Baseball Been Berry Berry Good to Me?

Yesterday I pointed out that government sponsored economic development plans have been a disaster--City North is vacant, the Civic Center can't meet its debt payments and the TSA is struggling to pay its bills.

While some "economic development" projects are simply ridiculous.  Others are actually pretty seductive.  The Legislature is currently debating  whether or not to raise taxes in order to keep the Cubs in Mesa. 

None of this is new.    For years, stadium deals have been sold as an economic panacea.  It's interesting to take a look back at how those deals have gone.

From New Jersey to Ohio to Arizona, the stadiums were sold as a key to redevelopment and as the only way to retain sports franchises. But the deals that were used to persuade taxpayers to finance their construction have in many cases backfired, the result of overly optimistic revenue assumptions and the recession.

Comments

[Steve]

Good article. A few things that make the Mesa deal much much better. The Cubs pay to maintain the stadium, in essence picking up all of the costs.
Every penny above the money allocated from the state and city is paid for by the Cubs.
The Cubs are also 100% responsible for the retail and mixed-use portion, something that doesn't exist in their current setup in Mesa. That's just icing on the cake and not needed to make the deal work. The Cubs are a different beast then a year-round home team. Their very presence brings people in from out of town to spend money.

[Geoff]

Baseball, a sport where owners refuse to institute a salary cap or implement the successful NFL model of revenue sharing, is going to see the state legislature force the fans of small market teams like Milwaukee and Kansas City to subsidize one of the three wealthiest teams, the Cubs?

I think if the other teams' fans are forced to come with 8% of their ticket price in additional taxes, the teams they support should receive 8% of the revenue the new Mesa stadium brings in for the Cubs.

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