Flames to announce plans to announce arena plans in the... future...

[nik-]

It's great that they're passionate about hockey, but so is Calgary, which happens to have twice the population and a significantly more affluent fanbase.

It's really not close.

[Loyal and True]

Originally Posted by nik-

That's the thing though, it's all exaggerated claims, just on a smaller scale with an NHL arena (which will still be close to half a billion).

You are exaggerating. It's not all exaggerated claims, there are some benefits. The investment should be smaller, something reasonable for the benefits received. $100M every 25 years seems more reasonable IMO.

If they want more....add in a ticket levy to be paid by ticketholders. The Present value of $14M per year (paid monthly) in levy revenue is $202M (using 5%). If this happens then a portion of every ticket goes to govt coffers. Gov't receives $350M over 25 years for its $202M

Then the owners come up with $100 to $150M on their own and the city is not responsible for cost overruns.

[Loyal and True]

Originally Posted by nik-

It's great that they're passionate about hockey, but so is Calgary, which happens to have twice the population and a significantly more affluent fanbase.

It's really not close.

Define affluent.

Calgary is a boom/bust economy which **currently** has a massive population and high income per capita. The 90s were not that long ago. People can move back to BC, SK, MB, Maritimes and US just as quickly as they got here.

[nik-]

Well if we're so susceptible, the last thing we should be doing is giving handouts for new arenas for pro sports teams.

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Loyal and True

You are exaggerating. It's not all exaggerated claims, there are some benefits. The investment should be smaller, something reasonable for the benefits received. $100M every 25 years seems more reasonable IMO.

If they want more....add in a ticket levy to be paid by ticketholders. The Present value of $14M per year (paid monthly) in levy revenue is $202M (using 5%). If this happens then a portion of every ticket goes to govt coffers. Gov't receives $350M over 25 years for its $202M

Then the owners come up with $100 to $150M on their own and the city is not responsible for cost overruns.

There are definitely benefits, it's cool to have a new arena, there's just no proof of economic benefits. I don't know what the solution is, I'm just not interested in being extorted by billionaires, which is often how this plays out.

[Loyal and True]

Originally Posted by nik-

Well if we're so susceptible, the last thing we should be doing is giving handouts for new arenas for pro sports teams.

I am not the one who's cocky about Calgary's affluent market vis-a-vis other Canadian hockey towns. Towns which, by the way, have invested in buildings even though they are "not even close" to Calgary in affluence.

[nik-]

Well that's kind of their problem. I'm aware that other cities pay for arenas, I just don't think we should, this is not an extreme opinion I'm holding here. And saying Calgary is a better market than Winnipeg and QC because of the massive population difference and more affluence isn't cocky, it's just a straight up fact.

[Loyal and True]

Originally Posted by nik-

There are definitely benefits, it's cool to have a new arena, there's just no proof of economic benefits. I don't know what the solution is, I'm just not interested in being extorted by billionaires, which is often how this plays out.

I can understand your suspicion towards extortion by billionaires. However in Calgary our owners have a long track record of community support in every way imaginable.

I'll go overboard with my next comment to stretch a point:

I might rather have this ownership group extort $100 million from the City of Calgary's spending budget and let the owners continue to build more cancer centres or university buildings then let City Council spend the $100M on whatever they seem to come up with at city hall.

[nik-]

Charity and community investment is tarnished when the community is handed a bill at the end. Even if the bill says "for arena" at the top.

[EldrickOnIce]

Originally Posted by nik-

If you think that all studies agree with the Ottawa one, we're done here, because you're so very very wrong. So wrong.

You're mixing arguments. The Ottawa study reports the economic benefits of an NHL team and facility, not anything to do with publicly funding it.
Those economic benefits to a city/area are an absolute certainty.

That fact, and who pays for them are entirely separate things. And all evidence suggests that Edmonton will be left hold at least a half empty bag that used to hold the half billion they dropped in to that project.

How am I am wrong in that, this is what I wrote in the post you responded to above

What probably none suggest (except the stupid City Shaping propaganda out of Edmonton) is that a new facility stimulates economic development/growth and will broaden/expand the tax base such that it pays back a huge investment, like Edmonton's half billion dollars.

Somewhere between zero and a half billion - and definitely closer to the zero part - there is hopefully middle ground where rational beings will find equilibrium.

[EldrickOnIce]

Originally Posted by Loyal and True

Thanks for the links and I read them over. Some good points in these articles but far from suggesting like "governments should put in zero dollars to these stadiums because there is zero economic benefit"

Most of the examples are $500M to $1B deals which were sold to the public with exaggerated claims. It's not hard to agree that there is not enough marginal benefit to repay that cost. I think there is a lot to learn from the mistakes of other cities. Some of these are county governments that really got burned trying to draw development away from the big city.

Nothing in there to suggest $100M is a bad investment every 20 to 30 years

^ This

You want to read a reportfull of those kind of exaggerated claims, read City Shaping. It tells how badly the half billion in Edmonton is needed to be the best investment ever for Edmonton taxpayers and the long term future of Edmonton.

Edit for link to City Shaping:
http://www.edmonton.ca/city_governme...haping_PDF.pdf

[nik-]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

You're mixing arguments. The Ottawa study reports the economic benefits of an NHL team and facility, not anything to do with publicly funding it.
Those economic benefits to a city/area are an absolute certainty.

The only certainty is that that is the money spent on things connected to the Senators. It is in no way proving that the Senators and their arena are creating those expenditures, only that they are the recipients.

Do you understand the difference here?

[Tinordi]

That Ottawa study is not worth the paper it's printed on.

You can show economic impacts from basically anything.

[Tinordi]

What matters is marginal economic activity from a new arena compared to a scenario where public funds weren't used to build it.

Again,you will not find a single study that shows that that's a good idea.

The backward rationalizing is getting a bit annoying. People want a stadium and are then making up reasons why the city should pay for it.

[EldrickOnIce]

Originally Posted by nik-

The only certainty is that that is the money spent on things connected to the Senators. It is in no way proving that the Senators and their arena are creating those expenditures, only that they are the recipients.

Do you understand the difference here?

Yes, I understand the difference - but that isn't what the study saiys. However, one can choose to not accept it's findings as fact.

[EldrickOnIce]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

That Ottawa study is not worth the paper it's printed on.

You can show economic impacts from basically anything.

So you read it. Where is their methodology flawed?

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

So you read it. Where is their methodology flawed?

It disagree's with Tinordi's opinion, therefore it must be completely and utterly worthless.

[Tinordi]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

It disagree's with Tinordi's opinion, therefore it must be completely and utterly worthless.

Nice swipe.

All that's required is a quick google of economic impact analysis versus cost-benefit analysis to understand that no economist or policy analyst takes EIA's seriously. They're basically marketing fluff masquerading as science.

But again, try to add substantively to the debate it looks bad on your argument repeated ad hominem's with little else.

[Tinordi]

Here you go Resolute, because I know that your priors are likely too hardened to be challenged by you going out and doing the research yourself:

Companies facing regulatory hearings like Kinder Morgan, groups promoting events like the Vancouver Olympics, or politicians justifying public expenditures like the new hockey arena in Edmonton generally talk about the benefits of their projects using a tool called economic impact analysis. This technique takes spending, runs it through a statistical model, and predicts impacts of that spending on both GDP and employment.

There are, basically, two issues with this method, and both are wonderfully illustrated by the oil spill example. First, the method is agnostic as to what the money is spent on, so money spent cleaning up an oil spill looks remarkably similar to money spent building a new hospital or school in terms of economic impact. Second, the technique generally does not account for where the money comes from, or how it would otherwise have been spent. Money spent on a hockey arena in Edmonton might otherwise have been spent on light rail or tax reductions, both of which would also have economic impacts. In the case of an oil spill cleanup, the costs are likely to be directly incurred by an insurance company, but the premiums paid for that insurance come at the expense of the value of the oil transportation service—the higher the expected clean-up costs from oil spills, the higher insurance premiums will be, and this will mean higher pipeline tolls, which in turn implies lower profits, taxes, and royalties on the products shipped. Simply-put, there’s no free lunch.

Economic impact analysis leads to what economists have known for decades as the broken windows fallacy—the idea that rebuilding existing things creates economic growth by requiring people to spend money. The oil spill is a perfect example of this fallacy, but of course it’s one in which we all know intuitively that oil spills are bad, so it seems ridiculous to talk about the benefits of cleaning them up. The fact that the technique we use to evaluate the benefits of spending in general only makes sense when we know the spending is beneficial should raise more than a few flags.Economic impact analysis is a wonderful tool for confirming your pre-existing biases and for justifying anything. For this reason, it’s a terrible tool for analyzing economic benefits because it never yields negative numbers—all spending is good spending as far as an economic impact analysis is concerned. All spending creates jobs. The trick, it seems, is to only listen to the results when it’s a project you like.

http://www.macleans.ca/economy/econo...-sounds-leach/

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Here you go Resolute, because I know that your priors are likely too hardened to be challenged by you going out and doing the research yourself:

I'm not sure what makes you more endearing. The fact that you are a total narcissist, or the fact that you are a massive hypocrite. Just as a suggestion... you should probably avoid making ad hominem attacks literally nine minutes after crying about the same.