The Houston city council unanimously approved spending $17.5 million on land and infrastructure for a new Dynamo soccer stadium yesterday. The vote leaves the seemingly endless Dynamo stadium campaign just a vote by the county commission (which would chip in a similar amount) away from approval, which could come as early as Tuesday.
If all goes according to plan, the Dynamo will break ground on a $60 million (not counting land and infrastructure) stadium this fall, with it set to open in 2011 — which sounds crazy ambitious, but then, soccer stadiums aren’t nearly as complex to build as, say, baseball stadiums. Though this won’t be soccer-only, interestingly: The Texas Southern University football team will also play there.
As for whether this is a good deal for Houston, that’s harder to say at this point. The Houston Chronicle cited Mayor Annise Parker as arguing that “the stadium is a better deal than Minute Maid Park, the Toyota Center and Reliant Stadium because neither the city nor the county will have to pay for the stadium itself” — which is true, but that’s not the same as arguing that it’s a good deal. Then, too, there’s the question of whether the Dynamo will pay rent or share any stadium revenues with their public landlord, or whether the whole public ownership of the stadium thing is just a way of getting out of paying property taxes.
Probably the best way to sum this up is: MLS still isn’t popular enough to command the sort of leverage that other sports do, and their stadiums are cheaper to build, so at worst the public loss isn’t as bad as throwing it down a hole on baseball or football. Which is, I suppose, what the mayor was saying, just not in so many words.
Google sent me your link so your blog must be important though I can’t really see why. There doesn’t seem to be much of a point in your commentary, and well, the stadium is set to open in April 2012 which has been widely noted in other media so your facts are marginal.
The last time google sent me your link I had a similar experience, is there a compelling reason why I should visit a third time?
What is the NAME of the Staduim? Have they mention anything about it?
Naming rights – who’ll buy them, who’ll get the money from them – appears to be one of the things left to be negotiated in the lease. It seems odd to approve building a stadium before you’ve decided how to split the revenues, but sadly not too atypical.
As for Heyward: Apologies for the date mishap – I got the 2011 date from the Houston Business Journal, which apparently is written by crack-addled lemurs. I should have gone to Wikipedia to start with, which has the correct 2012 date. (Their lemurs are all drug-free.)
Crack addled lemurs! Crack addled lemurs! Crack addled lemurs!
(Sorry, I’m a Zippy the Pinhead fan)