The Amway Center, home of the Orlando Magic and property of the city of Orlando (thanks to $480 million in public spending), is having some troubles with the slew of restaurants that were supposed in and around it. There’s the restaurant that defaulted on its lease and left the city to spend $738,000 to finish building out the space, the beer lounge (beer lounge?) across the street that has racked up more than $350,000 in grants and rent forgiveness, and in general a whole lot of good-money-after-bad activity that maybe should make Miami grateful that it can’t even find any restaurants to rent space near its new stadium.
But really, there’s one sentence that stands out in the Orlando Sentinel investigation of this mess, and that is:
Oopsy Scoopsy Yogurt Shop closed last year after being awarded a city grant, its owners charged with trying to defraud the city.
If all that survives of our current civilization is that single sentence, future historians will have a great head start on defining what the early 21st century was all about.
Stadiums built for free because they lead to developement around the stadium as along as the city pays for that developement. WOW!