The Stadium Effect

[simms3]

Creative Loading: The Stadium Effect

Interesting read on how stadiums have impacted surrounding neighborhoods.

Excerpt:

To make up for the hardship caused by the new facility, millions of dollars were pumped into Summerhill, helping turn shotgun shacks into the two-story Craftsman-style houses you see today. Olympic officials also cut a deal stipulating that more than 8 percent of parking revenue from Braves games and other events would be stored in an account known as the SMP Community Fund and then split between the three neighborhoods â€" thus tying revenues from parking lots to community benefits.

...

But nearly everyone CL spoke with for this story yearns for the economic development and opportunities which longtime residents remember existing before Summerhill was razed. Aside from a dry cleaner, convenience store, and a barbecue restaurant, few retail options exist.

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On days there is no game scheduled, the stadium's surrounding area is a ghost town â€" a sea of parking lots more than three times the size of the ballpark's footprint. It's easy to see how the vacant properties immediately surrounding the stadium would be ideal for mixed-use development, parks, and businesses that could serve the young couples, families, and elderly residents living in the neighborhoods. (Many of whom told CL that they pine for a decent place to buy groceries, eat a meal, and drink a beer.)

...

A few neighborhood property owners began to notice that parking cars on their lots was quite lucrative. In a few instances, Keating says, a home would mysteriously catch fire, clearing the way for a parking lot.  "Somebody said if we burn this [house] down we can put a lot in there," says the Georgia Tech professor, who focused on the stadiums' effects in his book, "Atlanta: Race, Class, and Urban Expansion." "It stimulated more destruction of the neighborhood. Who's gonna build a house next door to an informal parking lot? You're gonna come back and your car will be on blocks. It retards development."

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To compensate the community, the state, city, and Fulton County set up a $10 million housing trust fund to pay for affordable homes in Vine City, using favorable fixed-rate mortgages and home refinancings. But Motley claimed the program was "structured for failure." The fund would only reimburse developers building affordable housing after they completed the work, which required securing a loan, a difficult move for the local nonprofit builders.

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But overall, Graveline says, when you factor in the estimated $1.75 billion annual economic impact of the Dome and GWCC, the jobs created and sustained, was it worth doing?

"The answer," he says, "would always be a resounding 'hell yes.'"

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Newman, the retired GSU professor and urban affairs expert, relays a story often told by former United Nations Ambassador and Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, who helped win support for â€" and boost the communities surrounding â€" Lakewood Amphitheatre by helping local out-of-work residents start businesses that worked with the music venue. For example, veterans partnered and formed a firm that provided security at the amphitheater. Single mothers trying to raise children on welfare started a small concessions business and worked at Lakewood selling cotton candy, sodas, and other items.

"Eventually everyone in the neighborhood was invested in the success of Lakewood," he says. "The less people feel like it's something being done to them, it's something being done with them."

It's also possible, local urban designers and planners say, to stitch a stadium into the fabric of auto-oriented, tailgate-addicted Atlanta that could engage people and surrounding neighborhoods â€" rather than simply dropping a monolith on downtown, A-bomb style, killing all businesses in a one-mile radius.

As conversations with the Falcons move forward about a new facility that could alter the city's landscape, and the Braves making clear they're not leaving Turner Field any time soon, there are signs that some of residents' concerns are landing on the radars of top officials.

In 2010, a group of Georgia Tech students conducted a one-year design studio â€" which they presented to Invest Atlanta, the city's economic development arm â€" looking at how to break up Turner Field's mammoth parking lots into small, walkable blocks that could handle a variety of mixed-use possibilities. Think Wrigley Field in Chicago, Camden Yards in Baltimore, or, even better, San Diego's Petco Park, considered the gem of new ballparks. Parking could be used in decks on the periphery, perhaps even in the barren space between the stadium and the interstate.

Atlanta City Councilwoman Carla Smith, the area's councilwoman, has high hopes that the redevelopment plan the neighborhoods created and approved in 2006, would pave the way for such mixed-use redevelopment to take place and make the area immediately next to Turner Field not just a place to visit for ball games, but possibly to live. "You could invite people over and hang out on your porch and listen to the game," she says, almost giddy with excitement. "It'd be fun."

It'd also be a better experience for Braves fans who, instead of walking though a parking lot, could first cross a park featuring the baseball diamond where Hank Aaron made history. Or they could opt to spread out a blanket in an adjacent public green space nearby, and watch the game on a massive big screen.

Mike Plant, the executive vice president of the Atlanta Braves business operations who says the team has been a part of "a lot of conversations" about improving the area in such a way, played coy when asked about the future of the property surrounding Turner Field.

"Look at San Diego, Denver, Houston," he says. "Those were challenged areas. And a stadium came in and became the nucleus for some pretty interesting and attractive development. It's not rocket science. It's a little bit timing and finance. ... Stay tuned."

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It would seem likely that the team or Blank, whom community leaders have praised and called a good neighbor, would help build Mims Park, a 16-acre green space envisioned for mostly vacant parcels on the border of Vine City and English Avenue. The project is being pushed by Rodney Mims Cook, a well-heeled and well-connected Buckhead booster of classical monuments who built the Millenium Gate, Atlantic Station's Arc de Triomphe.

Such an investment would jibe with Blank's past philanthropic contributions and corporate ethos: a targeted investment that could reap dividends, rather than a one-time lump of cash to be tapped by civic groups â€" something community leaders say they wouldn't want.

[Tacachale]

This is what happens when you allow leagues to run monopolies over their sport and then hand them billions in taxpayer dollars to operate as they do.

[JFman00]

Article on the mechanics of it: In Stadium Building Spree, U.S. Taxpayers Lose $4 Billion

Tax exemptions on interest paid by muni bonds that were issued for sports structures cost the U.S. Treasury $146 million a year, based on data compiled by Bloomberg on 2,700 securities. Over the life of the $17 billion of exempt debt issued to build stadiums since 1986, the last of which matures in 2047, taxpayer subsidies to bondholders will total $4 billion, the data show.

Including the Cowboys’ Jones, there are 21 NFL owners whose teams play in stadiums built or renovated in the past quarter- century using tax-free public borrowing. Such municipal debt helped build structures used by 64 major-league teams, including baseball, hockey and basketball. The new generation of publicly owned stadiums was designed to increase revenue from high-priced seating as well as concessions and retailing. The venues have helped double the value of sports franchises since 2000, according to W.R. Hambrecht & Co., a financial services firm.
That growth occurred even after Congress tried in 1986 to bar cities and states from building stadiums with tax breaks originally set up to help local governments cut their borrowing costs for building roads, sewers and schools. Lawmakers’ revisions instead unintentionally encouraged local officials to borrow even more for pro sports, according to Dennis Zimmerman, a retired Congressional Research Service economist who analyzed the act’s effects.

“You come back to this thin line of, ‘What is a legitimate municipal government undertaking?’” Packwood said. While he draws the line at sports venues, he said too many voters and local politicians don’t. “If the owner can get away with the public putting up part of the money, he’s going to do it.”

[simms3]

San Franciscans said fuck it when the owners of the Giants wanted public funding for a new ballpark.  Now they have a great ballpark in a great district, though it is smaller.  The city did give a tax abatement (that's fine, all one has to do is look at all the new development in the area), and paid for a Muni connection (see prior note about development).  The team pays rent to the port.  Of course they are one in one teams using no municipal money.

Arthur Blank will put up at minimum $300M of his own cash for the Falcons' new stadium, but it's going to cost well more than twice that.  Personally, I'm very much against a new stadium.  How about better transit connections first or better pedestrian connections in the area?  That's apparently not how things work nowadays when the tail wags the dog.

The ONE area where the state goes gung ho about helping Atlanta is with the convention center and the football stadium, so I'm sure the city is drooling at the thought of any sympathy and monetary assistance from the state.  In any and all other situations the state shits on the city and does whatever it can to screw it over.

[dougskiles]

The Georgia Dome is 20 years old.

I bet many of the schools in Atlanta have portables that are more than 20 years old.

This is nothing more than keeping up with the Jones's.

[tufsu1]

This is nothing more than keeping up with the Jones's.

literally

[billy]

No one ever sems to use Wrigleyville rather than Camden Yards as a model.

[fsquid]

No one ever sems to use Wrigleyville rather than Camden Yards as a model.

because there are restrictions on how many night games can be played in Wrigley because of the neighborhood.  I think they say that the restrictions cost them $5 million in revenue.

[Ocklawaha]

Seattle is an interesting study, both major stadiums located within, and connected to, broad sidewalks within a block or two of King Street (railroad) Station. On one side you have railroad tracks and then immediately downtown, on the other you have a street and then immediately part of the container port. The area around the stadiums while not residential in the pure sense of the word are certainly vibrant, busy places.

[Tacachale]

No one ever sems to use Wrigleyville rather than Camden Yards as a model.

because there are restrictions on how many night games can be played in Wrigley because of the neighborhood.  I think they say that the restrictions cost them $5 million in revenue.

Boo hoo. The Cubs are hardly hurting.

Seattle is an interesting study, both major stadiums located within, and connected to, broad sidewalks within a block or two of King Street (railroad) Station. On one side you have railroad tracks and then immediately downtown, on the other you have a street and then immediately part of the container port. The area around the stadiums while not residential in the pure sense of the word are certainly vibrant, busy places.

Yes, it's amazing what you can do with a billion dollars in taxpayer money.

[fsquid]

Boo hoo. The Cubs are hardly hurting.

not the point.  My post was in response to the poster who mentioned that no one uses it as a model.

[fieldafm]

Yes, it's amazing what you can do with a billion dollars in taxpayer money.

Tacachale just hates baseball, football, apple pie.. and perhaps even America.   

[Tacachale]

^If you think that's bad, don't get me started on college sports.

[finehoe]

"The basic idea is that sports stadiums typically aren't a good tool for economic development," said Victor Matheson, an economist at Holy Cross who has studied the economic impact of stadium construction for decades. When cities cite studies (often produced by parties with an interest in building the stadium) touting the impact of such projects, there is a simple rule for determining the actual return on investment, Matheson said: "Take whatever number the sports promoter says, take it and move the decimal one place to the left. Divide it by ten, and that's a pretty good estimate of the actual economic impact."

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/if-you-build-it-they-might-not-come-the-risky-economics-of-sports-stadiums/260900/

[mtraininjax]

At least when the Jags came to town, the city put up money from bonds, without raising taxes to cover the bonds. In Cincinnati, they stuck it to the citizens with a half cent sales tax, the kind that never end, to pay for Paul Brown Stadium. Businessweek referenced that stadium as the most expensive in the US in its entire use of public funds. The Bengals did not put a dime into it, all publicly financed. Talk about getting the shaft!