[News] "Scotia Place" ground breaking and design release on July 22 1pm MT

[Freeway]

Originally Posted by Yeah_Baby

Which I understand from a shared cost perspective, but doesn't a lot of the literature and research suggest that the 'revitalization' outcomes are in reality more limited than first thought?

(of note: not saying anything about the arena deal itself, it is what it is, more just wondering about the trends going forward)

The results of "revitalization" in the literature are mixed.


Suddenly having a new arena downtown won't create economic activity. It's meant to attract economic activity from elsewhere in the city downtown. In that sense, I don't hate the idea behind it.

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by 3thirty

As others have said NHL, MLB, NBA make sense to be in populated or easily accessible areas due to the sheer number of games and weekday events. NFL is different as they have 8 home games a year usually on weekends and rarely host concerts or other events.

US is also a different animal because cities, counties and states will throw around money. Chicago and Kansas City basically try to get them all bidding against each other to get more money and end up moving far away. Its not like some suburb of Calgary is going drop off a dump truck of money to steal the arena.

Football teams all dream of being the Dallas Cowboys as well and building up all around their stadium as well so the are making money constantly and there is more land outside of the cities. Washington is moving back to DC however - so it goes both ways.

[Yeah_Baby]

Originally Posted by Freeway

The results of "revitalization" in the literature are mixed.


Suddenly having a new arena downtown won't create economic activity. It's meant to attract economic activity from elsewhere in the city downtown. In that sense, I don't hate the idea behind it.

It probably also depends on what the goal posts are too right? It really can't be a magic bullet that some folks want it to be me. But if someone's version of a revitalized area is folks coming to spend money then heading back to the suburbs, for something closer to folks living in denser neighborhoods or grass roots community building etc.


Thanks, Freeway, for entertaining my line of thought/picking your brain. If anyone was going to knowledgably going to nerd out on this stuff I figured it would be you.

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by OldDutch

Not that anyone learned from it. Given all these teams seeing cheap land and repeating history

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.

[fotze2]

Originally Posted by Yeah_Baby

It probably also depends on what the goal posts are too right? It really can't be a magic bullet that some folks want it to be me. But if someone's version of a revitalized area is folks coming to spend money then heading back to the suburbs, for something closer to folks living in denser neighborhoods or grass roots community building etc.


Thanks, Freeway, for entertaining my line of thought/picking your brain. If anyone was going to knowledgably going to nerd out on this stuff I figured it would be you.

I have no time for gentlemanly conversation style, you need to call him a c-word to be right!!!!