Baseball season kicked off yesterday, with the introduction of such new innovations as a pitch clock that drove a sharp increase in the all-important (?) metric of hits per hour of baseball and LED stadium lights that can be made to flicker artistically, even in the middle of a play. Truly, this is the future, if the future even exists.
Inarguably, this is Friday, which means we take a spin through news of the past week, if you believe there was one:
- Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg says it’s his “belief” and “a very reasonable anticipation” that he’ll have a new stadium deal in either St. Petersburg or Tampa by the end of the year, and that if he doesn’t, “there’s not a deal to be done, basically.” If you didn’t get the veiled threat there, he added, “At the end of the day, it’s all about ensuring that the team is here, throwing out its first pitch in 2028. And then here, throwing out its first pitch in 2053 as well.” Then he held up a stuffed Raymond the Seadog and made a slashing gesture across its throat, while dramatically tilting his head to one side with his tongue out and his eyes rolled back in his head. (Okay, not that last one, but only because Stuart Sternberg has no sense of drama.)
- Chicago Bears owner George McCaskey said that the team still hasn’t made a decision on “whether we’re going to develop the property” it bought in Arlington Heights and “whether the development is going to include a stadium.” He added, “I don’t have a timeline” for making those decisions, and “we’d like to have” discussions with Chicago about revamping Soldier Field. The Vegas betting line on “Are the Bears just trying to get a bidding war going here?” has now fallen to –300.
- Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam said Monday that “we’re committed to redoing the stadium” and “in all likelihood, it’s not going to have a dome.” Zero details on cost or who would pay for it, but Dee Haslam said “it’s a year-long phase” to get a more concrete plan, while her husband Jimmy said “we’re probably three, four, five years” from a stadium renovation “happening,” so clearly they’re not yet in the Rays/Bears stage of more concrete idle threats and promises.
- The Detroit city council has awarded developers of the area around the Detroit Tigers stadium and Detroit Red Wings and Pistons arena $783 million in public subsidies, because the last batch of subsidies for the sports venues themselves only created a bunch of parking lots. Will the Ilitches and their developer partners be able to score the elusive triple-dip? Herb Simon and the city of Indianapolis know it can be done!
- The proposed Oakland A’s stadium project at Howard Terminal cleared a legal hurdle as an appeals court tossed a challenge to the building’s environmental impact statement. Yes, that’s the same legal hurdle that a lower court cleared last September. No, still nobody knows who would pay all the costs of the thing. Yes, you may now move on to the next bullet point.
- Qatar hasn’t actually yet dismantled and reused its World Cup stadiums that it promised to have dismantled and reused by now. If anyone is surprised by this, they really haven’t been paying attention.
- Tempe’s duplicate Arizona Coyotes arena vote set for August has been officially canceled as unnecessary since voters will already be casting ballots in May, which is sad news for anyone who was hoping that future Arizona Coyotes seasons would be replaced by the more interesting spectacle of 82 televised arena votes a year.
- Also just in from Tempe: “We are a community that likes to be outdoors enjoying our Arizona sunshine, having coffee on the balcony, walking the dog, grilling burgers with neighbors. We are not a community that remains inside of a sound-insulated apartment with windows closed.” No, I didn’t expect the Coyotes arena battle to turn on the inalienable right to grill burgers either, but stranger things have happened.
- New York state is likely to use cash instead of selling bonds to finance a large chunk of the new Buffalo Bills stadium. You’ll notice I said “finance” there instead of “fund”; the amount being funded by the public hasn’t changed (still $1 billion), but how the state will raise the money may change. This is like deciding whether to pay for your new car up front or with monthly payments, and so should be completely uninteresting unless you’re an accountant for New York state, but it made headlines so I thought someone might need a reason to skip reading them, please go read about the liquid trees instead.
Tempe gets the first comment today, 3 hours west of Buffalo. Hugh Hallman is allegedly representing Tempe “pro bono” in it’s negotiations with the Coyotes and litigation with the Phoenix Department of Aviation. Hallman sounds like the biggest cheerleader and instigator for Meruelo and the Coyotes. Is he really working for the City of Tempe and it’s 200,000 residents, or is he getting paid, or expecting to get paid, by the Coyotes, Craig Tindall style. This whole deal stinks more than the landfill and compost pile on a 110 degree day.
If the Coyotes were to make the finals of the Stanley Cup playoffs (unlikely, I know), they might be playing at the end of June. By then, most Phoenicians are indeed sitting somewhere with the windows closed and the air conditioner running on max.
This is about the right of future residents of a proposed Tempe housing development to be able to grill burgers without getting buzzed by landing planes every few minutes, so shouldn’t be affected by the Coyotes’ theoretical Stanley Cup plans, at least.
And then there’s the usual traffic etc. Issues involved with this scale of development. Add this onto 70,000 students at ASU, tens of thousands of employees commuting to downtown Tempe, over 100,000 travelers a day at Sky Harbor and this will make the most congested part of Phoenix even worse. Then there’s the miserable track record of the Coyotes, filing bankruptcy, not paying rent or taxes, evading the salary floor by taking $30 million in dead contracts and having 7 owners in 27 years, including one that committed suicide and another that tried to strangle his wife. Fine organization those Coyotes.
Excellent points. Didn’t Gosbee do ‘both’? It’s not that I want to give Barroway a pass on his horrendous behaviour, but my understanding is that Gosbee was the first Coyotes owner to fail to clear that particular behavioural bar.
Fortunately Karen Gosbee didn’t fall for George Gosbee’s murder-suicide plot. Karen Gosbee wrote a book with all the gory details of George’s behavior and addictions, not light reading.
St Pete wants to figure out the stadium financing first, but Stu wants to work out the whole 86 acre site scheme first, which probably means he wants 100% of any development profits to go to the Rays (him) and not the 50% that’s in the current Trop use agreement. So will the City tell him to pound sand and will he then go to Tampa and get no development rights and less money from the public? Or will we still be talking about this in 2029?
I certainly hope so. They have held firm (sometimes wavering in spirit if not in action) thus far. It would be a shame if they handed over development rights they almost own themselves so close to the deadline. I have to think that is the only reason that Sternberg is deploying puppets at his non-news conferences these days.
Pie charts and visual aids are generally the last refuge of the imbecile.
Wonder if the Bears are starting to realize the best use for that land is housing, shipping and light manufacturing. Building a stadium is a money loser, so let’s get the state or city to improve Soldier Field so we can make more money off this Arlington Heights land.
Leaders in Phoenix and Tempe talk about their ongoing feud over Coyotes’ sports complex
https://www.azfamily.com/2023/03/30/sky-harbor-tempe-officials-address-noise-concerns-surrounding-coyotes-sports-complex/
Two videos are interesting.