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Old Posted Sep 11, 2019, 6:35 PM
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Pedestrian Pedestrian is offline
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Location: San Francisco
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Quote:
Originally Posted by observatory View Post
Actually SF voters narrowly passed twin bond measures for $100 million towards a new $525 million 49ers stadium-mall complex back in 1997. It was former owner Eddie DeBartolo's involvement in a Louisiana gambling boat scandal that derailed that SF stadium effort as he was forced to give up his ownership role with the team and the new stadium plan soon went down with him.
I don't remember the details now but my recollection was that in the case of both the Giants and 49ers there was a public contribution but it was mostly in the value of the land, not cash to help with construction costs. Also in the case of the 49ers, there was negotiating around unexpired leases and renovation of Candlestick vs a new stadium and so on--it got complicated. But what SF never did is what you seemed to be against--and which I am also against--which is to put public dollars not obligated by previous arrangements (such as promises to spend the same dollars renovating Candlestick) into a sports arena to be owned by the team or its owner.

Debartolo was never popular in SF, being from Ohio. I don't think losing his involvement would have been a critical negative. But memory dims.
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