November 18, 2010

Cutting off Wrigley's nose to spite Cubs' face

Steve Chapman, writing in the libertarian magazine Reason today, argues that if it's going to cost taxpayers $300 million to renovate Wrigley Field, maybe Wrigley Field should be torn down:

Wrigley is attractive and charming in many ways, but it's like driving a vintage car: After a while, the novelty is not enough to justify the antiquated design. The ivy-covered walls and manually operated scoreboard have to be balanced against the cramped concourses, primitive restrooms, modest kitchen facilities, and obstructed views. ...

A new park would rid the Cubs of their maintenance headaches, while providing them better ways to relieve fans of cash — lots of luxury boxes, better dining, new shops, and diversions.

It would allow the team to hire better players and pamper them in style. The architect could lovingly re-create the treasured features of the existing stadium, while omitting the shortcomings.

Only one problem: A new stadium would almost certainly cost even more than renovating Wrigley. So that luxury box money would either need to be diverted from pampering players to pay off stadium debt, or (more likely) Cubs owner Tom Ricketts would still be asking for hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies to pay for a new place.

Chapman's error is in buying Ricketts' argument that renovations are necessary because Wrigley costs $10 million a year to maintain. Even if you accept that a redone stadium would have cheaper maintenance costs (not at all a sure thing, given that it would have more stuff in it that would need to be maintained), even $10 million a year in savings wouldn't be enough to pay for $200-300 million in renovation costs — it would be cheaper, in other words, for Chicago taxpayers to just take over maintaining Wrigley than to pay Ricketts to rebuild it. The fight here isn't over whether a Wrigley reno is a good idea — Ricketts, notably, hasn't shared any details of what it would mean for the team's finances — but over whether the public should hand over hundreds of millions of dollars to make it happen.

We've been through all this before, of course, with Fenway Park, which 11 years ago was similarly declared obsolete and in need of replacing with a modernized replacement. In the end, thanks to both a new owner and the concerted efforts of Boston activists — who, among other things, conducted an architectural charrette to come up with ideas for ways to increase revenues at Fenway, helping originate such innovations as the Green Monster seats — Fenway was saved and received a widely popular renovation, with very little public subsidies. (It did receive federal historic preservation credits, which are available generally to anyone rehabbing historic structures.) On the face of it, the Wrigley reno looks like a similar plan. But if Ricketts says he can't do it without public money, the proper response isn't necessarily "tear it down," but rather "okay, if it's cheaper to keep maintaining the old unrenovated place, then just do that."