Why are billion dollar sports stadiums being built with public money in US cities with the WORST housing affordability?

Photo above - San Francisco's Chase Center arena. Home to the Golden State warriors, and signature Hennessey V.S.O.P and Moet & Chandon cocktails (the Golden 75) . . . and the nation's worst home affordability index. Silicon Valley Tech Moguls with property tax breaks made it happen.

‘The stadium is secondary’: how US sports teams became real-estate speculators | US sports | The Guardian

Quick . .. where is America's MOST EXPENSIVEST sports stadium? Go to the head of the class if you know it's SoFi Stadium, in Los Angeles. Home of the Rams AND the Chargers. Completed in 2020. Cost? $5 Billion!!! WTH!!! That's $72,000 per seat!! How much of that was public money (tax credits, land grants, road improvements, utilities upgrades, etc)? Websites disagree, but they got a LOT! The stadium operators admit to $100 million in tax relief. Who knows what they DONT admit to? Los Angeles has the worst housing affordability index in America, except possibly for . . .

San Francisco, where the Chase Center – home to the Golden State Warriors - was completed in 2019. But the Warriors' Arena “only” cost $1.5 billion. Because it's a basketball court, it has fewer seats, then it should be cheaper, right? The construction cost per seat is even higher though – about $85,000 per. Oh, and they built the Levi's Stadium in SF (49ers) for $1.4 billion in 2014. Bet you couldn't build it for that today, after all the inflation, eh?

New York, New York . . . has the Barclays Center (Nets) and the Met Life Stadium (Giants and Jets, both losers), but technically that's on the NJ side of the river.

Oddly enough, even though Las Vegas built TWO giant stadiums in the past 5 years, neither of them were tagged by casinos for naming rights. Allegiant Stadium and T-Mobile Arena. But I'm not claiming that Las Vegas has the worst housing affordability problems. Land is flatter, cheaper, and less regulated near Vegas.

So . . . billions and billions for stadiums. Big public money involved. And people chillin' in tents on the sidewalks nearby. The rationale for public financing of sports venues is always the same: JOBS!! Yeah . . . um . . . food vendors? Janitors? Parking attendants? Security guys? Where do THEY live? 50 miles away, where someone has a prayer of getting a 2 bedroom walk up for less than $5,000 a month?

In some cases local politicians will remind us that a funding referendum was held. Or a public hearing during a city council meeting. Both special interest AND voter opinion was obtained. Nobody wants to see their local team pack up and leave due to having tacky, outdated skyboxes. Well, maybe the Giants and Jets, who ended up in NJ. But look how well most of the other teams are doing!

There is, of course, no guarantee that “stadium money” would have been used for affordable housing, even if rational decisions had been made on how to spend tax dollars. Politicians suffer from a crisis of confidence when it comes to public opinion. They routinely vie with personal injury lawyers, used car salesmen, and cable TV newscasters for dishonesty rankings.

Let's look at the bright side, though. Hot dog vendors at the Los Angeles SoFi stadium are getting the new $20 per hour minimum wage, as of January 1st. But do they work enough hours selling beer and hot dogs (or sushi – this is Los Angeles!) to make ends meet? I suspect some are working 2nd and 3rd gigs. Amazon picker, Uber, Door Dash, whatever. And the rest? They might be living in tents.

I'm just sayin' . . .

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LeopoldBloom · M

Stadiums promote business development in their vicinity, leading to tax revenue (at least, that’s the theory) so cities pay for them with that expectation.

MethDozer · M

@LeopoldBloom In theory. Most of the time the locations stadiums are put in remain or become the biggest shit holes in town.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@MethDozer in philadephia (near where my mom lives) they're going to build the new 76'ers (basketball) arena in chinatown. tear down like a 10 square block area for the arena itself, parking, access ramps to the interstate, etc.

this what leads to loss of affordable housing. displacing established neighborhoods to enrich sports moguls.

MethDozer · M

@SusanInFlorida Modern America hates culturally distinct neighborhoods.

LeopoldBloom · M

@SusanInFlorida In LA, Dodger Stadium displaced the long-standing Chavez Ravine community. The land was originally going to be used for a public housing project.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@LeopoldBloom i should do a column on airports maybe. those use up a LOT of acreage.

MethDozer · M

@SusanInFlorida Do golf courses.

LeopoldBloom · M

@SusanInFlorida Imagine how much smaller airports could be if we had a national bullet train system.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@LeopoldBloom i don't disagree. but how will we protect the 500 miles of tracks between Los Angeles and San Francisco from sabotage? Apparently you can cause these things to crash just by throwing a shopping cart onto the tracks. At 120 mp they take 5 minutes to come to a complete stop.

If nobody thinks this is a real problem, just look at the efforts we go to keeping terrorists from boarding planes.

LeopoldBloom · M

@SusanInFlorida I was thinking about that. First, the tracks would have to be elevated, with a barrier of some sort. You also don't want children or animals wandering onto them. An elevated berm with a fence would prevent or at least impede a surprise attack like the one you describe. There would also have to be a monitoring system, probably AI watching all sections of the track and slowing or stopping oncoming trains if a problem was detected.

How does security work in places where they already have bullet trains? We've had Amtrak for a while, but I don't recall anyone derailing one even though most of the track is unguarded and completely exposed.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@LeopoldBloom i've seen videos of several european derailments. none involved cows or ISIS. the most recent was some engineer who was talking to his girlfriend on his cell phone, and forgot to hit the brakes while the train was still 5 miles away from the station. 90+ people were killed.

LeopoldBloom · M

@SusanInFlorida In other words, operator error. Going by passenger miles traveled, trains are still safer than planes.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@LeopoldBloom no question at all. if you asked me would i feel safer in a train or plane. it's train. especially if the plane is operated by some foreign carrier/nation.

i'd feel my chances of surviving a train wreck were higher than plane crash too. just ask the relatives of the missing malaysian air jet.

that said, I have little desire to spend 40 hours going cross country in a bullet train, when I could get there in 4-5 by jet. Jet's don't crash often enough to scare me. you're far more likely to die in a car crash on your way to the airport or train station than on the plane/train itself.

LeopoldBloom · M

@SusanInFlorida Trains make more sense for shorter trips, especially when you factor in the waiting time at the airport. As for passenger miles, flying is a lot safer than driving. For a country the size of the US, there should be a workable mix of options.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@LeopoldBloom commuters would probably say we are at that "workable mix". i'm not sure what 500 miles of new rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles is supposed to prove. Other than anything China does, we can do more expensively, and take longer at it?

nobody is going to commute between those two cities.

Joe Biden has a train station in Wilmington Delaware named after him. A train runs from there to Washington DC. There are no commuters for that 3 hour trip either. But as senator, Joe got the train station upgraded, and the renamed it after him.

LeopoldBloom · M

@SusanInFlorida People don't commute between LA and SF? There are 40 million individual trips between those two cities annually. A train system might take some of the pressure off the airports.

As I said, you need a mix. Many cities still rely on commuting by car. One thing that impressed me about Washington DC, Portland, and the Bay Area was how easy it is to get around on public transportation. I haven't been to LA for 20 years, but when I lived there, you had to go everywhere either by car or on the shitty bus system they had. I understand that they've put in some urban rail since then, but I've also seen the ten-lane freeways full of cars, so it's clearly not adequate.

There are 116 flights between Wilmington and DC, so clearly there's some other reason why people don't want to take the train besides just lack of demand for that trip. Counting typical travel time to the airport on either end, boarding, and wait time, the 34 minute flight takes an average of 5 hours total end to end. There's travel, boarding, and wait time for trains, too, but not nearly as much. So the total travel time is probably similar for both.