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September 12, 2011
Cal legislature okays fast-track for all stadiums and arenas
The bill to fast-track Los Angeles' $1.2 billion downtown football stadium indeed passed the California State Senate on Friday, by a 32-7 margin. And later the same day, the senate also passed president pro-tem Darrell Steinberg's bill allowing all development projects to be exempted from lengthy lawsuits — which, depending on how you look at it, either puts all of the state's big projects on equal footing, or uses a loophole granted to one developer as an excuse to grant loopholes to all developers (so long as their projects are worth at least $100 million).
Assuming Gov. Jerry Brown signs the bills — no word from the governor's office at last check — this will obviously smooth the path for AEG's L.A. stadium, as well as proposed buildings for the San Francisco 49ers, Sacramento Kings, and San Diego Chargers, among others. Still, the main holdup in all of those cases is money: The 49ers still haven't firmed up their share of construction costs, the Kings arena finance plan right now mostly amounts to wishful thinking (the latest involving selling off future parking revenues for up-front cash), and AEG needs to find an NFL owner who wants to give up either a hefty annual rent, a hefty share of stadium revenues, or a hefty share of the team itself in exchange for moving to L.A. Not having to worry about pesky lawyers is a nice plus, but pesky bankers are still the main reason why stadium deals do or don't get done.
I find the idea of selling off parking to fund the arena to be probably the most offensive idea of them all. First, I don't think that idea has a very good track record. Second, that's a $24M lost revenue stream for the City that I very seriously doubt an arena would be able to cover (even their own cost estimates say $37M of new tax revenue for the City over 30 years).
We need to tell our Council members, Do not sell off our parking. It will result in far less revenue for the City, not more.
These people will be shocked out of their minds when a Maloof-Taylor-ICON consortium is the only bidder for the parking concession.
Posted by MikeM on September 12, 2011 12:45 PM
Now we have "Dueling Reports" in Sacramento:
www.sacbee.com/2011/09/13/3907017/city-report-identifies-issues.html
In my mind, a new arena in Sacramento has never been farther away. This is one of the best plot-twists I've seen in quite a while.
Posted by MikeM on September 13, 2011 05:03 PM
Here's the City's report:
sacramento.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?meta_id=372038&view=&showpdf=1
Posted by MikeM on September 13, 2011 07:53 PM
The City Council has unanimously agreed to enter into exclusive negotiations with Taylor-ICON.
However, a few key issues were brought up during council discussion:
1) The Maloofs must pay off the existing bond debt;
2) It turns out that, in California, a City cannot sell off its parking meters. I don't know why that is. To me, this is a major issue; buying only the garages, but not the meters, sets up meters competing with lots, which would get very strange.
3) The review process is forecast to take 16-20 months.
I also noticed that when Council members asked questions, each one has a potential show-stopper for them that differed from the show-stoppers the others mentioned. This means there's quite a bit of disagreement with the 100 day report and the Council. So while they voted to try to put together a deal... Well, one Council member noted that 85% of the work remains to be done.
More tomorrow, I'm sure.
Posted by MikeM on September 14, 2011 01:07 AM
Well, here's one way to eliminate the opposition: Buy them out.
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/09/19/state/n150133D58.DTL&tsp=1
Man, that amusement park is only worth $70M?
Posted by MikeM on September 19, 2011 07:36 PM