents. And now that it’s been ruled those meetings should have been public, recordings of them are subject to public records requests, and the results have really made Woods and the councilmembers not look good:

The Tempe City Council assumed it was protected from prying ears when it went into a closed-door meeting on Dec. 15, 2022. According to the minutes from the meeting, councilmembers needed secrecy to discuss “their personal observations of Tempe residents conveying support” for a new arena for the Arizona Coyotes. What the councilmembers and Mayor Corey Woods actually said was a bit more colorful than that.

According to an audio recording of the meeting, the officials used their shroud of secrecy to disparage arena opponents. Citizens who campaigned against the arena were “cave people,” while arena opposition ringleader Ron Tapscott was a “crazy uncle.”

Further down, the Phoenix New Times reveals it was actually the consultant, Troy Corder of Strategy 48, who called opponents of the plan “folks who just like to yell at each other” and “cave people” — something New Times described as a “belittling acronym,” though it didn’t explain for what. (“Citizens Against Virtually Everything,” presumably.) Still, Vice Mayor Jennifer Adams then responded by saying, “Yes, exactly,” though, so she deserves credit for the phrase as well.

This, apparently, is how elected officials talk when they think no one can hear them. There were two other illegal closed meetings that weren’t recorded — the one that turned up was only recorded because a fill-in clerk wanted a way to check her notes — so unless someone else present decided to take advantage of Arizona’s status as a one-party consent state, we’ll probably just have to imagine what was said there.

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Arizona official forms “advisory committee” to raise Coyotes from dead

access_time personNeil deMause

The Arizona Coyotes don’t have an arena to play in or an actual NHL franchise or an owner, really, but they have one thing you haven’t got: a friend in Maricopa County Board of Supervisors chair Tom Galvin, who plans to form an “advisory committee” to “explore options” to bring the Coyotes back from the dead:

“I cringed when local politicians took glee in the demise of our hockey team,” Galvin said. “I think of Wayne Gretzky’s quote: ‘You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.’ So, I’m forming an advisory committee of visionary leaders.”

Local politicians didn’t actually take glee in the demise of the Coyotes, and it was actually Wayne Gretzky’s dad that said that, but whatever! The point is, Galvin is forming an advisory committee, which will have people on it, “smart, credible people who know how to do things the right way” — you know what, let’s just let Galvin keep going on this, he’s on a roll:

Galvin said two big questions need to be answered for hockey to return to the Phoenix metro.

“Who would be the owner? And, where would this building be? It would have to be a world class building,” he said…

Galvin said the situation with the NHL is “different” [from its talks with the Diamondbacks about a potential new stadium]:

“We are not owning a hockey stadium,” he said. “This is about helping promote and convening community leaders to help see how we can get hockey back.”

If you’re a visionary leader who would like to serve on the committee, or maybe have a billion dollars in your pocket and would like to build and own a “hockey stadium,” you can call Galvin’s office at 602-506-7431. He doesn’t actually say he’s interviewing candidates, but it’s pretty clear he needs all the help he can get.

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Friday roundup: A’s exec says Fisher really does have Vegas stadium money (no, you can’t see it)

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we get to the bullet points, and I know how much you all love the bullet points, there is pressing news we have to discuss first, which is that Athletics owner John Fisher has the billion-dollars-plus he needs to build a stadium in Las Vegas. Sort of. Maybe. According to a guy:

Athletics owner John Fisher and his family will invest $1 billion into the construction of a stadium in Las Vegas and U.S. Bank and Goldman Sachs will offer a $300 million loan, club executive Sandy Dean said Thursday.

Dean made his remarks to a special meeting of the Las Vegas Stadium Authority board.

Dean said four letters will be presented at the Dec. 5 authority meeting asserting construction details and financing will be in place. Final approvals are expected to be made at that meeting to allow construction of the $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat domed ballpark with a capacity for up to 33,000 fans.

So it’s official: Fisher has financing in place for his Vegas stadium … well, no, he will have financing in place by December … or he’ll have a letter (or four) stating that financing is in place?

[One] letter, Dean said, asserts the Fisher and his family have the ability to meet their financial commitment. Dean said [another] letter from U.S. Bank will show that through a review of the owner’s finances that it “concludes the Fisher family has more than sufficient resources to fund the equity investment that’s required to build the stadium.”

Except! Here’s video of Dean saying that one of the letters will be “from John Fisher indicating that his family will invest a billion dollars in support of the project here in Las Vegas.” So which is it: Is the Fisher family committing to spend $1 billion on a Vegas stadium, or just avowing that it  is worth $1 billion? We already knew the latter — Vegas convention center authority chief and unregistered A’s lobbyist Steve Hill keeps saying it, among other things — but that’s not the same as actually figuring out what the family would liquidate to pay for the stadium: the San Jose Earthquakes? The Gap?.

(Dean also said Fisher is still looking to sell minority shares of the team at inflated prices because “it would be good coming to Las Vegas to have outside partners from Las Vegas,” but not because he needs the money, oh no: “The ability to finance the stadium is independent of that.”)

The question all this keeps coming back to isn’t “Where can a billionaire find a billion dollars?” but rather “Is the Fisher family ready to throw a billion dollars of its own money down a stadium hole?” The number of stadiums that can cover their own construction costs is slim; the number that have done so that are in their leagues’ smallest market and include a pricey dome is zero. Which is why people are eager to see Fisher put actual money on the table; promises of a letter next month that will maybe describe actual money on the table is not quite the same thing.

Sorry if all that was anticlimactic. And now, this week’s bullet points:

  • Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost wants to intervene in the Cleveland Browns‘ lawsuit against the city of Cleveland seeking to block the use of the Art Modell Law to block the team from moving to a new stadium in Brook Park. Yost says the team’s claim that the law, which requires that teams be offered up for sale to local owners before being relocated from their current home city, is “unconstitutionally vague” is “wrong,” and since Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam only sued the city, he needed to file a motion to intervene on behalf of the state. Feel the excitement!
  • Philadelphia councilmember Mark Squilla may have come down in favor of letting the 76ers owners build an arena next door to Chinatown, but he has an idea for ensuring that the neighborhood isn’t disrupted: a zoning overlay to “require affordable housing, restrictions on types of businesses, and limits on the size of new storefronts to discourage chain restaurants from crowding out traditional Chinatown retail,” in the words of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Adds the Inquirer: “The precise language mandating how any of this would work has yet to be added to the bill.” This is on top of proposing a tax increment financing district to kick taxes collected in Chinatown back to local businesses to offset any rise in rents as the result of increased property values — pretty sure that would only risk encouraging landlords to increase rents more knowing businesses would be getting subsidies to help pay them, need to go back and check my Intro to Economics textbook chapter on microeconomics.
  • The World Series is over and I didn’t get around to discussing the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s claim that each Yankees and Mets home playoff game generated $20-25 million in economic activity, but suffice to say I talked to an EDC spokesperson who told me (on background, so I’m not supposed to quote them directly so I’m not) that the analysis was based off a previous model from 2022 that puts together assumptions from the city tourism board plus assumptions from the Yankees and then applies a multiplier. Also, they look at “anonymized cell phone data”? No, you and I are not allowed to see the actual model, so no further details about WTF this means will be available.
  • Spotlight on America has a piece on how Tempe, Arizona said no to funding an Arizona Coyotes arena and how other cities could follow its lead, which is all well and good until it concludes by lauding late Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen for his commitment to Seattle, when Allen actually paid the city to hold a referendum so he could get $300 million in public money for a football stadium, then refused to open his books like he promised in exchange for the money, seriously, what?
  • Perhaps you would prefer a deep dive into the toilets at the Los Angeles Clippers‘ new arena? Perhaps you would prefer I hadn’t phrased it that way? Sorry, you’re getting both!

 

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Friday roundup: Browns owners sue to block Modell Law, still no Vegas stadium finance plan from Fisher

access_time personNeil deMause

We have a lot to cover today, but first I would like to encourage you to donate to Matthew Sweet’s GoFundMe for stroke recovery if you’re a fan of his music and haven’t yet — he sounds like he’s in a bad way, he couldn’t afford health insurance on a musician’s income (especially being off the road for much of the last four years thanks to the pandemic), and needing to have health insurance is still a thing in the U.S. for some reason. Here’s hoping that the money raised will help allow him to make a significant recovery, and that someday even people without hit songs will be able to afford medical care and the Pentagon will need to hold a bake sale.

But enough about the unfairness of the modern American economic system, on to … well, you know:

  • With the city of Cleveland considering whether to file suit under the Art Modell Law to force Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam to offer the team for sale to local buyers before decamping to suburban Brook Park, the Haslams have taken the preemptive step of suing to block the Modell law on the grounds it violates the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause and is too vague and probably a bunch of other things, the typography on the PDF is really hard to read. “Today’s action for declaratory judgment was filed to take this matter out of the political domain and ensure we can move this transformative project forward to make a new domed Huntington Bank Field in Brook Park a reality,” said Browns COO Dave Jenkins, which is a nice way of saying, “These damn ‘laws’ and ‘democratic procedures’ were getting in the way of our stadium plans, that could not be allowed.”
  • Speaking of things getting in the way of the Browns’ Brook Park dome plans, Cuyahoga County executive Chris Ronayne has reiterated that he doesn’t want Ohio taxpayers footing $1.2 billion of the stadium bill, saying, “We have looked at the facts, and the facts are that, and I said it before, that the Brook Park play just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work from a financial standpoint, and it’s frankly very detrimental to our future.” Added Cleveland city law director Mark Griffin: “I want to say this to our state legislature … and to this court system: If you make moves to try to gut this city of one of our key corporate partners and money maker, all of us will remember. You will be up for reelection. You would have to deal with the city of Cleveland in some way, shape, form, or fashion, and none of us will ever forget it.”
  • John Fisher will not be presenting any financial details of his Las Vegas Athletics stadium plan at the Las Vegas Stadium Authority’s October 31 meeting, I’m sure you’re all shocked to hear. The authority will discuss his proposed lease agreement for the stadium, but the actual language doesn’t appear to have been posted yet on the authority’s website, guess it’ll be a surprise! Marc Normandin has more on the Vegas clown show at Baseball Prospectus.
  • The Green Bay Packers have agreed to future rent increases at Lambeau Field after previously demanding a rent freeze so it could instead put the rent savings into paying for stadium upgrades. The Green Bay council unanimously rejected that proposal, and Packers execs agreed to annual 2.75% rent increases worth about $30 million in total present value — turns out sometimes pro sports franchise owners do take “no” for an answer, though obviously the Packers are a bit of a special case in terms of franchise ownership.
  • WTOP-TV quotes University of Maryland business professor Michael Faulkender as saying a renovated Washington Capitals and Wizards arena could benefit the surrounding Chinatown because “Generally when people come down for an event, they’re not just going to go straight to the event. They’re also going to, perhaps, come in early, go to restaurants, maybe stay afterward, go to bars,” which 1) they really don’t that much, 2) those that do are already there, since the arena is already in place. Faulkender added, “It may, on the margin, attract people to live closer to it, if they’re regular fans of one of those teams,” and attracting new residents to displace existing ones is exactly why people say the arena has been bad for D.C.’s Chinatown, Faulkender can just stop now, I think.
  • If you were wondering what former Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo was up to and had your money on asking for tax kickbacks for a proposed $1 billion minor-league and college hockey arena in Reno, Nevada, you’re a winner!
  • New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says her $1 billion Buffalo Bills stadium subsidy was necessary because five other cities were trying to steal the Bills otherwise. She didn’t name any of the cities, of course, but we know what one of them must have been.
  • I wrote a long explainer for Defector this week on where the proposed Philadelphia 76ers arena deal falls on the bad-to-awful spectrum, if you’ve been wanting a long explainer on that. And I did an interview with ABC Tampa about where the Tampa Bay Rays might play next year with their stadium roof in tatters, if you want to hear me expound on that, or just missed seeing what I have on my living room walls.
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Friday roundup: Missouri gov vows bidding war for Chiefs and Royals, Coyotes (?) owner (??) throws in towel

access_time personNeil deMause

Has there ever been a week before this where two cities dropped a combined $1.425 billion on sports stadium subsidies? Actually, yeah, there was that week in April 2022 when Maryland approved $1.8 billion in stadium subsidies one day after New York approved $1 billion in stadium subsidies, which is honestly going to be tough to beat. Part of this is just how state legislative calendars work, with elected officials typically racing to get potentially unpopular bills passed super-quick at the end of sessions before anyone notices, but it can still feel alarming in the same way a couple of sports subsidy plans getting defeated in quick succession can feel encouraging. “Don’t get distracted by small sample sizes” is probably the best guidance, though “Whoever has the gold makes the rules” isn’t bad either.

Anyway, it’s Friday, so you know what that means! Let’s see what else has been happening:

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Arizona cancels land auction for neo-Coyotes arena since owner lacks permits to build one

access_time personNeil deMause

When last we left off with the Arizona Coyotes, the old Arizona Coyotes had moved to Salt Lake City, while old Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo was still set on winning a June 27 auction for public land in Phoenix so he could get an NHL expansion team and build an arena there with the help of a tax surcharge from a “theme park district” that the Phoenix mayor opposes. And if all that sounds awfully nebulous, things got much, much worse for Meruelo on Friday, when the state of Arizona abruptly canceled the auction on the grounds that Meruelo needs a zoning variance before he can do anything with the land:

“After much consideration, the Arizona State Land Department (ASLD) has determined that it is in the best interest of the Trust to cancel the auction and reorder the steps,” the ASLD said in a release. “ASLD recently confirmed that the proposed arena use will require a Special Use Permit, and as a result we are requesting that the applicant file for and receive a Special Use Permit prior to the auction. This affords the applicant and ASLD certainty that the applicant can build what it intends to build for its anchor tenant. It is not uncommon for ASLD to require applicants to secure zoning/use permits prior to auction.

“We understand the delay in an auction is a disappointment for our applicant and members of the public, but the change in timing is the prudent decision for the Trust. ASLD remains open to working with our applicant to bring the land forward to auction in the future if a special use permit is received.”

That’s all perfectly reasonable, though it does raise the question of why the state land department waited until six days before the auction to go “You know what, maybe let’s not.” Sure, back in March when the land was posted, Meruelo still had an actual NHL team instead of just some logos and the promise of one, but the Coyotes have been Utah-bound for a couple of months now, did it take this long for anyone to realize the state could just call the whole thing off?

Anyway, Meruelo is predictably steamed, releasing a team statement that “this unprecedented action by the State of Arizona seriously jeopardizes the future of NHL hockey returning to the desert” and “by cancelling the land auction, the state is forgoing millions, and potentially billions, of dollars that would have gone directly to K-12 education” [citation extremely needed].

Meruelo still has until 2029 to come up with an arena site, money to build an arena, and $1 billion to buy a expansion franchise so he can cash in the NHL-ownership IOU that he got from the league as part of the deal to move the Coyotes to Phoenix. All signs are that he is extremely unlikely to accomplish all of those things, but no harm for him in trying, right? If nothing else, it gives the few Coyotes employees Meruelo didn’t lay off something to tweet about for the first time in a month.

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Friday roundup: Throw another $75m on the Rays subsidy fire, Phoenix mayor opposes neo-Coyotes arena tax

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s Friday again! I tried asking Google AI some stadium questions to see if it would return entertainingly daft answers, but I didn’t get much, so just eat your rocks and let’s get on with the week’s news remainders:

  • If an estimated $1.5 billion in cash, tax kickbacks, and land breaks for the Tampa Bay Rays didn’t sound like a lot already, turns out the $155 million that Rays owner Stu Sternberg wants to pay for 65 acres of land isn’t really $155 million, because he’d be making the payments in installments over 30 years. (St. Pete Assistant City Administrator Tom Greene estimates that this would knock about one-third off the value of the payments, making them worth $103 million; I get more like $80 million, but it depends on the exact payment schedule.) “I think that if you are not accounting for inflation in the agreement, we’re not getting the value that it says there,” said city councilmember Lisset Hanewicz, and, nope, inflation is not quite the same as devaluation for present value, but good enough for government work.
  • Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego says she “does not support using taxpayer funds, including property tax abatement, for sports arenas,” which is a blow to once-and-wannabe-future Arizona Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo’s plan to build a new arena in Phoenix using a “theme park” sales tax surcharge. “Tax abatement is essentially what establishing a theme park district does — so per the statement, she is opposed,” a Gallego spokesperson clarified — I’m still not 100% convinced that’s what it does, but either way, it’s going to make it tough for Meruelo to pursue his arena plans, at least unless the state legislature passes its bill to block city officials from having any say in such matters.
  • The city of Santa Clara and the San Francisco 49ers owners have resolved their lease dispute after, as the San Francisco Chronicle put it, “the five-member City Council majority, which was elected with the help of millions in campaign contributions from 49ers CEO Jed York, approved the deal 5-2 in a closed session Monday night.” The details are too detailed to figure out exactly who came out how far ahead in the agreement, but given the above you can probably make an educated guess.
  • Voters in Eugene, Oregon have overwhelmingly rejected spending $15 million toward a new stadium for the minor-league baseball Emeralds, who have to move from their current stadium, which is only 14 years old, because MLB is making them as part of its “force all minor-league cities to build new stadiums” plan. Team officials had previously said they would move the team if the stadium measure didn’t pass; General Manager Allan Benavides said following the vote results that he didn’t know what the team owners’ next steps would be: “We’ll have to get really creative if we want to stay here, or find a new home.” Or maybe MLB could give them a waiver to keep playing in their current stadium, though that would only help the Emeralds and their fans, not MLB, so don’t hold your breath there.
  • John Mozena of the Center for Economic Accountability (the makers of these stickers) wrote an op-ed for the Tampa Bay Times yesterday on why stadium subsidies in St. Petersburg or anywhere are a bad idea, which provides a good overview of the economic arguments and more than a few bon mots — I’m partial to “stadiums don’t create more economic activity in a city any more than cutting a pizza into more slices creates more dinner for everyone,” but feel free to choose your own favorite.
  • The St. Louis Cardinals suck, which means it’s time for a news report about how hot dog trucks outside the stadium aren’t seeing as much business. Are hot dog trucks on the other side of town doing better business as a result? That’s too hard to report, you’ll have to do your own research, apparently.
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Friday roundup: More Bears $2.6B stadium subsidy fallout, plus Indianapolis switches soccer horses

access_time personNeil deMause

Before we get to the news: I hope that those of you who enjoy using dark mode are enjoying the new dark mode plugin I installed this week (DarkMySite, if anyone cares), which seems, unlike the old one, to actually mostly work. If you haven’t tried it out and want to, click the little moon symbol at bottom right and take a load off your eyes!

Also, a special shoutout to a couple of FoS readers (unnamed, but you know who you are) who either sent in a large lump sum of cash or upped their monthly Patreon pledge for no reason at all in the last week. As I forget if I explicitly mentioned, I quit my previous day job last month, which should give me more time to devote to this site; and while I do have a new regular gig that seems promising, every step towards making this site self-sustaining is hugely helpful, so a huge thanks to all you supporters, at any level. (And for those who haven’t yet taken the plunge: There are still about a dozen more Vaportecture art prints, get ’em before they’re gone!)

Okay, enough of that, time’s a-wasting and there’s a whole week of news remainders to dig through:

  • The fallout continues from the Chicago Bears owners’ $2.6 billion stadium subsidy demand (see the updates for the math behind the updated figure), with so much more today that we’re going to have to break out the second level of bullet points:
    • Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson says it’s no contradiction that he said during his mayoral race that the city shouldn’t spend billions of dollars on a Bears stadium when there were “dozens of other urgent needs” and now thinks this is a great idea, on the grounds that he, a “middle child” from a “working-class family,” got to talk to billionaires and make sure they put some “skin in the game” and also the stadium will be “transformational” and “the Bears are staying in Chicago” and “the type of economic development this project brings” and “14 more acres of space for our children in the city of Chicago to benefit from.” Is all that the best use of $2.6 billion? I’m sorry, we’re out of time for questions, thank you for coming.
    • The Chicago Sun-Times editorial board did get a chance to ask Bears CEO Kevin Warren what would happen if the team got its $1.225 billion in taxpayer money for the stadium and nobody came up with another $1.175 billion to build new underground garages and park space, and Warren replied: “I’m not going to think negatively about that now. … If that’s the conclusion that … you want to reach now, then you can say that. I’m being positive about it … and being very transparent as far as what we need from the different three phases with this stadium project.” So, optional when projecting the city’s costs, not optional in the sense that you don’t want to go there in terms of what happens if the city doesn’t come up with another billion-plus dollars, got it.
    • Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker reiterated yesterday that he’s agin’ the whole kit and kaboodle, saying: “I’m skeptical of the proposal that was put forward and I’m even more skeptical of the ability to get enough votes for it in the General Assembly.”
    • Chicago Sun-Times columnist David Roeder suggests that if the Bears (and White Sox) want public money, they should give the public a cut of ownership of the team, though some stick-in-the-mud (okay, it’s me) points out that sports leagues love nothing more than to head off the possibility of public ownership, even blocking one-time San Diego Padres owner Joan Kroc from gifting her team to the city of San Diego on the grounds that that just isn’t done.
  • Way back in 2019, the Indiana state legislature approved giving $112 million toward a new soccer stadium for the Indy Eleven soccer team, provided owner Ersal Ozdemir got his team promoted from the USL to MLS. At the time, this seemed like an easy enough lift, since all the other kids were doing it, but it hasn’t happened yet, and now apparently Indianapolis mayor Joe Hogsett has gotten tired of waiting, announcing that he’s putting in a bid with another ownership group to get an MLS expansion team, using the same tax kickbacks that Ozdemir was looking to get. Ozdemir, who already broke ground on his stadium site last year, though it’s unclear if he’s actually started construction, is naturally enough extremely unhappy with this latest news, accusing Hogsett of “preparing to walk away” from “years of good-faith negotiations” and instead give the public money to some other soccer guy instead of him. Will there be lawsuits? Stay tuned!
  • A “hotel entrepreneur and former longtime Kansas City resident” got space on the Kansas City Star op-ed page to argue that Kansas Citians who voted against a tax subsidy for Royals and Chiefs stadiums missed an opportunity to become like Denver, where “the Coors Field development inspired a stunning downtown renaissance” where “dozens of restaurants, bars and clubs opened to serve crowds before and after the 81 hometown games each year.” I once again wish that I still had a copy of the chart someone once showed me that indicated that most of the development starts in Denver’s LoDo district actually preceded the construction of the Rockies stadium; if I can dig it up, I’ll post it here as an update.
  • The Arizona state senate is considering a bill to allow the state to approve “theme park districts” like the one Alex Meruelo wants for a Coyotes 2.0 arena, without city governments weighing in. (It did so by virtue of hollowing out an already-state-house-approved bill to give first responders access to treatment for PTSD and inserting theme park district language instead, which Arizona calls a “strike everything amendment” but “zombie bill” is a much better name.) This could make it easier for Meruelo to have the state levy a sales tax surcharge in his arena district that would be kicked back to him for construction costs; we’ll have to wait and see what the state senate thinks of it.
  • Buffalo Bills owners Terry and Kim Pegula may sell up to a quarter of their team to help raise money for their share of a new stadium, after construction costs have soared by a reported $600 million. In case you needed more evidence that many if not most stadiums are money losers that are only built so that team owners can cash subsidy checks, here’s your Exhibit A.
  • Arlington, Texas is spending $4.2 million to upgrade the Texas Rangers‘ old stadium, which the team moved out of after 2019 into a new publicly funded one, because, according to Arlington Mayor Jim Ross, “it’s a regional injection of all economic development.” The stadium is currently home to the XFL Arlington Renegades and occasional concerts.
  • What more could happen to Montreal’s Olympic Stadium after costing $1 billion to build and hundreds of millions more to fix the roof on and now $870 million to fix the roof on again? How about catching fire and needing $40 million to fix the damage? You gotta wonder if the Big Owe is just trying to put itself out of its misery at this point, but Montreal officials aren’t getting the message.
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Coyotes arena could cost Salt Lake City $670m or more, plus Meruelo keeps on Merueloing in Arizona

access_time personNeil deMause

This may just be the inevitable fallout of a franchise relocation that came pretty much out of nowhere two weeks ago, but there was a lot going on this weekend with the Arizona Coyotes‘ transformation into the Utah Something-Somethings. Let’s take the news items one at a time:

New team owner Ryan Smith doesn’t want a new arena, he wants to renovate his current one. This makes sense, if only because Smith is already plunking down $1.2-1.3 billion on the franchise, so he’ll want to keep construction costs down so that he doesn’t have to cover too much of them. It could be a tricky rebuild, though, as, like the arenas in Phoenix and Brooklyn, the Delta Center was built with the NBA in mind, so it’s going to require significant reworking to accompany a hockey rink, which is a good bit longer than the Jazz basketball court.

Also, Smith claims that if he had his druthers, he’d be building a new arena south of downtown, but elected officials instructed him otherwise:

“Our elected officials,” Smith said, turning to address those in attendance Friday. “I know you guys get dragged every way possible, you guys literally stopped us in the middle of the process and said ‘These both have to be downtown, so go figure out what you have to do.’” The Delta Center remodel plans were the result.

There’s still no reported price tag for a renovated Jazz arena to accommodate hockey, but the Salt Lake Tribune does have a new estimated total for the 0.5% Salt Lake City sales tax hike that would help fund it, reporting that it “would, in the estimation of the Legislature, raise $54 million per year that would go towards repaying bond on the project; over 20 years, it’s a total that sums to over $1 billion.” The better total would be to use the present value of those dollars over time — in other words, figure out how much in 2024 spending it could pay off, like calculating how much house you could buy with a certain amount of future mortgage payments — and that comes to $673 million, which is a lot more than the $500 million that was reported last month when the legislation was passed by the state legislature. Plus, that doesn’t include the kickback of all sales taxes from a possible sales tax increment financing district around the arena, so the public price tag could still go higher.

The sales tax hike still needs to get passed by the city council, but Bettman says if it fails, there’s a Plan B for raising the funds:

If that tax hike doesn’t pass, Bettman told ESPN700 on Friday that he’s seen a second set of arena plans. “There are a couple of sets of plans which I’ve seen. One is obviously a renovation and a resizing and configuring of this building. And the other is … a new building,” he said.

Uh, that’s not actually a Plan B for raising money, it’s a Plan B for spending it. Either Bettman, or ESPN700, or the Tribune (which reported the above) got confused somewhere along the way, your guess is as good as mine as to which.

Salt Lake City downtown businesses are in for an unpleasant surprise. “Utah NHL rising tide expected to lift all downtown businesses” read the headline on last night’s KUTV story, which quickly makes it clear that the ones doing the expecting are those self-same downtown business owners:

[STK Steakhouse manager Markus] Ericksen knows the introduction of a hockey league could be great for a growing downtown.

“We are excited; we saw a lot of great walk-in business because of the games with the Jazz,” said Ericksen.

Unfortunately, the economic literature doesn’t support the idea that more arena business drives a significant amount of new spending at local dining establishments — here’s one paper from last year that concludes that “basketball & hockey arenas do not appear to generate significant spillovers for the surrounding businesses” — and neither do anecdotal reports from local restaurateurs, who say it’s hard to seat enough fans in the brief time before and after games to get much benefit.

Ericksen has the opportunity to get his steakhouse’s name in the news, so it makes sense for him to use it to promote his business to future hockey fans. Why KUTV chose to investigate the economic impact on local businesses solely by talking to one local business owner and the head of the downtown chamber of commerce — I mean, it’s an easier lift than spending the 60 seconds it took me to find that economic paper, I guess, and then going through having to contact the authors and wait for them to get back to you and set up a Zoom, but it’d be nice to see TV journalists doing at least minimal journalism.

Outgoing Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo can’t make up his mind about pretty much anything. Meruelo had quite the week, saying all kinds of things that he then had to immediately walk back:

  • On Thursday, Meruelo said he’d retained ownership of the minor-league Tuscon Roadrunners, and announced that “we’re gonna move them up to Mullett Arena” in Tempe, where the Coyotes have played the past two seasons. Later that same day, Meruelo said “we haven’t made a decision yet,” and the next day he said, “We’ve talked about maybe playing half the season in Tucson and half the season at Mullett.” He also, according to Tucson TV station KVOA, revealed that “the hasn’t discussed the matter with the Roadrunners, the City of Tucson, or Arizona State University, which owns Mullett Arena in Tempe,” all of which would be slightly important before moving the team.
  • In Friday’s press conference, Meruelo declared that he hadn’t done many press interviews of late because he “didn’t like the media” — leading NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who was sitting next to him, to interrupt: “Let me translate that a little bit. I don’t think anybody should take that personally. I think he doesn’t like being a public person.”
  • After calling his planned Phoenix arena “the first ever privately funded sports arena and entertainment district in the history of Arizona,” Meruelo declared that he actually plans to ask the city to create a “theme park district” that could levy a 9% sales tax surcharge within the district, which would be kicked back to pay for arena construction. (How much of this would come out of taxpayers’ pockets, and how much would act like a ticket tax where he would have to lower prices on things like concessions and souvenirs to avoid driving away customers, remains the subject of debate among economists, depending on a bunch of factors.) A theme park district would also be exempt from property taxes and “monies derived by the district” exempt from income taxes, which could be a much more significant chunk of change.

Like I said, it’s a lot. It’s entirely possible, though, that the move of the Coyotes from Arizona to Utah could end up triggering a billion dollars or more in public costs across two states, so that two NHL team owners can get new arenas without dipping too far into their own pockets. Or Salt Lake and Phoenix elected officials could vote down all the tax kickbacks, sure, that’s a thing that could happen. But accepting defeat and paying for things yourself doesn’t seem to be in Bettman’s, or Meruelo’s, vocabulary.

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