Utah Mammoth – Page 2 – Field of Schemes

Utah legislators proposing $1.4B in spending on MLB, NHL venues, to be paid for with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

February 28, 2024 Neil deMause

Utah state legislators are pushing ahead with plans to build both an NHL arena and an MLB stadium, despite not having teams in either sport. And also despite not quite having figured out how to pay for either of them:

The Utah state house passed a bill to spend up to $900 million on a baseball stadium and surrounding entertainment district, provided a team arrives. However, earlier plans to fund the project with a statewide hike in hotel taxes was dropped amid opposition from rural legislators (and hotel operators), leaving the stadium bonds to be paid off, according to the bill, by statewide car rental taxes, kickbacks from sales and property taxes on the site (hello, mega-TIF!), and a whole lot of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
The Utah state senate passed a bill to spend around another $500 million (estimated at $1 billion over 30 years, which would fund around half a billion in bonds) to create a different sports and entertainment district for the Jazz and an as-yet-nonexistent hockey team. The money would, according to the bill, allow Salt Lake City to both impose a citywide sales tax hike and also kick back the share of existing state sales taxes designated for building prisons, generating ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in new revenue.

The two legislative bodies now swap bills, and will have to figure out how to pay for both at the same time. Dan McCay, sponsor of the senate hockey arena bill, said he didn’t want to stack the tax hikes on top of each other for the same people, “so that those become unlivable environments for those who are paying the tax”; if local residents visit both sports venues, though, their tax money will be getting funneled to both projects, plus of course everyone in the city will be dealing with the budget hole created by having taxes kicked back that could otherwise be used to pay for other things.

There’s a whole lot still to be worked out here, even before figuring out whether Salt Lake City would even get teams and what kind of leases they would demand — as we’ve seen before, lease opt-outs and state-of-the-art clauses can end up forcing cities to throw a lot of good money after bad. But the general dimensions of the plan are in place: around $1.4 billion in tax money to be set aside as a lure to get major-league hockey and baseball teams. Normally I’d call that a staggering amount of money for elected officials to give preliminary approval to all in one day, but what with the way things are going in other states, it’s going to take more than $1.4 billion to stagger anybody.

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Friday roundup: Opposition builds (somewhat) to sports subsidy plans in Virginia, Kansas City, elsewhere

February 23, 2024 Neil deMause

It’s been a rough week, what with new stadium demands dropping every couple of hours, half of them from Jerry Reinsdorf. But there have also been signs of new organized opposition from all corners, some of them involving heavy hitters:

The Northern Virginia AFL-CIO came out against the proposed Washington Capitals and Wizards arena in Alexandria after being unable to reach an agreement with the teams and the state on whether a hotel that would be part of the $2 billion project would employ union workers. “If they’re against it, then the arena deal is probably going to have a very difficult time,” remarked Virginia House Speaker Don L. Scott Jr. afterwards, as the arena bill heads for reconciliation talks between the house, which passed it, and the senate, which didn’t even give it a hearing. “If it dies, it dies.”
Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas, meanwhile, upped the ante on her opposition to Alexandria arena plans, challenging D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Twitter to “compete by both offering $0 in taxpayer dollars to these teams and let them decide where they want to pay to build their own arena.” (Bowser’s account did not respond, unless this counts.) Former Alexandria mayor Allison Silberberg, who is part of the Coalition to Stop the Potomac Yard Arena campaign, was so pleased that she brought Lucas a cake.
After the Kansas City renters’ group KC Tenants came out against the upcoming April 2 referendum to renew Jackson County’s 0.375% sales tax surcharge and give the money to Royals owner John Sherman as part of a potential $1 billion in public money for a new downtown stadium, calling it “$167 per household, per year, all to pay for a playground for the wealthy and for tourists,” a group of city residents have formed the Committee Against New Royals Stadium Taxes to likewise oppose the tax hike. The group has “little to no money in its bank account,” according to the Kansas City Star’s account of campaign manager Tim Smith’s characterization, but it does have a parked domain name and its organizers are members of the extremely active Save Kauffman (Royals) Stadium at Truman Sports Complex Facebook group, which is a recommended follow if you want to see how extremely angry many Kansas City residents, and Royals fans, are about this whole state of affairs.
Arthur Acolin, a real estate economics professor at the University of Washington, released a three-page report on the proposed downtown Philadelphia 76ers arena that found that disruptions to existing businesses during construction and operation could cost the city and state between $260 million and $1 billion in lost tax revenues. The math is a little rough — it looks like Acolin just added up all the economic activity in the area of the proposed arena and calculated what would happen if it fell by sample round numbers — but as he writes, “the 76ers have provided nowhere near this level of details nor any of the analysis behind their figures.” It was enough to get the 76ers to respond by calling the report “fatally flawed” and “another attempt by those who oppose the project to obfuscate the truth by pumping out misinformation and half-baked theories instead of engaging in productive dialogue,” in a CBS News article that repeatedly refers to Acolin as “Albert Alcoin,” which should get all their copy editors immediately fired, if they had copy editors, which they probably don’t.
Arizona Republic sportswriter Greg Moore wrote a column about Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick’s threat to leave town if he doesn’t get public stadium money that includes the subhead “I don’t like bullies,” and really the rest of the column is just icing on that four-word cake.
I brought my mighty rhetorical weight to the airwaves, or at least the internetwaves, by going on the Sox Machine podcast to talk about why giving Reinsdorf $1.7 billion in tax money for a new Chicago White Sox stadium development (since upped to $2 billion) would be crazytown.

So that’s it, then, the tide is finally turning, and maybe soon we can all stop pushing this damn rock back up this damn hill day after day? Hahaha of course not, the forces of vacuuming up money and giving it to rich people so they can have more money (because that’s what makes them rich people) continue unabated:

The Utah legislature advanced a bill to hike sales taxes in Salt Lake City by 0.5% to generate $1 billion for an arena for a nonexistent NHL team, with the backing of Mayor Erin Mendenhall. This would be on top of $600 million or more in proposed hotel tax hikes to help pay for a stadium for a nonexistent MLB team. Hockey bill sponsor state Sen. Dan McCay denied that this was giving in to threats by the Jazz ownership that they could move out of the city limits without a new subsidized arena, then added, “you’d hate to see downtown lose the sporting opportunities they have now,” so, yeah.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson delivered up a fresh bowl of word salad about whether he’ll endorse city money being used for a new White Sox stadium: “As far as public dollars, we haven’t gotten into any of those specifics just yet. But I will say that we’re gonna explore all options. … Everything is on the table here. But again, I want to make sure that there’s a real commitment to public use and public benefit. … There’s no guarantee that they’ll get it from the city. What I’ve said repeatedly is that we need to make sure that our investments have real public benefit and that there has to be a commitment to public use. Those conversations are being had, and there are some promising developments that eventually we’ll be able to talk about out loud.” He has it right here on this list…
The new $27 million Rhode Island F.C. soccer stadium in Pawtucket will now cost state taxpayers $132 million over 30 years, because the Pawtucket Redevelopment Agency got a terrible bond rate. State commerce secretary Liz Tanner defended the pricey borrowing by pointing out that even though the state legislature could have just appropriated the money and saved taxpayers a ton of interest payments, “there would’ve been a level of uncertainty without knowing whether the legislature was going to pass those dollars or not,” and we can’t have that, now can we?
The Dodger Stadium gondola project — surely you remember the Dodger Stadium gondola project — lurched forward again on Thursday when the Metro Board of Directors signed off on its environmental impact report. The gondola still needs approval from the city of Los Angeles and parks and transit officials, plus to figure out who exactly will pay for its potential $500 million price tag, but if nothing else it lives to gondola another day.
Oakland A’s owner John Fisher is reportedly focused on staying in Oakland until a new Las Vegas stadium is open in 2028, and also Sacramento is the frontrunner to be the temporary home of the A’s, this is way too blind-men-and-the-elephant for me, maybe let’s all calm down about the latest rumors you heard, guys.
And in non-sports news, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry defended signing a bill to remove the requirement that recipients of state development subsidies report how many jobs they’ll be creating, because “this program is about capital investment. It is not about job creating.” Just gonna sit here and let that roll around in my brain for a while, have a great weekend and see you back here Monday!

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Friday roundup: More shouting about Virginia arena traffic, plus rumors of A’s (temporary) death and Coyotes-to-Utah

February 2, 2024 Neil deMause

Happy Friday! (Happiness provided separately.) While I have you here, is it a good time to remind you that Field of Schemes is on Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, Post, and whatever Elon Musk is calling his thing these days? And that by following FoS in any or all of those places, you can get notifications of new posts as soon as they happen — and not only that, by reacting to posts on those sites, you can help get more attention for Field of Schemes, because that’s how social media likes work, it’s a popularity contest where your votes make the things you like more popular? No, that isn’t what you want to hear right now, you just to read the weekly news recap? Okay, ignore all that for now, you can always come back to it later.

Alexandria held a public meeting last night on traffic and transit plans for its proposed Washington Capitals and Wizards arena, and people came with all sorts of questions about the traffic and transit plans, who’da thunk it? The teams’ owner and the Virginia Department of Transportation issued a new “concept plan” for traffic and transit that mostly seems to be about how arenas generate traffic mostly at peak times (duh) and the state would be spending $200 million to mitigate this through various stuff (okay) — though honestly it’s hard to get much out of the plan beyond its dedication to all-caps type, seriously don’t do that unless you want to make it harder for readers to comprehend what you’re saying … oh.
Former D.C. councilmember Jack Evans wrote a whole op-ed for the Washington Business Journal saying that the Alexandria arena deal would be a terrible one because it involves “extremely risky” TIFs, which isn’t necessarily wrong but is hilarious if you remember who Jack Evans is and why he’s now a former councilmember. (If you don’t remember Evans, just luxuriate in the part where he cites the more than 20 TIF deals he consummated while on the council as evidence that he knows how awful they can be.)
Slate’s David Faris, meanwhile, thinks D.C. should let the Wizards and Capitals leave and let Virginia stick itself with the arena costs, because the teams and their limited economic impact aren’t worth it. Mostly I want to call attention to Faris’s suggestion that stadium and arena deals are subject to “a sports version of Fenno’s paradox — the political science finding that people generally like their own representative while disapproving of the job Congress is doing” — which I’m not sure is actually the case, since in my experience people tend to get the maddest about their own cities’ sports subsidies, but it’s an interesting concept.
Could the Oakland A’s disband for three seasons, leaving MLB with only 29 teams, then emerge fully formed in Las Vegas as a beautiful expansion butterfly? You could take my word for it (hahaha no), or you could read Awful Announcing’s lengthier consideration of the possibility (the players’ union would have to sign off on losing 40 major-league jobs for three years, fewer teams would mean fewer games and would affect TV contracts, hahaha no).
The actual likeliest locations of the A’s until their Vegas stadium is ready (if their Vegas stadium is ever ready, add Ken Rosenthal to the list of doubters) is thought to be either Salt Lake City or Sacramento, but either would require temporarily rejiggering the A’s TV rights situation, which “is gumming up a resolution,” writes ESPN’s Jeff Passan. I know A’s owner John Fisher claims he fell in love with Las Vegas and really wants to move there, but it does seem more and more like he stumbled into committing to a move through his stadium czar Dave Kaval’s loose lips and is only now trying to figure out how it will actually work.
Could the Arizona Coyotes move to Salt Lake City as soon as “immediately”? Rumors say so, and just because the same rumors said so last summer and nothing happened then doesn’t mean they couldn’t be right now, right?
“Levi’s to pay 49ers, Santa Clara $170M to make stadium signs slightly bigger” is a funny headline, but it’s not actually true, since Levi’s will be paying the San Francisco 49ers and Santa Clara $170 million for a ten-year extension of their naming rights deal, which is only partly motivated by wanting to make their stadium signs bigger before the 2026 Super Bowl and World Cup. Good on the city for getting at least a share of the naming rights money when many cities don’t, that’ll help make up for the money they’re losing from the team owners winning their case that they only have to pay half of the property taxes on the stadium.
State Treasurer Dereck Davis said, “I feel lied to,” after learning that Baltimore Orioles owner John Angelos had agreed to sell his team just weeks after promising he wasn’t going to sell his team in order to get a new sweetheart lease deal from the state, that seems a very valid feeling to have. Maybe the state should have put a poison pill clause in the lease making it null and void if Angelos went back on his word? Oh well, too late now, maybe next time.
The people who want to bring an MLB expansion team to Portland, Oregon might buy a golf course to use for a stadium that would be paid for somehow for a team that only exists in their dreams. At least they’ll always have their outfield tram renderings.
A bill to lure the Chicago Bears across state lines to Indiana now has two sponsors in the state house instead of one. Further updates as events warrant.

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Friday roundup: Chicago mayor endorses Sox plan (whatever it is), Jazz owner seeks NHL team (and new arena), Jaguars public price tag still $1B

January 26, 2024January 26, 2024 Neil deMause

Was it a week and a half for you too? Sure was here! I’m a little afraid that the sports powers that be have decided to address popular anger over the great stadium swindle by dumping so many new subsidy deals on us at once that outrage fatigue kicks in, and I’m even more afraid that it’s working. Are your eyes starting to glaze over like mine at all the billion-dollar-plus figures? Are you ready to stop demanding that your elected officials stop catering to billionaires, and instead just watch some TV, as long as you can afford TV? Some Soma would sound pretty good about now, wouldn’t it?

I’m just joshing you, I know that the only people left reading this site have deep wells of outrage. In which case, the bullet points that follow will be like a long, cool drink of water to slake your thirst for laughing to keep from crying:

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said Wednesday that the White Sox‘ proposed South Loop stadium project is “the way new stadiums should and could look,” despite it not actually being a proposal yet, having only designs that were leaked anonymously to Xitter and then taken down, and having a funding plan that can best be described as “Wait, I thought you had the money.” Johnson added, “I just hope that this is … yet another display of my leadership,” and if by “display” he means “telling example,” then I think we can all agree that yep, sure is.
Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith has officially asked the NHL for an expansion franchise, with the 33-year-old Delta Center (renovated in 2016 with the help of public tax kickbacks) serving as an “interim solution” but asserting that “Utah will need a new arena designed for professional and Olympic hockey.” No price tag yet on that, but when this came up last month there was talk of competing offers from Salt Lake City and its southern suburbs, so expect the public ask to be a bundle.
Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan says about Jaguars stadium renovations and surrounding development, “You have to at least know who you have and what you’re talking about in terms of, you know, who’s going to pay for what and what exactly that’s going to look like,” and also what it’s going to look like is around a billion dollars in city money. That’s the same thing she said three months ago, and Jaguars execs said four months before that, at least they’re being consistent in their handwavy estimates.
Newly released video shows that Philadelphia city councilmember Mark Squilla, who previously flip-flopped from opposing a 76ers Chinatown arena deal to saying maybe it’s okay if they pile up enough consulting studies saying it is, said in December that he’ll oppose any plan that provides team owner Josh Harris with public money, though there’s no word whether he indicated if exploiting an existing tax exemption on the property counts as public money. (Also, sorry about the link to the video with the horrible ad at the start, this is all I’ve got to link to, I already had to scramble yesterday not to violate the Forbes link boycott, these are tough times for news aggregation.)
Washington Capitals and Wizards owner Ted Leonsis has written an open letter to fans saying, among other things, “I find the notion that sports arenas and stadiums do not provide economic benefit to be simply illogical.” Leonsis has, let’s see, a B.A. in American Studies, can’t argue with expertise like that!
With new Oakland A’s Las Vegas stadium renderings still a long ways off, what are team officials using in their presentations when they’ve already said the old ones are garbage? The garbage, of course.
“People are arguing on Facebook about raising sales taxes to pay for a Kansas City Royals stadium” is now a legit news story idea, this near-future dystopia is just the best.
L.A. city councilmember wants to call a stop to Frank McCourt’s proposed Dodger Stadium gondola project until there’s been a traffic and accessibility study; that’s hardly the dumbest thing about the gondola, but guess you may as well start somewhere.
What’s worse than handing out hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks for a sports stadium that employs relatively few people? How about handing out hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks to computer data centers that employ almost no one and require residents to pay higher electric bills to build new fossil-fuel-powered generation plants to power them?
For those who like to ask, “Do tax breaks for development projects like stadiums really take a toll on public services,” here’s a report on a Good Jobs First study finding that property tax abatements, mostly TIFs, cost St. Louis public schools $1,634 per student per year. And since most of the TIFs are in the city proper, which is almost half African American, the burden falls disproportionately on Black students (who lose $610 a year compared to white students’ $179) and those whose low incomes qualify them for free or reduced lunch (who lose $665 compared to $133 for students from higher-income families). But at least it’s helping poor and Black neighborhoods, with most of the TIFs going to … okay, actually most of the TIF-funded projects are in white and affluent neighborhoods, all is going according to plan.

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Friday roundup: Vegas A’s stadium in limbo; so are Coyotes’ future, maybe Mets’ casino?

June 9, 2023 Neil deMause

First things first: The Nevada legislature never got around to holding its second day of Oakland A’s stadium hearings yesterday, and while there was no announcement of why, the obvious conclusion is that it’s because they don’t have the votes to pass anything. The current plan is to reconvene on Monday, with the time until then used to see if amending the bill will turn any legislators’ heads: Rumored changes include removing the A’s exemption from the state’s live entertainment tax (which could save the state about $100 million in tax breaks, though that’s a subsidy I didn’t include in my latest estimate, so it would still leave the total public cost at around $500 million) and improving the team’s community benefits agreement to include things like donations to a local food bank (which wouldn’t amount to much at all), so my question stands.

At least A’s owner John Fisher has one friend in the Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial board, which helpfully asserted yesterday that though the economic benefits of a stadium are questionable, this is about “making the region a more attractive place to work, live, invest in and visit,” which Las Vegas desperately needs because nobody visits there, it’s too crowded, or something? Maybe Fisher could actually use some more persuasive friends, though presumably that’s who he has in behind-closed-doors meetings with state legislators between now and Monday.

But that’s not all that’s happening, not by a long shot:

NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly says Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith “has an interest in bringing the NHL to Salt Lake City,” and “obviously, what happened in Arizona created this talk of potential need for relocation,” jeez, does the guy need to spell his move threats out to you? (Whoever “you” is, since nobody in the Phoenix area seems that worked up about whether the Arizona Coyotes stay or go, and for good reason, but league execs gotta do their thing.)
You know how much I hate repeating New York Post “reporting,” let alone New York Post “exclusives,” so take this one with the usual grain of salt: The Post says, citing “City Hall and other sources,” that New York Mayor Eric Adams, Mets owner Steve Cohen, and Queens city councilmember Francisco Moya engaged in a “spirited” phone call about tying Cohen’s casino bid to progress on an NYC F.C. soccer stadium, possibly by rolling the two into one land-use bid in exchange for Cohen letting the soccer team use his stadium lots for parking during matches. To make things even spicier, “Sources said Moya claimed after the meeting that Cohen threatened to back ex-con Hiram Monserrate, a former councilman and state senator who previously represented the area, in a Democratic primary if he didn’t get on board with his redevelopment plan.” Moya’s been pretty close-mouthed on the whole casino thing, letting state senator Jessica Ramos take the lead on stalling approval for it so far; Cohen denies this, and Monserrate says he opposes the casino plans, so who the hell knows, it’s a Post story, after all.
Philadelphia Chinatown residents and supporters will march on City Hall tomorrow to protest plans for a 76ers arena on the neighborhood’s doorstep, arguing that it will create economic and traffic havoc that would destroy the community just as the Washington Wizards‘ arena did to D.C.’s Chinatown. A public meeting on Wednesday revealed some very watercolory renderings of the arena but not much about the public response given that the only reporting on it I can find is from a real estate company, oh journalism.
Having more professional sports teams may not bring measurable economic benefits, but it does bring more influenza deaths. It’s science!

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