I'm not opposed to stadiums, but I am opposed to tax payer funded or loaned stadiums. I am also opposed to use of eminent domain to take land for any non-infrastructer project.
I figure if the team doesn't want to pay for it then get a "buy a brick" drive going and see if it funds the stadium.
I watch sports ball and I don’t want the team defunded but I don’t want my taxes paying for the construction of a new stadium; the revenues of which won’t be going back to the city.
The problem with this is that you're effectively forcing people who hate sports stadium to pay for them, not to mention those living nearby who are going to be affected by the noise, traffic jam and pollution caused by the stadium.
Why not let the teams crowdfund and build their own stadium like any other risky venture without capital?
Agreed. My thing is, if a sports stadium is gonna be built with public money, it should belong to the public and the team owner should have to pay rent and/or revenue share. Otherwise, why should a billionaire (or group of wealthy people) get a taxpayer-funded stadium for them to print money with?
Then maybe don't spend $1.1B for a stadium, and especially don't subsidize it with public funds unless the public either owns the team or then owns the stadium and leases it to the team.
"De gustibus non est disputandum." ("Everybody has their own opinions." / "There's no accounting for taste.")
Some people enjoy the game. Those who do not enjoy it should not be forced to pay for the stadium. I would even oppose using eminent domain to acquire a contiguous area of land large enough to build one, with the sole possible exception of Green Bay, Wisconsin, where the Packers are very nearly a municipal corporation due to their "ownership" structure (non-voting, non-dividend-paying, restricted-resale stocks don't count as ownership, in my opinion).
Selling the naming rights to the stadium to the highest bidder is just twisting the knife in the back, really.
This article is similar in character to economic retrospectives of cities that hosted Olympics competitions. The IOC always promises an instant boost to prosperity, but that never seems to materialize. I have been to Turner Field (formerly the primary 1996 Olympic stadium), and the surrounding area does not look very boosted (although other parts of Atlanta are admittedly much worse). The stadium is coming down in 2017, as a 20-year-old building is apparently no longer good enough for the Braves to play baseball in it. Their previous home at Atlanta-Fulton Cty Stadium only lasted 30 years.
For reference purposes, Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are both more than 100 years old and still in use. Stadiums in Kansas City, LA, and Anaheim are pentagenarians. Milwaukee County Stadium made it to 50 before the Brewers traded up. Yankee Stadium retired at 85. Tiger Stadium lasted 87 years. Candlestick Park retired at 53. Memorial Stadium (Baltimore, 2nd) lasted 53 years.
From a cursory examination of history, a city is much better off building its own smaller stadium, sized for basketball, hockey, and rock concerts, than one that can only reasonably be filled by MLB baseball, NFL football, Olympic track and field, club soccer (in Europe), and musical superstars. Offering public subsidy to a privately owned single-sport stadium strikes me as brain-damaged beyond all reasonable measure, especially when the sports franchise seeking to build it is currently leasing a publicly-owned facility.
There are not just spare parcels floating around zoned for stadiums (or hospitals, or university campuses, or whatever). Creating one of these things is always an act of government.
That’s not to say the government should also have to pay, but the idea of sports teams acting like any other consumer of commercial real estate is clearly off.
With taxes they are partners. That's the reasoning behind public financing.
I think a better alternative is just tax breaks. The team can build a stadium but gets huge tax cuts on everything for a certain period of time to justify the build cost.
I also don't understand why stadiums have such limited lifespans. Wrigely field in nearly 100 years old.
The fact that NFL teams get taxpayers to foot the bill for new stadium construction and then the team retains the facility as private property, now that is what I have a problem with. Those facilities are bought with public money and should be public parks.
When I lived in Southern California the NFL and its boosters were continually trying to get the taxpayers to build a stadium complex. The arguments always went something like "There will be X new tax revenue and Y new jobs." And that's probably true.
But if you took the same land and used the same money to build a big shopping mall your X and Y would both be much bigger. Every time local governments did a study that compared a new stadium to just about any other use of the land the alternative was better.
I'm not opposed to stadiums, per se, but professional sports teams are businesses and as such need to pay their own expenses.
Or you could make teams pay for their own stadiums. They take the revenue so why shouldn't they? The equivalent is Amazon requiring local government to provide them with automated warehouses for them to relocate to (or remain in) that locality.
I'm not opposed to stadiums either, but I am opposed to the lies and distortions invoked to validate their construction.
I would much prefer it if the politicians just came out and said 'we're going to spend your taxes on a great big stadium, because we will get to open it and name it, and you, the voters, like bread and circuses'.
Wrapping tax-spends up as some sort of business case just muddies the waters for people when a real business case needs to be analysed.
Perhaps the answer is that, for a jurisdiction, each time there is an election, a multiple choice question could be at the bottom. We wish to take one of the below actions, please indicate your preference:
1) increase tax by x and build stadium
2) increase tax by y and build hospital
3) increase tax by z and build new water reservoir
4) decrease tax by x and you decide what you want to do with it
My remark is flippant but we seem to be entering a strange world where people believe jobs and taxes can only be created through the application of tax monies to politicians ideas.
Just make it simple. Take the cost of the stadium as a no recourse loan against the team. All of a sudden stadiums get produced with "any" level of scrutiny. It's far too easy to ask for more handouts for luxuries when you're not paying the bill.
I figure if the team doesn't want to pay for it then get a "buy a brick" drive going and see if it funds the stadium.
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