Quote:
Originally Posted by verybadgnome
There are other options as well such as supporting a team, but not willing to subsidize it. 99% of businesses in Austin get nothing in the way of subsidies and if your business needs one I have to question the value of the good or service you provide. The economic case for stadiums, aside from the intangibles like civic pride, is pretty awful:
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/econo...ican-taxpayers |
I don't think 99% of business in Austin get no subsides unless you want to treat all business equal. I would guarantee that the top employers by both salary and employee count do. And that's without getting cute about the fact that our two largest employers operate on state owned land that the city doesn't get to tax.
I generally think that stadium subsidies ought to be illegal or at least highly restricted on a national level, but I don't know how you do that. And until you do there will always be some other city willing to snipe your team, which means you better pony up when the owner wants a new stadium or you will lose a beloved past-time of your citizens. I think generally handing billionaires tons of money to build out something that is a profitable enterprise is dumb. MLS is a bit of a trickier widget as there is a lot of speculation by owners on potential future value of these franchises. Right now MLS has a garbage TV deal, decent average attendance and a serious problem of being looked at as a lower tier soccer league. Average salaries look to crest into the top 10 (top 8?) leagues in the next decade and the league is smartly expanding into solid markets in search of a TV deal (currently losing average viewers to Liga MX and EPL by a lot) and to try and become the pre-eminent soccer league on this continent (though, they have a *LONG* way to go to catch Liga MX in quality). So, this is an off-chance instance of which I think the owners probably do need to defray some risk as building a 200MM stadium is likely to not turn a profit for Precourt for a decade+ if ever.
The thing about this particular stadium is other than the taxable value of the land and whatever sales price the city could fetch we aren't on the hook for a bond package or stadium financing which puts this stadium deal on the "good end" of local city fleecing.
Lots of these studies also ignore the fact that many of these stadiums wind up built in suburbs nationally with overly rosy projections of growth for a suburban environment. Urban stadiums actual tend to bring economic growth.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6f0...1d192a2731.pdf
There isn't good conclusive data on this, but lots of the issues that these studies point out is that suburban or fringe of downtown massive stadiums surrounded by parking lots do not spur economic growth. An integrated stadium into the urban fabric of a city may.
I would also posit that there are lots of "soft" benefits to stadiums. It's hard to state for sure, but there is something to be said for the overall attractiveness of a city on potential job seekers and job creators that is hard to measure or even attribute to a stadium.
Austin has always had a lot going for it, but there is a strong correlation with the opening of COTA and the cities explosive economic growth in tourism and international tourism. None of this is objective, but I have several times in Europe stated that I live in Texas and was asked "Oh, Austin?" which can be attributed to 1) Austin having a relatively high GDP per capita and a young population that I fit the profile of 2) Austin has stronger international name recognition because of the race.
We could argue around for days, but assuming the new Broadmore development gets off the ground and North Burnett continues to grow the stadium will find itself right smack dab in the middle of our second downtown and population center of the city. It's on us and council to make sure we push for smart growth in that area and make it pedestrian friendly because 20+ games a year filtering into local bars and restaurants can have a very large impact to the area.
It also means prying JJ Pickle away from UT and getting them to sell off some of that land.
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The anti-stadium urbanist crap is silly as shit.
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