Category: Washington Commanders

Friday roundup: Oregon okays $800m in MLB stadium spending because “transformative”

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been a minute since I’ve issued an appeal for new supporters for this site, so: If you aren’t already a supporter of this site, please consider becoming one! There are both monthly and one-time options, and in addition to subscriber benefits like receiving all the stadium and arena news in your email inbox and getting whatever tchotchkes I come up with next, you ensure the piece of mind that comes from knowing you’re helping to keep this site going into its 28th year, which just began this month! Shedding light on the sports subsidy game in any way that affects actual policy turns out to be harder than even a professional cynic like myself thought — for all the reasons this site covers every day — but if we can all just keep it up for another 28 years, I think we might finally start getting somewhere.

As always, thanks to everyone who is contributing now or has contributed in the past — it not only lets me pay the ever-increasing costs of hosting this site and enables me to spend time writing it without going broke, it’s heartening to know that people think this issue is important enough to devote your hard-earned dollars to. Or maybe you just like pointing and laughing at billionaire failsons, that works, too. I hope to be able to keep this site going until it’s no longer necessary, at which point you’re all invited to the victory party, if any of us are still mobile enough by then to dance.

And with that cheery thought, here’s your weekly dose of ways everything still mostly sucks now:

  • The Oregon state senate voted 24-5 to approve $800 million in public bonds toward building a Major League Baseball stadium, just as soon as Portland gets a Major League Baseball team. Senators say the project will pay for itself by using money from player income taxes (it won’t) and that it will be a “forward-thinking, transformative opportunity” and “a showcase of what is beautiful, central, core to our constituents of Portland,” which is giving money to ex-Nike execs so they can have their own private sports team, I guess? Please enjoy your requisite J.C. Bradbury Simpsons meme, it’s well earned.
  • What do Washington, D.C. councilmembers think of the news that their mayor is on the brink of agreeing to spend $850 million toward a Commanders stadium at a time when the district budget is just red ink up to its eyeballs? “Is this really going to cost us close to a billion dollars?” asked council chair Phil Mendelson, while economic development committee chair Kenyon McDuffie called it a “once in a lifetime opportunity” before being asked how the city could afford it and replying, “I haven’t seen the details.” It’s okay, all the other kids are doing it!
  • Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman says he does not support the Cincinnati Bengals owners’ request for $350 million in state money toward stadium renovations, and wants to hold out for a deal where taxpayers “can actually make money” like … the Cleveland Browns deal? I’m getting kind of tired of linking to my explanation of the Casino Night Fallacy, but seeing as this seems to be some sort of mass delusion that state legislators are signing up for, maybe it can’t be explained enough.
  • The Kansas City Chiefs and Royals owners are still kicking tires on potential stadium sites, yep, that’s excuse enough for a news story, nothing else journalists should be spending their time covering, probably. Local business leaders say it’s important, anyway, and if we didn’t have a free and independent press taking its editorial directives from the local chamber of commerce, where would this country be?
  • Modesto, California is trying to build a stadium to get a soccer franchise. Of all the 2025 things that you never expected we would be living through, that’s one of the 2025iest.
Share this post:

DC mayor reportedly set to spend $850m on new Commanders stadium, budget cuts be damned

access_time personNeil deMause

It’s been no secret that D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser really really wants to build a new Washington Commanders stadium at the site of RFK Stadium, and yesterday some details were leaked via NBC Washington reporter Mark Segraves:

D.C. is close to a deal worth more than $3 billion to bring the Washington Commanders back to the District and build a new stadium at the RFK Stadium site.

So the “deal” is worth $3 billion, for both a stadium and a “mixed-use residential and retail development.” And who would be paying for that?

Multiple sources familiar with the deal told News4 that Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Commanders have the framework for a deal in place that would see the team paying the vast majority of the costs to build a new stadium and much of the money provided by the city going for infrastructure that will support the entire 180-acre development.

“Vast majority,” you say? So how much would D.C. taxpayers be on the hook for?

The Commanders would put up as much as $2.5 billion, and the District would provide up to $850 million, documents obtained by News4 show.

This is what’s known in news circles as “burying the lede,” and that’s quite a lede to bury. The unnamed sources specified that the district’s money would only go toward “infrastructure,” plus also “eligible capital costs,” with one example being parking garages that would be used by the new complex. Would D.C. get to recoup parking fees at the garages it built, at least? Or would Commanders owner Josh Harris get 100% of the revenues while taxpayers covered a quarter of the costs? The sources were silent on this, or else Segraves never asked.

As for where D.C. will get that $850 million, $350 million would be “paid in 2032 through taxes generated from the new development,” which is super unclear — bonds would be sold in 2032 based on future tax revenue? which taxes? — but not nearly as unclear as where the district would get that first $500 million:

One hurdle is the looming $410 million in budget cuts D.C. faces for the current fiscal year that were imposed by Congress. That must get resolved, then the mayor can present her budget for fiscal year 2026, which needs to be approved by the D.C. Council and Congress.

Details! Bowser claims her budget is ready to go, in which case we — and the D.C. council — should soon learn more actual specifics of this proposed deal.

In the meantime, a campaign called “Homes Not Stadiums” has launched a petition drive to hold a voter referendum on a measure to block the use of the RFK site for a stadium so that it can be used for affordable housing instead. “To prioritize the stadium over the needs of the people who actually live here, it’s not acceptable, and the mayor should allow the people to have a say in it,” said campaign organizer Kris Furnish, who is an experienced local activist, albeit not previously around budget or housing issues.

Share this post:

Trump’s tariffs and budget cuts will make stadiums more unaffordable — but will cities stop funding them?

access_time personNeil deMause

Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser still really wants to build a Commanders stadium using an as-yet-undisclosed pile of public money, but she has a little problem: The district is facing a potential $1 billion budget deficit over the next three years. Not that that usually stops cities from pouring money into sports venues — when times are good it’s usually “we can afford this” and when times are bad it’s “we can’t afford not to do this” — but the, uh, disconnect is great enough that even local TV stations are asking questions, literally:

7News On Your side reached out to Bowser and asked her the following questions:

  1. How will this forecast affect talks with the Commanders about a new stadium?
  2. Will Mayor Bowser push the team to take on a larger share of the bill for a new stadium?
  3. Will this forecast lead to more spending cuts or higher taxes for residents?
  4. Will this forecast push the mayor to back away from any new stadium deal requiring the use of taxpayer dollars?

So far the response from Bowser — as well as the D.C. council, which was presented with similar questions — has been crickets.

Anyway, this does complicate Bowser’s plans to lure Josh Harris’s Commanders back to the city with gobs of taxpayer money. And how did D.C. end up in such a huge budget hole, anyway? Funny story:

D.C.’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer, in its new revenue forecast released Friday, estimates the city will bring in $21.6M less this year and an average of $342.1M less over the following three years than its December forecast predicted. The total decline adds up to just over $1B in reduced revenue between now and the end of fiscal year 2028.

The report cites the Trump administration’s recent moves to slash the federal workforce as the primary reason for the declining projections, along with the domino effect that is expected to have on the local economy.

This raises a larger question: What impact will the mayhem that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are committing across the federal government have on stadium and arena construction? We’ve already seen predictions that Trump’s tariffs on both Canada in particular and imported steel and aluminum in general will cause construction prices to soar. Throwing local government budgets into the wood chipper would only compound the problem, as cities and states would be chasing ever-more-expensive stadiums with ever-shrinking treasuries.

And yet! It’s important to remember that one of the things that kicked off the entire stadium-subsidy racket — and, before it, the auto-plant and computer-chip-factory rackets — in the 1980s was Ronald Reagan slashing federal funding to local governments. With no way of creating jobs by spreading around federal dollars, city mayors increasingly turned instead to offering their dwindling supplies of cash to corporations as a way to try to steal jobs from the city down the road, launching the economic war among the states. It didn’t work — raiding your neighbor while they raid you is a zero-sum game — but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming ingrained as the business of local government, and it was all set off by local government having too little cash, not so much that it didn’t know what to do with it.

So, will a Trumpcession tank team owners’ stadium plans? It’s way, way too soon to tell. It’s going to change the entire climate around construction of more or less everything, though, as well as state and local governments’ fiscal plans, so things will be different, if not necessarily better. At the same time, Trump’s tax cuts are making the rich much richer, so you would think that team owners could better afford to pay for stadiums themselves — but, again, this whole scheme isn’t about who can afford them, it’s about how to get someone else to pay for them so owners can keep more money for themselves. Kleptocracies work in mysterious ways.

Share this post:

Friday roundup: Ravens get even more public cash, D.C. United wants somebody to buy them a roof

access_time personNeil deMause

Greetings from New York, where we now have two terrible mayors instead of one! That’s hardly the worst of today’s political news, so instead let us distract ourselves with some (mostly) terrible stadium and arena news:

  • The Baltimore Ravens‘ $434 million stadium renovation project is now a $489 million renovation project, and 64% of the additional cost is set to be covered by state taxpayers. Or, if you’re whatever AI is writing the headlines over at Sports Illustrated, “Ravens Spending Over $50 Million More on Stadium Upgrades,” sure, that’s probably right, no need to read your own story to check.
  • D.C. United‘s owners want to add 10,000 seats and a roof to their (checks) not yet 7-year-old stadium, and “what remains unknown is the potential price tag or whether the team will ask the city for subsidies.” Also the Axios reporter passing this along (from an original source of “two sources,” not even “familiar with the team’s thinking” or anything) calls D.C. United “American soccer royalty,” what ever happened to no more kings?
  • Missouri House Speaker Jonathan Patterson is turning up the heat on Jackson County, saying “time is running out” for “a plan and course of action” for new Kansas City Royals and Chiefs stadiums, or else … the teams will kick everything back a year and try again, again? Too many showrunners these days really do substitute overbearing string sections for viable suspense plots.
  • D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser says a Washington Commanders stadium “will be the anchor that attracts other investment–housing, amenities, jobs, and opportunities,” guess somebody doesn’t remember what the late Allen Sanderson said about NFL stadiums and cemeteries.
  • In 2023, the city of Anaheim commissioned a $325,000, two-month study of how to keep the Angels‘ stadium viable for decades to come, and now the study may not be done until 2026 and will cost over $1 million, cool, cool.
  • New Sacramento Republic F.C. vaportecture! And it looks like, uh, a soccer stadium? At least there are some smoke bombs, on both ends of the pitch for some reason, but no fireworks or people holding up scarves dramatically and we can’t even see what ridiculous formation the players are in, I give this a B-minus for entertainment value at best.
Share this post:

Friday roundup: Browns officially demand $1.2B in tax money, DC and San Antonio residents call out public cost of sports plans

access_time personNeil deMause

And how’s your city’s week going? That good, huh? It’s going around.

I would share more Bluesky snark with you, but there’s stadium news to be gotten to:

  • The Cleveland Browns owners have formally issued their request for funding for a $2.4 billion domed stadium in Brook Park, and it includes $1.2 billion in taxpayer money. (The breakdown is $600 million state, $178 million county, $422 million city, if you’re an Ohioan and are wondering which of your government budgets the money would be coming out of. Also, though it’s being described as “new tax revenue,” it really isn’t; hey there, Casino Night Fallacy!) Team owner Jimmy Haslam is describing this as a “50/50 public and private partnership,” though of course that’s only on the spending end; the chances of taxpayers getting an equal cut of stadium revenues are estimated as ROTFL. At least one of the elected officials being asked for cash was extremely unenthusiastic: Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne, who has stated that he’d rather the Browns remain within the city of Cleveland, said, “We have to throw a flag on the play” and “it’s a Hail Mary to throw out numbers that don’t square,” sorry, we’ve reached our maximum daily exposure to football metaphors, we’ll have to pick this up again next week.
  • D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser told a community meeting that she wants to build a Washington Commanders stadium at the RFK Stadium site, and according to WTOP, “When someone asked whether Bowser would commit to not offering a subsidy, she said no.” News reports didn’t describe the crowd reaction to that non-pledge, but given the overall skepticism about a stadium plan expressed at the meeting, we can picture it for ourselves.
  • Speaking of resident reaction, “‘Highly speculative’: Residents bristle at lack of answers on funding for new Spurs arena” is a pretty evocative headline, well done, San Antonio Express-News. And unlike in D.C., in San Antonio massive public scorn matters, because the Spurs arena development plan — which goes by the truly jaw-dropping name Project Marvel — is going to require a public referendum to pass, so the Spurs owners have some bristling to address.
  • The United Soccer League says it’s planning to launch a new top-tier division in 2027 to compete with Major League Soccer, made up of some of its existing second-tier franchises and some new ones, and you know what new soccer teams means: new soccer stadium demands! USL officials talked a lot about how the U.S. needs a system more like Europe, where there are tons of soccer teams in cities large and small, but left out the part about how those teams’ stadiums are typically built without large public subsidies, curious, that.
  • And speaking of soccer stadiums, a clown study by the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis claims that a new soccer stadium in Bridgeport would “generate $3.4 billion in economic output and sustain 1,300 new permanent jobs annually until 2050.” Wait, 1,300 permanent jobs annually? Like, 1,300 jobs one year, then another 1,300 jobs the next? It will not surprise you to learn that the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis is connected with UConn’s business school, not its economics department, though it may surprise you that the report was apparently issued last August but only got reported on by the Hartford Business Journal this Wednesday, slow week in the stenography industry, I guess.
  • You may think you don’t want to read a long profile of College of the Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson in the school’s magazine, but what if I told you he provides scientific tips on which lottery numbers to avoid picking? Matheson also discusses stadium funding (“Let’s just say that I’m fairly happy that I have long-term job security as a critic of spending massive amounts of taxpayer money”) and the fact that he wears a different soccer jersey to class each day, which, yes, requires a lot of soccer jerseys.
Share this post:

Friday roundup: 2024 was the year cities said “no” to stadium subsidies, and team owners said “actually, yes”

access_time personNeil deMause

Welcome to the last weekly roundup of 2024! It was a bit of a slow week thanks to the holiday, when even team execs and elected officials (though not always journalists) tend to take a break from stadium and arena shenanigans and focus on eating overpriced peppermint bark or whatever.

It was a weird year in the sports subsidy world: Kansas City voters rejected a sales tax hike to fund stadiums for the Royals and Chiefs, only to have the team owners get the state of Kansas to approve $1.4 billion or more in public bonds for new stadiums there, though they haven’t yet committed to taking the offer; the Virginia legislature rejected a $1 billion–plus subsidy for a new Washington Capitals and Wizards arena, only to have Washington, D.C. provide more than half a billion in renovation money; Illinois state officials said repeatedly that they weren’t interested in funding a new Chicago Bears stadium, only to have team execs keep coming back with even more proposals for new stadiums; Florida elected officials rejected an already-approved Tampa Bay Rays stadium before later unrejecting it. Or maybe it’s not such a weird year, given that the two constants since the whole great stadium swindle started back in the 1980s have been the populace being steamed about huge piles of their tax money going to wealthy sports owners and the wealthy sports owners coming back with “we’re sorry to hear that, but we would still like the huge piles of money.” They will fight eternally.

But let’s look forwards, not backwards! Time to clear away the remaining news items and get ready for 2025:

  • The city of Boston signed a lease with the NWSL club BOS Nation FC to play at the city-owned White Stadium, which will be rebuilt at a cost of around $200 million, of which taxpayers will cover $91 million or more. According to Boston Business Journal, the team will “keep the bulk of revenue from matches” aside from 10% of in-stadium advertising revenues and 3% of concessions revenue, while paying $400,000 a year in rent (rising by 3% each year) and a $1-per-ticket surcharge. (The renovated stadium will also be available for use by Boston public school teams on days when BOS Nation FC doesn’t need it, though presumably they won’t need things like the restaurant and beer garden being planned for the pro team.) There is no possible way taxpayers won’t take a bath on this unless every single soccer ticket buyer spends around $1,000 on concessions, which seems a bit ambitious.
  • WJLA-TV interviewed businesses near the current Washington Commanders stadium — well, a cashier at one brunch restaurant — to find out what they think of the team maybe moving to a new stadium in D.C., and she replied: “We’re busy on Sundays. I think the Commanders fans, they bleed into our Sundays. They’re in the areas. These are popular shopping areas. Definitely probably going to see an increase post- or before the games.” Definitely probably! No need to interview anyone else, slot that in for the 6 pm news.
  • George Petak died. You know, this guy. Out of respect for his family and friends, I will not make any jokes about potential efforts to recall him from heaven.

That’s all she wrote! See you back here on Monday.

Share this post:

RFK land bill sets up bidding war for Commanders, this can’t be good

access_time personNeil deMause

The budget bill that passed Congress late Friday night and forestalled a government shutdown did not include a provision handing over the RFK Stadium site to Washington, D.C., but a separate measure passed early Saturday morning, and everybody is excited! The Washington Post called it “a stunning win” and “a political miracle,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said the bill was important to “get control of this land so that we can make it productive,” House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (yes, that guy) called it a “historic moment for our nation’s capital,” and even Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said the bill means his state “is going to be better in the future than what it is right now” because of promises from Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris to pay for the demolition of the team’s old stadium and contribute to redevelopment of its site.

Not mentioned in any of this, of course, is who would pay how much for a new Commanders stadium, on the RFK site or elsewhere, and that’s where things get potentially dicey. Moore has said he’s looking forward to competing to keep the Commanders, and Harris is still considering sites in Virginia as well. That spells bidding war, and the last time we saw one of those in the D.C. area, it didn’t end well: Even after Virginia lawmakers turned down the Wizards and Capitals‘ demands for a billion dollars for an arena in Alexandria, D.C. officials still approved more than half a billion dollars for renovations to their current arena, apparently just out of happiness to be allowed to spend anything at all. Bowser already indicated that she’s provided unspecified concessions to Maryland politicians to get the land transfer through — could be trading an air national guard squadron, could be something else, nobody’s saying — and it’s anyone’s guess what could be offered to Harris, especially when Bowser has clown consultants claiming a Commanders stadium would be worth as much as $1.26 billion in LOLeconomic output.

None of which has anything to do with whether the RFK Stadium site makes more sense for being centrally located and easy for fans from all regions to get to, or less sense for being centrally located and a waste of valuable public land, or anything else separate from the potential subsidies, because these deals are almost invariably all about the potential subsidies. More to be revealed in the 2025 legislative sessions, no doubt.

Share this post:

Friday roundup: Sixers arena OKed after protests, RFK site transfer KOed by Elon Musk

access_time personNeil deMause

Weekly news roundup, special abbreviated travel edition:

Share this post:

Friday roundup: A’s charging $200 each for Sacramento tickets, DC hires NFL-linked firm to study building NFL stadium

access_time personNeil deMause

How much additional stadium news was there this week? So much so that I skipped posting anything yesterday, just so I could start on the bullet points for this roundup. That’s just how much I care about you, the readers of this site. (Also I couldn’t bear to write entire posts for any of these, they were all either too silly or too depressing or both.)

On with the news:

  • There were rumors that Oakland A’s management was going to force fans to also buy Sacramento River Cats season tickets if they wanted A’s season tickets in Sacramento next year, but it turns out that’s not true. What is true: A’s fans wanting season tickets will have to commit to buying them for the “duration” of the team’s stay in Sacramento, and tickets will run between $185 and $250 per seat per game. (UPDATE: The Sacramento Bee reports that that’s only for “premium” season tickets; it’s unclear if there will be non-premium season plans, or if so what they will cost.) At least A’s players won’t have to suddenly acclimate themselves to playing in front of crowds bigger than the intimate affairs they’ve grown used to since owner John Fisher alienated all his fans in the Bay Area.
  • Washington, D.C. is exploring building a new Commanders stadium by agreed to pay $565,000 for a feasibility study to ASM Global, which Fox5DC describes as “a company with extensive experience managing NFL stadiums,” but which is more accurately described as a subsidiary of Legends Entertainment, which is co-owned by the New York Yankees and Dallas Cowboys. Surely they will deliver an unbiased and comprehensively researched cost-benefit analysis of building an NFL stadium in D.C., why would you ever think otherwise?
  • Not only is the city of St. Petersburg forcing its top employees to pay back $250,000 in bonus checks it sent out for overtime work on the new Tampa Bay Rays stadium project, now city administrator Rob Gerdes has suspended city HR director Christopher Guella for a week as punishment, despite Mayor Ken Welch having defended the bonuses as “within budget and my administrative authority.” Gerdes says this is because the bonuses actually turned out to be illegal; Welch insists it’s just because he wanted to avoid a bad look, though if so he really should have checked first with Barbra Streisand about how well that works.
  • Illinois labor leaders are pushing for the state to fund sports stadiums for the Chicago Bears and White Sox and Red Stars, because “unions want to build,” according to AFL-CIO president Tim Drea. And they don’t like building the things that won’t get built if the state saves a few billion dollars by not building stadiums? Somebody get them on the phone with the Nevada teachers union, they have a lot to talk about.
  • Two Cleveland city councilmembers walked around the Browns stadium during an exhibition game and asked more than 3,000 fans if they’d rather the team stay at the lakefront or move to Brook Park, and most said they prefer the lakefront. Of course, since these were people at a game at the lakefront, you’d expect them to skew more toward wanting to see games there, since people who skip going to games because they’re at the lakefront wouldn’t be at a game at the lakefront. Anyway, what did the fans say about how much they want the city government to spend on a new or renovated Browns stadium? Oh, they didn’t ask about that? Opening day is two weeks from Sunday, plenty of time for the councilmembers to plan a new round of canvassing.
  • The Dome at America’s Center, former home of the St. Louis Rams, needs $150 million in upgrades, according to the stadium authority that runs it and surely would never lie about something just to get a nicer space to rent out at public expense. The dome is currently rented out for “assemblies for large conventions, Metallica and Beyoncé concerts, and even some lower-level professional football games,” which surely will make it easy to earn back $150 million, so long as Metallica never stops touring.
  • Saskatoon needs to come up with $400 million in public money toward a $1.22 billion development to include a new arena for the Saskatoon Blades, and it plans on raising the money via a long list of uhhhh, we’ll get back to you: maybe hotel taxes, maybe TIF property tax kickbacks, maybe money from the province, who knows? “What would the city look like without SaskTel Center or without TCU Place?” asked Saskatoon director of technical services Dan Willems. “Would we be able to attract newcomers and help major employers attract talent to our city without these types of amenities?” Shh, don’t tell him.
Share this post:

Friday roundup: Kansas-Missouri stadium border war gets hot, yet another non-economist cited as economics expert

access_time personNeil deMause

Happy heat dome Friday! Hope those of you in the parts of the U.S. that are broiling are staying inside watching soccer tournaments and cranking the air-conditioning and … okay, maybe that isn’t the best plan. We’ll try to come up with a better one before the Paris Olympics, which will once again provide athletes from around the world with the opportunity to compete for medals and maybe die of heatstroke. (Or mutant sharks. But more likely heatstroke.)

Where was I? Oh, right, stadium and arena scams, plenty of those to go around while we wait for the world to boil:

  • Missouri elected officials are up in arms over Kansas elected officials’ passage of legislation to allow selling billions of dollars of tax-funded bonds to lure the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals across state lines, and are also prepared to work on their own stadium subsidy legislation in response. “Today’s vote regrettably restarts the Missouri-Kansas incentive border war, ” said Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, adding, “We remain in the first quarter of the Kansas City stadium discussion.” Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, calling the Kansas stadium bond legislation “a wakeup call to Missouri,” said he expects his state to put together its own legislation later this year. It’s all going according to plan!
  • Meanwhile, some developer dude took it upon himself to hire an architecture firm to design a rendering of a Royals stadium on the Kansas-Missouri border, with most of the stadium in Kansas but the right field wall in Missouri, that wouldn’t cause any problems figuring out which state would collect sales taxes to then kick back to team owner John Sherman. Lots of nice fireworks and people flinging their hands in the air, though.
  • WTOP reported Wednesday: “The projected benefits of a new Washington Commanders stadium being built in D.C., which were detailed in a report the city released last week, are largely honest and reasonable, according to a University of Maryland economist who reviewed it.” Unfortunately, three sentences later the radio news station revealed that Michael Faulkender is actually a finance professor, not economics, which is not the same thing at all. The University of Maryland does have an economist who’s an expert in stadium deals, but WTOP didn’t ask him for his opinion, they must have wandered into the wrong classroom building, that probably happens a lot.
  • Facing a vote on whether or not to commit to spending $775 million in public money on upgrades to Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan’s stadium, the Jacksonville city council yesterday pushed back — on spending $94 million on affordable housing and homelessness prevention as part of an accompanying “community benefits” package. The council says it’ll still come up with the money after taking “some time this summer to work on this,” and it doesn’t affect the $150 million from Khan for community benefits (over 30 years, so really only worth about half that amount), so nothing to worry about, elected officials never go back on their promises!
  • Charlotte was apparently “working on [a Carolina Panthers stadium] deal for a year and a half” before letting the public in on the details, yeah, that might be a story.
  • I personally prefer not to get my news in video form, as you’ve no doubt noticed from the endless scroll of plain text that is this website, but if you do, this report from More Perfect Union on “How Sports Team Owners Scam Communities Out of Billions”  is worth checking out: It has me in it, and also an A’s fan organizer saying “we’re all about kicking John Fisher in the nuts,” what’s not to like?
Share this post: