Life in these Untidy States: Stadium--The Abridged Edition

[athelind]

I guess I can boil down my last post into a couple of simple questions:

Does investing public money into building a stadium actually yield a net economic benefit to the community?

If so, does it actually provide more of a benefit than investing the same public money into, say, public transit or public utilities*?

*Note that Santa Clara is one of

Comments

[athelind]

I'm gonna beg off tonight -- I've got another Bullet Proof Headache, and I doubt an evening of work at Legends is going to help it much. Thank you for the invite, though!

A little lead time and a chance to adjust to the concept of "work is over, but home is in the opposite direction" should leave me more amenable; I kinda have to steel myself to the idea of "going out and doing stuff".

[moonfires]

Overall, no.

[pseudomanitou]

Benefit to the community... only within the inner city where the new sports building is built.

This kind of thing can revitalize an inner city -- bringing people outside the city limits inside to spend money, prop up new restaurants, hotels, etc.

Now, in the long run, this can make the inner city more appealing to businesses looking for a city structure office location.

But it all depends on so many factors. Maybe the team sucks constantly and has trouble selling tickets. Maybe the only businesses that pop up are strip clubs and sports bars that release drunks into the streets. Maybe the businesses that are attracted in are unethical or become too large so that the community finds itself entirely dependent on the company doing well. It's a gamble.

But for some cities, it's pretty much a given that it will increase tourism and spending.

Did something similar in Minneapolis. It helped, but once you cross into a certain area, property taxes triple. This is why I don't a condo north of I-94 :P

[athelind]

Thank you! This is the first specific example of a positive benefit I've found. Even anecdotal evidence gives a clue as to where to look for hard numbers.

It still sounds like a bad deal for this area, though, especially since Santa Clara doesn't really have much in the way of an "inner city" to benefit; the stadium will be dropped into an area currently dominated by business parks, hotels, the Santa Clara convention center, and the Great America theme park (which seems to change hands annually). In fact, it's slated for the land that the city currently leases TO Great America for parking overflow.

And again, I'm still not convinced that an inner city venue wouldn't benefit more from other forms of urban renewal, including, say, tax breaks or rent subsidies for downtown businesses.

[athelind]

You'd think that the result of that would be a town where you had to drive everywhere, but the opposite is true: there just aren't that many places to live in Santa Clara that AREN'T in walking distance to any number of conveniences.

[divabeq]

I both live in and work for the city of Arlington, TX (where they just built the new Dallas Cowboy's Stadium) and my answer is an emphatic "no". I have a fairly intimate knowledge of the budget of the city both before and after a stadium is built. Before the stadium, we received raises and since, we have not, nor will we get cost of living raises this year. In addition to the tax breaks to the stadium and immense cost of construction for this kind of a project, there are infrastructure improvements that have to be made that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. New water towers and water and sewer lines, new streets, street lights, signs, increased police presence... it goes on and on

[r_caton]

One word -
OLYMPICS.

And after?

Lok at the crap at Wembley and White City...
White City is just improving (maybe) now, the 'Lympies were 1908 and 1948