Stadium #TotalFail

### ODT Online Fri, 14 Nov 2014
Opinion: Your say
Learning from stadium-related mistakes
By Rob Hamlin
One of the few good things about making mistakes is that you can learn from them, and avoid making the same kind of mistake again.
It is pretty clear that the FB Stadium has been a mistake on the part of the Councillors that voted for it. It has not come close to delivering the economic or social benefits that were predicted by its backers at the time. The figure arrived at in an earlier response to the above article [ODT Online] of $22 million loss per year, appears to be about right for this facility’s current annual cost to the community once all the cross-subsidies and clever fiscal two steps have been eliminated. On the social front, unlike the Moana Pool and Edgar Centre facilities that it is often compared with, the Stadium lies empty 95%+ of the time. Both these failures might just be forgiven if it was an attractive structure – but the Taj Mahal it ain’t.
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Another oft-cited council asset…….

Moana Pool | Swimming New Zealand

### ODT Online Sat, 15 Nov 2014
Party to mark long success of sporting and social hub
By Chris Morris
Moana Pool’s golden jubilee is to be marked with a splash, and Mayor Dave Cull is confident the facility has plenty of life still left in it. The 50th anniversary of the pool’s opening on November 14, 1964, was celebrated yesterday with the unveiling of a photographic exhibition of the pool’s early days.
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The ‘convenient’ shonky comparison lives on…….

### ODT Online Sat, 15 Nov 2014
Moana Pool paid off, despite price
By Chris Morris
Forsyth Barr Stadium is not the first controversial building to capture headlines in Dunedin. Fifty years ago, a decade of debate, disagreement and concerns about the cost preceded the opening of Moana Pool.
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This is all painfully familiar…

blog.svconline.com

The trials of the Phoenix Coyotes, the least popular hockey team in the NHL, offer a lesson in public debt and defeat.

### theatlantic.com Sep 7 2012, 2:37 PM ET
Business
If You Build It, They Might Not Come: The Risky Economics of Sports Stadiums
By Pat Garofalo and Travis Waldron
In June, the city council of Glendale, Arizona, decided to spend $324 million on the Phoenix Coyotes, an ice hockey team that plays in Glendale’s Jobing.com Arena. The team has been owned by the league itself since its former owner, Jerry Moyes, declared bankruptcy in 2009. For each of the past two seasons, Glendale has paid $25 million to the league to manage the Coyotes, even as the city faced millions of dollars in budget deficits. Now, Greg Jamison, who is also part of the organization that owns the NHL’s San Jose Sharks, is making a bid for the team, and would therefore be the beneficiary of the subsidies.

“Take whatever number the sports promoter says and move the decimal one place to the left. Divide it by ten. That’s a pretty good estimate of the actual economic impact.”

To put the deal in perspective, Glendale’s budget gap for 2012 is about $35 million. As the city voted to give a future Coyotes owner hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, it laid off 49 public workers, and even considered putting its city hall and police station up as collateral to obtain a loan, according to the Arizona Republic. (The latter plan was ultimately scrapped.) Overall, Glendale is not only on the hook for $15 million per year over two decades to a potential Coyotes owner, but also a $12 million annual debt payment for construction of its arena. In return, according to the Republic, the city receives a measly “$2.2 million in annual rent payments, ticket surcharges, sales taxes and other fees.” Even if the Coyotes were to dominate the league like no other in recent memory and return to the Stanley Cup Finals year after year, the city would still lose $9 million annually.

“It’s kind of a perverse argument that taxpayers should subsidize this because businesses depend on this deal that isn’t viable.”

This is an altogether too common problem in professional sports. Across the country, franchises are able to extract taxpayer funding to build and maintain private facilities, promising huge returns for the public in the form of economic development.
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[Link supplied]

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr