strib: Twins drop stadium's economic argument

[question everything]

startribune.com

Twins drop stadium's economic argument

Mike Meyers
Star Tribune National Economics Correspondent
Published June 19, 2005

Jerry Bell, lead man in the Minnesota Twins' bid for a new stadium, has given up on one of the arguments that the team used to make in pressing its case.

A publicly subsidized $478 million stadium could be great for the club, but Bell isn't saying it would also spur business activity in Minneapolis or Hennepin County.

(snip)

In dropping the stadiums-as-economy-boosters argument, the Twins are acknowledging what economists long have argued: Stadiums built for pro sports fail to deliver measurable financial returns for their communities.

The histories of the Xcel Center, Target Center and Metrodome -- all acquired chiefly with public money -- show that stadiums usually fall short of promises that they will provide monetary benefits to the public.

Consider the Metrodome: Opened in 1982 at a total cost of $68 million, its boosters predicted that the stadium would be a magnet for new construction in a part of downtown that hadn't seen new private investment for years. Instead, the building boom of the 1980s and 1990s in downtown Minneapolis bypassed the Metrodome neighborhood.

(snip)

The Target Center, acquired by the city of Minneapolis from private developers at a cost of $74 million in 1990, now sits next to the Block E entertainment center, but Block E was built only through $40 million in public subsidies.

The Xcel Center, opened at a total cost of $130 million in 2000, became something of a laboratory this past winter for measuring whether the presence -- or lack -- of professional team sports hurts a city's economy, when the NHL lost its entire season because of a labor dispute between players and owners. From November through April, sales tax receipts in St. Paul totaled $7 million, up $181,000, or 2.6 percent, from the same period a year earlier, when fans were regularly filling the Xcel for Minnesota Wild games, according to the St. Paul Office of Financial Services.

(snip)

http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/5463027.html

Mike Meyers is at [e-mail].

[loveable liberal]

1. where's savelmo for a rebuttal?

[no name no slogan]

2. I've wanted to say this for a while so here goes:

HA!

[Spike from MN]

3. Gee, what a coincidence.

Do you suppose this has anything to do with the bill proposed by Phil Krinkie and John Marty? In case you haven't heard of it, their Stadium Fair Funding Act would require that profits be shared between the Twins and the taxpayers proportional to the amount that each party invests. The bill was proposed on June 10 and the above article is dated June 19 but that must be pure coincidence. I'm sure the bill had absolutely nothing to do with the Twins doing a 180 on their whole "economic boon" argument. :sarcasm:

Here's a link:

http://startribune.com/stories/1519/5449160.html