Quote:
Originally Posted by OldDutch
Not that anyone learned from it. Given all these teams seeing cheap land and repeating history
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In some cases, it's a scam, pure and simple. I've discussed this before, but it was some years ago, so I beg leave to recap:
In the 19th century, scummy promoters in the U.S. would offer to open up new territory by building a railroad, in exchange for a big land grant from the state. They would set up two companies – one for operations, the other to hold the land grant – sell stock in the operating company to the public, build the road as cheaply as possible, and then let the operating company go bust. They walked away with the land grant, and the state would have to bail out the railroad so the settlers would not get stuck without transportation.
The modern version of this swindle is to buy a sports franchise, get public money for an arena or stadium, plus a big chunk of land for an ‘entertainment district’ around the site. Then you sell off the (money-losing) franchise and leave the city or county on the hook for the arena, while getting filthy rich by developing the cheap land around the facility. That's what was supposed to happen in Glendale, but the 2008 financial crisis wiped out the commercial real estate market and
everybody involved went bust.