urbanSTL

STLrainbow wrote:^ Yes, I'm serious. Is there anything wrong with the piece? And with his NFL stadium commentary? It was far better than most, especially the nonsense we got from the sports media.

Gotta agree with rainbow. It's a well-reasoned piece. I think it's unfortunate, but understandable, that the immediate reaction to such scrutiny by sports fans is to poo-poo. I've yet to see anyone quantify all the purported economic byproducts that supposedly make millions of dollars in public assistance so obvious for stadiums.

Or roads. Or parks. Or museums. Or IKEAs. Or anything else that makes up a city.


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gary kreie wrote:Or roads. Or parks. Or museums. Or IKEAs. Or anything else that makes up a city.


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Roads are necessary. IKEA's are easy to quantify: sales tax. I'd argue that parks are more necessary than stadiums but okay. I'd give you museums except that in St. Louis the public voted to fund them and they don't exist to generate profit for a small group of wealthy businessmen. If the public votes to fund the stadium knowing that it may take years and years to recoup the handouts while lining the owners' pockets in the meantime then fine. but the public deserves to not be spoon-fed best-scenario bullsh*t just to get at their money.

Further we get something tangible for our tax dollars invested in museums: free admission. If tax dollars linked to sports were tied to a certain number of free seats for community members I bet there would be a lot less resistance.

symphonicpoet wrote:Further we get something tangible for our tax dollars invested in museums: free admission. If tax dollars linked to sports were tied to a certain number of free seats for community members I bet there would be a lot less resistance.

Hey, there's an idea! Require two free tickets be given to every schoolkid in the city.

Sub article, but BizJourno is reporting SC STL is asking for $40M from state and $80M from city; $120M of $200M stadium.

http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news ... llion.html

So they've now passed 50% in public funding requests. I'm sure the credits will be to pay for the interchange work and such but seems more and more like I'll be voting against this measure. I love soccer but this is ridiculous

edit:

So it's the city asking the state for $40 million in tax credits and is listing the project at $405 million. So stadium is $200 million and land acquisitions and infrastructure another $200+ million? Seems crazy
https://twitter.com/Mike_Faulk/status/8 ... 3126941697

^ are they counting the expansion fee that's rumored to be between $100-200m in total project fee


I think this $40m is in case the city public
Vote goes south. I mean they'll take this and $80m if they can get it. Also the timing of this request is so that it's approved before the new governor and his tax credit board is in place. New governor has said he won't support public $ for stadiums

MarkHaversham wrote:Hey, there's an idea! Require two free tickets be given to every schoolkid in the city.

You know, I completely forgot about the Cardinals old program. Is it still going on? I suspect that's a part of why I follow baseball . . . but never gave a half a hoot about football. All that said, I'd suggest that you de-couple it from age if there's tax support. Not all taxpayers have kids. I fully understand that those of us who want none of the kinder biz need to support those who do in some important ways for the good of the community, but this isn't particularly educational. Throw me a bone here. That's how this stuff works, right?

I think the Cardinals still give tickets to kids, maybe as a reward for A's.

Of course, the Cardinals have a lot more tickets to give away than the MLS team would.

I have a vague recollection that the continuation of the Cardinals ticket program was even tied in to tax support. (They'd been discussing eliminating it or cutting it back.) Too far back now. Can't quite remember correctly. Ned to break out the google and search, I suppose. Later. After coffee.

dbInSouthCity wrote:^ are they counting the expansion fee that's rumored to be between $100-200m in total project fee


I think this $40m is in case the city public
Vote goes south. I mean they'll take this and $80m if they can get it. Also the timing of this request is so that it's approved before the new governor and his tax credit board is in place. New governor has said he won't support public $ for stadiums

Sounds like it does include the expansion fee.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metr ... cb876.html

The application states the ownership group expects a negative net income off the team for the first decade of its existence. But it also estimates the state would generate $44.8 million in tax revenue over the next 33 years from the stadium.

I wonder how much truth there is to that statement

^ that's a good piece... especially if the expansion fee is going to be more these days than in the past, it is frustrating they are going with such a high cost stadium and public ask. Drive those costs down so things like event and parking revenue can pay for city's portion then fine, I can live with it, but any ask for a tax increase pretty much is a line in the sand for me.

Good article Alex, your link to the tax credit application isn't there. Yea second only to one other team in public funding. At the current funding levels I'm voting no, they're misleading more and more every time more details leak about this

shadrach wrote:

MarkHaversham wrote:I think the Cardinals still give tickets to kids, maybe as a reward for A's.

Of course, the Cardinals have a lot more tickets to give away than the MLS team would.

My kids used to get 'em through the city library's Summer Reading Program.

That still exists, and it's not just for kids. My wife gets them every summer. There's plenty of excess capacity for those weekday games against non-marquee opponents.

STLrainbow wrote:^ that's a good piece... especially if the expansion fee is going to be more these days than in the past, it is frustrating they are going with such a high cost stadium and public ask. Drive those costs down so things like event and parking revenue can pay for city's portion then fine, I can live with it, but any ask for a tax increase pretty much is a line in the sand for me.

I thought I read somewhere that the ownership group planned to pay the expansion fee in addition to their stadium contribution.

^ I think I phrased that sloppily.. yes, they are proposing to cover roughly $280M of what they argue is a $400M or so effort when including the $200M expansion fee. But my point is that since the fee is so high (not sure if they are being conservative by going with $200M or have been told that will indeed be the amount by MLS), why are they also going for such a high-priced stadium? Get that down to $125-$150M -- which looking at other soccer stadia seems like would be reasonable -- and I think you could really get this done with much more manageable public support.

So what happens if the MLS agrees to for example a $140 expansion fee and the stadium ends up being $140 Million. Does STL SC then say: oh we can actually afford all that no public money needed? I'd like to see some firmer numbers and some verification that if costs go down the public money goes down hopefully dollar for dollar. And the team covers overruns.

mjbais1489 wrote:So what happens if the MLS agrees to for example a $140 expansion fee and the stadium ends up being $140 Million. Does STL SC then say: oh we can actually afford all that no public money needed? I'd like to see some firmer numbers and some verification that if costs go down the public money goes down hopefully dollar for dollar. And the team covers overruns.

They have reported that SC STL will cover cost overruns and maintenance on the project.

^ I think it was cost overruns and majority of maintenance. Anyway, there is no agreement yet just vague statements and lots of details to iron out... naming rights, parking and concessions revenue split, rent, form of city financing, etc., etc.

But I assume that will become at least a bit clearer pretty soon and hopefully we'll get a surprise that the public ask will be much less... I guess from an SC STL perspective if you get citizens thinking it'll be an $80M ask but turns out to be $50M that's not a bad position to be in. What a deal you're getting!

Yea even the soccer community in St. Louis is starting to pull back support on this. You have people who were completely yes on this (myself included) who now are questioning if this is just a money grab to try and get as much public funding as possible. I'm willing to vote no and hope they come back with something lighter or just go completely private funding even if that means risking not getting an MLS team at all

The press bills everything as: the city and state are handing over $120M in cash. But how much of the city and state money is just giving back money generated by the stadium and MLS team -- money that wouldn't exist without the MLS in St. Louis? Maybe someone already answered this and I just missed it. Seems like opponents try to muddy that story.

I look at things like stadiums as infrastructure that a large city needs. Similar to a convention center. Stadiums are likely to be used by most citizens of the city sometime in their lives. We would probably be thrilled if private investors came in and announced they would fund half the cost of a brand new convention center the size of the one in Nashville. We use public money to help private companies all the time whose products are utilized by customers nationwide, but are nowhere near as focused on St. Louisans as customers as a local stadium would be. So I'm not sure why sports are singled out as particularly evil in their request for public money compared to other developments. I assume it is because sports are seen as frivolous entertainment, unlike, say, beer, without which life itself would cease to exist.

^ a point from Ray Hartmann that I mentioned earlier that I agree strongly with is that proposals for sports facilities indeed should be treated equally to other projects seeking public assistance... and I think if well-crafted, reasonable public support of a high value proposal can bring something to town that otherwise would not get done then it should be thoroughly considered.

But as has been pointed out before, these sports proposals usually go far beyond normal TIF and abatement, etc. that are commonly handed out (and often abused). In this particular case, it appears that the city will be asked to raise actual taxes in some form -- parking? sales? stay tuned! and issue bonds backed by those taxes. That is quite uncommon and is deserving of even greater scrutiny and skepticism.