NFL Merry-Go-Round: Relocation Roundelay

[BrySmalls]

On 2/25/2022 at 5:46 PM, Dynasty said:

Both Dulles and Woodbridge are hell of a distance, but I don't know how realistic it would be to have them close enough to D.C.. Anything from there to Fairfax is largely congested and I'd think they'd want to make it close enough to an airport for visiting teams to not get stuck in the congestion.

 

Woodbridge might have the land and toll roads, but it doesn't have a transit line, not as many hotel options as Dulles, or "close" proximity to a major airport.

Dulles has the Commanders HQ, the additional land, airport, hotels, toll roads (not too busy on the weekends), and a transit line (extending to the airport by July 2022).

 

Building the stadium near Dulles is the logical choice. Based on Snyder's lack of sound decisions lately, he'll build the stadium in the Woodbridge area.

[Red Comet]

1 hour ago, gosioux76 said:

 

I'm not an economist, just a skeptic, so I'm not really qualified to question deMause' analysis. I can see how this theory works in a region like, say, Los Angeles or Seattle, where the options for local entertainment are in multitudes. But I'd question whether the same is true for a place like Buffalo, where there aren't as many alternatives, and where the team is very much a cultural institution rather than a part of the surrounding noise. 

 

I'm not suggesting investing in a stadium is a good use of public funds, I just think don't think it's as much of a black-and-white issue for communities like Buffalo that identify so closely with their teams. 

Being from a city around the size of Buffalo, I can confirm that, no, a new arena really didn’t do anything for us and it’s a white elephant. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

The Bills stadium is used at most 10 times a year by the Bills. Do they do concerts or rodeos or anything else?

 

Lumen Field has the Seahawks, Sounders, UW and WSU football sometimes, plus concerts and soccer exhibitions. All things considered, it's used more than most.

 

Would a stadium in Buffalo see more use? MLS...maybe?

[DCarp1231]

“Cinderella” location in Maryland for new Commanders Stadium-

 

https://www.si.com/nfl/washingtonfootball/.amp/news/washington-commanders-stadium-development-virginia-dc-maryland-dmv

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

2 hours ago, gosioux76 said:

I'm not an economist, just a skeptic, so I'm not really qualified to question deMause' analysis. I can see how this theory works in a region like, say, Los Angeles or Seattle, where the options for local entertainment are in multitudes. But I'd question whether the same is true for a place like Buffalo, where there aren't as many alternatives, and where the team is very much a cultural institution rather than a part of the surrounding noise. 

 

I'm not suggesting investing in a stadium is a good use of public funds, I just don't think it's as much of a black-and-white issue for communities like Buffalo that identify so closely with their teams. 

 

That is a reasonable and intuitive assumption.  However, deMause has claimed repeatedly that there are many studies that demonstrate the existence of the substitution effect (note: sorry, I previously referred to it as the "replacement effect") in cities of various sizes.  I believe that several of these studies would have been done by economist and Smith College economics professor Andrew Zimbalist.

The lone instance that deMause acknowledges where the outlay of public money for a stadium was worth it  is the case of the Giants' new ballpark.  This is partly on account of the relatively small public expenditure — a contribution of about $20 million of public funds towards a stadium that cost more than $300 million — and partly on account of the surrounding area booming.  (Of course, while this may be a rare instance of public money for a stadium not having been wasted, deMause also points out that the area where the stadium sits was booming before the stadium got there, and so would have done so with or without the stadium.)

By contrast, in the Buffalo example, the public expenditure would be $1 billion, or a whopping thirty times the cost (when figured in the equivalent in today's dollars) to San Francisco's (much richer) citizens. 

[gosioux76]

43 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

That is a reasonable and intuitive assumption.  However, deMause has claimed repeatedly that there are many studies that demonstrate the existence of the substitution effect (note: sorry, I previously referred to it as the "replacement effect") in cities of various sizes.  I believe that several of these studies would have been done by economist and Smith College economics professor Andrew Zimbalist.

The lone instance that deMause acknowledges where the outlay of public money for a stadium was worth it  is the case of the Giants' new ballpark.  This is partly on account of the relatively small public expenditure — a contribution of about $20 million of public funds towards a stadium that cost more than $300 million — and partly on account of the surrounding area booming.  (Of course, while this may be a rare instance of public money for a stadium not having been wasted, deMause also points out that the area where the stadium sits was booming before the stadium got there, and so would have done so with or without the stadium.)

By contrast, in the Buffalo example, the public expenditure would be $1 billion, or a whopping thirty times the cost (when figured in the equivalent in today's dollars) to San Francisco's (much richer) citizens. 

 

This is really interesting. I know I should just read the study, but for the sake of discussion, I wonder if this takes into account intangibles like whether the public investment enabling development of a stadium can be attributed to keeping that team in the market. 

 

For example, if you can say with any degree of certainty that Buffalo's investment of $1B in pubic money was absolutely needed to build the stadium, that there were no other logical sources of capital, and the investment would prevenut the Bills from eventually moving to Toronto or somewhere else, would that then make the investment justified? 

 

Lots of qualifiers there, I realize.

 

This argument makes me think to the St. Louis effort to keep the Rams. At the heart of their lawsuit against the Rams and the NFL was that the defendants induced the city to put up public money to invest in a stadium proposal at a site along the Mississippi River out of the belief that it still stood a chance of keeping the team there. Say what you will about whether that was realistic, but in my mind it represents an example of where there was the potential for a justified municipal investment in order to retain a civic asset. 

[Red Comet]

The issue to begin with regarding whether stadiums should be publicly funded was that the voters in these locales time and time again were promised that it would be an economic boon. Now that said boon hasn’t worked out, that argument has lost legitimacy. Seems like they’d have an easier time getting welfare from cities going forward if they just played on the insecurities of cities: “You don’t want to be a hick town do you? Then pay for our palace!” Which is how the Sprint Center (now T-Mobile Center) was built in KC. That and we were promised an NBA or NHL team. 

[leopard88]

On 3/10/2022 at 11:01 AM, gosioux76 said:

 

I'm not an economist, just a skeptic, so I'm not really qualified to question deMause' analysis. I can see how this theory works in a region like, say, Los Angeles or Seattle, where the options for local entertainment are in multitudes. But I'd question whether the same is true for a place like Buffalo, where there aren't as many alternatives, and where the team is very much a cultural institution rather than a part of the surrounding noise. 

 

I'm not suggesting investing in a stadium is a good use of public funds, I just don't think it's as much of a black-and-white issue for communities like Buffalo that identify so closely with their teams. 

 

22 hours ago, gosioux76 said:

 

This is really interesting. I know I should just read the study, but for the sake of discussion, I wonder if this takes into account intangibles like whether the public investment enabling development of a stadium can be attributed to keeping that team in the market. 

 

For example, if you can say with any degree of certainty that Buffalo's investment of $1B in pubic money was absolutely needed to build the stadium, that there were no other logical sources of capital, and the investment would prevenut the Bills from eventually moving to Toronto or somewhere else, would that then make the investment justified? 

 

Lots of qualifiers there, I realize.

 

This argument makes me think to the St. Louis effort to keep the Rams. At the heart of their lawsuit against the Rams and the NFL was that the defendants induced the city to put up public money to invest in a stadium proposal at a site along the Mississippi River out of the belief that it still stood a chance of keeping the team there. Say what you will about whether that was realistic, but in my mind it represents an example of where there was the potential for a justified municipal investment in order to retain a civic asset. 

 

I'm not saying DeMause and Zimbalist are wrong.  However, I think they understate the economic impact of visiting teams and fans.  Presumably, all of the members of the Boston Red Sox and a sizable number of their fans wouldn't travel to Baltimore on two weekends each summer and spend money on hotels, food and souvenirs if Camden Yards wasn't there.  The money spent by them is not merely moving from a suburban restaurant or a movie theater to the stadium.  It is being brought into the city's economy from another market.

 

With regard to keeping a team in the market, there is economic and intangible value in that too.  I don't know how to quantify the impact, but a city gets valuable publicity every time national television coverage of a Big Four/Five sporting event shows shots of someone making crabcakes or throwing fish around a public market or riding the incline in Pittsburgh.  There is also intangible value in being able to say that your city is a "big league" city.

 

I'm not saying these things justify public spending on sports venues without asking questions.  However, I also don't think it is accurate to say that there is zero return on investment with regard to the local economy.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Agreed. People don't care about, say, Tulsa like they do OKC in part because for a large portion of the country, there's no connection to Tulsa. OKC, if nothing else, has the Thunder. I don't know the economic value of that, but it's not zero. (though I guess you'd have to subtract that from public revenues that find sports facilities, and that's how we got to this convo in the first place.)

[BrySmalls]

On 3/10/2022 at 1:18 PM, DCarp1231 said:

“Cinderella” location in Maryland for new Commanders Stadium-

 

https://www.si.com/nfl/washingtonfootball/.amp/news/washington-commanders-stadium-development-virginia-dc-maryland-dmv

 

That Maryland site is promising. I hope that it ends up being the winning stadium location.

[Cosmic]

More details are trickling out about the *wink wink* totally not finalized Bills stadium deal. The county executive says that the rumored $1B in public money is "not accurate" (meh... who knows), but importantly, he said that the deal includes a long-term lease. At least with throwing a giant pile of money at the team, the county will own the stadium (as they do now).

 

Quote

“I want to remind everybody this is not just a discussion on the construction of a stadium but a long-term lease and everything that goes along with it,” Poloncarz said, reiterating that his goal is a “fair deal” for taxpayers that keeps the Bills in Buffalo long-term.

https://www.wivb.com/news/poloncarz-1b-public-funding-for-bills-stadium-not-accurate/amp/

[throwuascenario]

On 2/26/2022 at 11:45 PM, the admiral said:

I don't think it's a top-down initiative. I do think people are becoming allergic to cities again and starting a new cycle of white flight, which is about the last thing we need but we're doin' it anyway. Also, Virginia has been courting the team for years and years now -- they've been getting a little fussy about being the largest state without a sports team, and this would be the one to get. I don't like it, but some of the most enormous evildoers in the world are already based in Northern Virginia, so what's one more?

 

I don't think this is true in general. More and more people are moving into cities and their downtown cores. The Patriots started the trend and the Rams popularized it. Of having an entire campus instead of just a stadium. Why collect revenue only on gamedays when you can find cheap land and make it much more valuable just by virtue of putting an NFL stadium next to it? This is why they're building apartments, hotels, restaurants, stores, and whatnot. It has nothing to do with the demographics of the area. The NFL is so popular at this point that people would go either direction to go to the games. Into or out of the city core. They just to own all the land around the stadium.

[DoctorWhom]

Honestly, I'm glad the Patriots are in a suburb like Foxboro instead of an already congested city like Boston or Hartford. 

Going to Bruins/Celtics & Red Sox games is already a pain in the ass, namely to park. Trying to add a Football stadium would just be another nightmare. Another reason the Revolution don't have their own stadium either. 

Gillette parking is beautiful because there's so much empty wooded land just for parking. 

One thing the Patriots added not too long ago was free backlot parking, where it's free but the exit gate doesn't open until 2 hours after the game. It's a win-win & my book and so much better than going to game in traffic laden Boston. 

 

Boston added a commuter rail stop to Foxboro specifically for Patriots & Revs games a few years ago, so it's not even a travel issue. 

 

I'm honestly surprised more owners haven't tried to follow Kraft's example. Getting a huge ass plot of land and make your own little mall alongside the stadium. I can't imagine how cost effective it must be for him.  

 

 

 

[dont care]

12 hours ago, DoctorWhom said:

Honestly, I'm glad the Patriots are in a suburb like Foxboro instead of an already congested city like Boston or Hartford. 

Going to Bruins/Celtics & Red Sox games is already a pain in the ass, namely to park. Trying to add a Football stadium would just be another nightmare. Another reason the Revolution don't have their own stadium either. 

Gillette parking is beautiful because there's so much empty wooded land just for parking. 

One thing the Patriots added not too long ago was free backlot parking, where it's free but the exit gate doesn't open until 2 hours after the game. It's a win-win & my book and so much better than going to game in traffic laden Boston. 

 

Boston added a commuter rail stop to Foxboro specifically for Patriots & Revs games a few years ago, so it's not even a travel issue. 

 

I'm honestly surprised more owners haven't tried to follow Kraft's example. Getting a huge ass plot of land and make your own little mall alongside the stadium. I can't imagine how cost effective it must be for him.  

 

 

 

They’ve had that commuter stop for over 20 years. I remember riding to games on it as a kid before they built Gillette, 

[Red Comet]

NFL Owners approve of financing deal to help pay for new Bill stadium.  Remember when everyone thought the Bills would move to Toronto? Those times were funny. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

23 minutes ago, Red Comet said:

NFL Owners approve of financing deal to help pay for new Bill stadium.  Remember when everyone thought the Bills would move to Toronto? Those times were funny. 

 

They played an eighth of their games in Toronto. Had people showed up, the Bills would have had a maple leaf on their helmets by now.

 

EDIT:  I think the crazier sliding doors moment for Buffalo is what if the owners had let that other guy buy the Bills instead of the Pegulas?

[Brian in Boston]

It is mind-boggling that the State of New York ($600 million) and Erie County ($250 million) are going to be on the hook for just over 60% of the cost of building a facility to house the Pegulas' private, for-profit business entity. 

Oliver's restaurant in Buffalo has been packing-in customers - both locals and visitors - since 1936. Along the way, the business has employed countless workers and generated tax revenue for the City of Buffalo, Erie County, and the State of New York. When the current owner - David Schutte - decided to renovate the eatery in 2016, what would the reaction of local and state pols have been if the restaurateur had asked for public funding for 60% of the reconstruction and redecoration costs for the private, for-profit business?

 

How about the four generations of Salvatore family members who have overseen  the operation of multiple hospitality sector businesses - Italian/Prime,  The Delavan Hotel and Spa,  Chandelier Bar,  Salvatore's Garden Place Hotel amongst them - since their patriarch first launched a restaurant on Buffalo's east side in 1938? How much public money do we think local and state elected officials would have been in favor of investing into their private, for-profit ventures?

Why is it that certain private, for-profit businesses in the entertainment and/or hospitality sector - i.e. multimillion/billion pro sports entities - are showered with publicly-funded largesse, while the very thought of other successful, longstanding, tax-generating businesses receiving such aid would be considered absurd? It is a double-standard that's particularly maddening given the fact that after collecting a healthy amount of public funding for construction of the arenas, ballparks, and stadiums that their teams play in, it isn't long before most pro sports owners are subsequently pestering government entities for breaks on the taxes that their for-profit sports businesses generate. And if the local governments aren't willing to concede to the demands of team ownership at said point? That's when the owners start playing footsie with other municipalities looking to foot-the-stadium construction bill in order to land a  major pro sports team.

The fact of the matter is that many modern pro sports owners wouldn't deign to own a major pro franchise in one of the North American leagues if it weren't for the subsidization that said business entities enjoy, particularly in the area of having public funds build and maintain facilities for the teams.  

Corporate welfare of the most unseemly kind. But, hey... no price too high for our bread and circuses, right?   

[gosioux76]

43 minutes ago, Brian in Boston said:

It is mind-boggling that the State of New York ($600 million) and Erie County ($250 million) are going to be on the hook for just over 60% of the cost of building a facility to house the Pegulas' private, for-profit business entity. 

Oliver's restaurant in Buffalo has been packing-in customers - both locals and visitors - since 1936. Along the way, the business has employed countless workers and generated tax revenue for the City of Buffalo, Erie County, and the State of New York. When the current owner - David Schutte - decided to renovate the eatery in 2016, what would the reaction of local and state pols have been if the restaurateur had asked for public funding for 60% of the reconstruction and redecoration costs for the private, for-profit business?

 

How about the four generations of Salvatore family members who have overseen  the operation of multiple hospitality sector businesses - Italian/Prime,  The Delavan Hotel and Spa,  Chandelier Bar,  Salvatore's Garden Place Hotel amongst them - since their patriarch first launched a restaurant on Buffalo's east side in 1938? How much public money do we think local and state elected officials would have been in favor of investing into their private, for-profit ventures?

Why is it that certain private, for-profit businesses in the entertainment and/or hospitality sector - i.e. multimillion/billion pro sports entities - are showered with publicly-funded largesse, while the very thought of other successful, longstanding, tax-generating businesses receiving such aid would be considered absurd? It is a double-standard that's particularly maddening given the fact that after collecting a healthy amount of public funding for construction of the arenas, ballparks, and stadiums that their teams play in, it isn't long before most pro sports owners are subsequently pestering government entities for breaks on the taxes that their for-profit sports businesses generate.

The fact of the matter is that many modern pro sports owners wouldn't deign to own a major pro franchise in one of the North American leagues if it weren't for the subsidization that said business entities enjoy, particularly in the area of having facilities built and maintained for the teams.  

Corporate welfare of the most unseemly kind. But, hey... no price too high for our bread and circuses, right?   

 

I agree with this, and you showed some really great examples. But, for the sake of argument, let me ask this: Do we — and I mean the collective "we" — overstate the value of professional sports franchises to the cities in which they reside? In other words, you can argue that the state and county are ascribing more value to the Buffalo Bills as a community asset than they are, say, Oliver's restaurant. Is it fair or logical to do so? And by that same logic, is it fair to suggest the loss of the Bills would be greater than the loss of Oliver's restaurant? 

 

I completely understand the idea of this as an obvious double standard. And I'm no fan of corporate welfare. I do, however, wonder what a Buffalo without the Bills or a Jacksonville without the Jaguars would look like. I feel as if cities in this predicament are guided by a  fear of losing an already tenuous grip on stature, and that sitting idle while their NFL team, the one thing keeping them part of a national conversation, shuffled off to a new city would just expedite their descent into irrelevancy. 

 

It kind of calls into question the future of American cities and how we define their success. Is there a model for an aging Rust Belt city to reinvent itself for a new era without sports? My guess is "no," which is why the politicians are pushing all these chips onto the table. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

6 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

It kind of calls into question the future of American cities and how we define their success. Is there a model for an aging Rust Belt city to reinvent itself for a new era without sports? My guess is "no," which is why the politicians are pushing all these chips onto the table. 

 

Amazon HQ2? Foxconn America? If it's not sports and not tourism, then it's industry. And what does a city like Buffalo have to offer any level of investment to increase its stature? And based on the experience of Foxconn America and Amazon HQ2, why even bother to play that game?

 

I live in a city that "matters," and with it comes cost pressures in every direction -- food, housing, transportation, etc. Sometimes I Redfin homes in my home area of Western New York and marvel at those $300k mansions with tennis courts and wondering if and when I GTFO and go back there.

 

At the same time, owning a home is one thing, but paying for it is another. And I don't know what new jobs are coming up in Buffalo absent a reason to be there. And then once Buffalo (or Toledo or Harrisburg or Gary or name another mid-east city) gets some kind of major job center investment, then housing explodes and the problem resets itself.

 

So, no, I don't know.

[gosioux76]

6 minutes ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

Amazon HQ2? Foxconn America? If it's not sports and not tourism, then it's industry. And what does a city like Buffalo have to offer any level of investment to increase its stature? And based on the experience of Foxconn America and Amazon HQ2, why even bother to play that game?

 

I live in a city that "matters," and with it comes cost pressures in every direction -- food, housing, transportation, etc. Sometimes I Redfin homes in my home area of Western New York and marvel at those $300k mansions with tennis courts and wondering if and when I GTFO and go back there.

 

At the same time, owning a home is one thing, but paying for it is another. And I don't know what new jobs are coming up in Buffalo absent a reason to be there. And then once Buffalo (or Toledo or Harrisburg or Gary or name another mid-east city) gets some kind of major job center investment, then housing explodes and the problem resets itself.

 

So, no, I don't know.

 

Spot on with that. 

 

I think one of the overlying issues here is that no city wants to accept that they're smaller than they once were. You've heard of aging gracefully? There's no such think as a city shrinking gracefully, even if it would be prudent to do so. 

 

I mean, there are a lot of successful mid-sized cities that are affordable, have character and plenty of amenities. But I can't think of one of those cities that was, at one point, a much bigger metro area.  It just doesn't happen that way, which is why you end up seeing the Buffalos of the world willing to pay the price to hang onto their last scraps of big city identifiers. 

 

In fact, we tend to think of these as "dying" cities when, in reality, they're just right-sizing to the modern era. But nobody wins political campaigns by advocating for being smaller. It's go big or go home.