Sorry, Google's Blogger editing is messed-up again, so some of the post below is chopped-up, despite numerous efforts to fix it and make it right.
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Today we have proof positive that even devout sports fans recognize that at some point the bread-and-circus show must be tempered by financial realities, regardless of what the elite fan may be willing to pay for premium service.
And in some cases, the days of the tail wagging the dog may be nearer an end than we thoought, which is all to the good.
The very readers that Newsday's Neil Best addresses in his column today are the intended consumers of the new Yankee Stadium, yet they reveal thru their common sense comments, below, that they have a much more realistic feel for the economic cost appropriateness of certain enhanced 'gold leaf' stadium design aspects being paid for by taxpayers -versus the Yankees share- than the columnist, whom I often agree with.
Just not this time.
It's the same sort of gut-check and uneasy feeling about who should be paying for what in a prospective Marlins
Stadium that currently exists in NE Dade (and SE Broward) today among many of the sports fans and voters I speak to on a daily basis, even among those who STILL SUPPORT a taxpayer-funded Marlins Stadium in Little Havana.
Which is to say, one without reliable mass transit nearby.
They also wonder why the Marlins have had so little public pressure placed on them by the powers-that-be of this community to be more forthcoming and transparent with quantifiable facts and figures.
Could it be because many of those very people and their organizations have bought completely into the Miami Mega-Plan as a panacea for this area's ills, ignoring its resemblance to a runaway 'Edifice Compex ?
Before spring training starts next month, it would be a great positive change for the better locally if South Florida's print and TV reporters actually picked-up on that fan/voter sentiment, and gave some voice to it, rather than relegating it to the perpetual cynic column.
Instead, though, South Florida's media seem to be generally be following what seems like almost a scripted format, wherein they show-up at press conferences at the Steve Clark Bldg. or Dinner Key to record what is said, regurgitate what they hear without asking any hard questions, and then take the Marlins' word for every thing, seemingly doing no original research of their own regarding the accuracy of the time and costs estimates given by the govt. and the Marlins, despite how laughably absurd they seem on their face.
I hadn't originally planned on mentioning it until the time came, but one of my small number of New Year's resolutions, to the
extent that I believe in that sort of thing, is to to start publicly calling out the wimpy local South Florida sports reporters who refuse to ask tough questions of the Marlins, the county and the city, especially those on TV who seem to flinch at the oppotrtunity when it present itself.
Darn, there just never seems to be enough time for them to ask the questions that ought to be asked.
So far, in the years since I've returned to South Florida, the only two local TV sportscasters I've seen who've distinguished themselves by reliably refusing to swallow the Marlins' baloney that other sportscasters swallow whole, are former Dolphins Joe Rose and Kim Bokamper, of Channel Six/WTVJ and Channel Four/WFOR respectively.
And that's true of them on both TV and their appearances on WQAM.
That's it, that's the whole list.
That's pathetic, of course, but that's the sad reality of the quality of journalism in Miami in the year 2009.
Obviously, Michael Putney and Glenna Milberg have done more than their fair share in trying to illuminate the myriad Marlin stadium issues, thru both their news reporting and their segments on Channel 10's Sunday morning public affairs program,
This Week in South Florida, but it shouldn't be their job alone to shoulder the burden of asking questions on this issue in this TV news market.
You'd think that the provision in the deal that literally makes the TENANT Marlins the de-facto Lords of the Stadium Manor, able to limit the number of outside county/city-sponsored commercial events held there to a minimum, even during the winter, wasn't a common sense deal-killer to begin with, if the idea is NOT to be a white elephant for taxpayers.
As if the fact that the majority of last year's Marlins' season ticket holders -people who've ALREADYvoted by putting their money where their mouth is, unlike Loria & Co.- actually live in Broward and Palm Beach Counties, not Miami-Dade, wasn't enough of an obvious marketing and logistical obstacle to a stadium being built on the sainted memory of the Orange Bowl.
All this time later, and WQAM's Jim Mandich is still the only media person in South Florida to consistently mention publicly how little the Marlins have actually contributed towards the costs of the preliminary plans and drawings.
Or the surety issue.
As to the latter, see Risa Polansky's straight-forward article from Miami News Today titled, Some Miami-Dade commissioners dissatisfied, 'disappointed' with meetings on Marlins Stadium agreements
Being a lover of American history, it's really not so surprising that I still recall the small area in front of the entrance to The National Archives on Pennsylvania Avenue that I passed hundreds of times during the 15 years I lived and worked up there, and the dozens of times I went inside the Archives, often doing tedious family history research looking at rolls and rolls of 19th-century Texas census records on microfilm.
When I lived there, I was often told that for most of the past sixty years, until the new FDR Memorial opened a few years ago, it was the only monument in D.C. to FDR, supposedly, done at his specific request.
All it says is a variation of Shakespeare's quote "The past is prologue."
"The Future," 1933-1935
Designed and modeled by Robert I. Aitken
Carved by the Piccirilli Brothers Company
Designed and modeled by Robert I. Aitken
Carved by the Piccirilli Brothers Company
Exactly!
So despite all the past lip service of Jeffrey Loria and David Samson to make some changes in their approach, when was the last time we ever saw an honest-to-goodness interview, print or TV, with someone in South Florida interested in joining the Marlins as an investor, to give them the deeper pockets they need to make the team more competitive on the field?
Or, actually able to pay their projected share of the proposed stadium and infrastructure costs?
Yeah, that's what I thought -me. too.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/opinion/15thu3.html
New York Times
Editorial
January 15, 2009
Whatever Yankees Want
The new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx is still months away from the first pitch of Opening Day. But suddenly a lot of people are questioning yesterday’s package deal for this luxurious ballpark in light of today’s struggling economy.
Seats for $1,500 a game? Suites fit for the royal family? A scoreboard fit for the Big Board? A fabulous steakhouse and granite ramps (no ordinary cement for this crowd)? This $1 billion-plus pavilion and park financed with a lot of taxpayer help is beginning to sound like something fit for the Wizard of Oz.
To pay for many of these add-ons, the Yankees now want — surprise! — more help from the city. They have asked the Industrial Development Agency for an additional $400 million in tax-free financing to finish the project. Unless the city’s leaders show some courage, the agency is expected to rubber-stamp that request by the end of the week, after a pro forma hearing on Thursday.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the development agency should renegotiate this latest round of what has always been an incredibly generous deal for one of the richest teams in the country. At a very minimum, they should insist that the Yankees pick up more of the city’s share of the project, which now amounts to $362 million.
About $326 million of that money will pay for demolishing the old stadium, building new infrastructure and replacing 22 acres of city parkland that was lost to the new stadium.
Yankee officials like to say that they are the ones paying to build this stadium, not the city’s taxpayers. That is only partly true. The public has subsidized the project in many ways — providing generous tax-exempt financing and a variety of other assistance like rent abatements.
Meanwhile, the total $362 million price tag to the city has almost doubled since the project was announced in 2006. And, according to the Independent Budget Office, the price dwarfs the $138 million the city will provide for the Mets’ new stadium across town.
Some city contribution to costs for these stadiums makes sense. But the real question is how much New York gets in return on this very hearty investment.
The Yankees promise over 6,000 construction jobs. But once their new house is built, there could be as few as 22 full-time, year-round positions.
What makes this latest request feel like “icing on the cake,” as Assemblyman Richard Brodsky puts it, is that the rest of the city is staring at such hard times and a looming $1.5 billion budget deficit.
Mayor Bloomberg has — rightly — had to cut city budgets and increase property taxes and explain to residents how times are bad and how we all will have to share the pain. It is time for Mr. Bloomberg to make that same pitch to the Yankees.
If the Yankees can sign megamillion-dollar contracts (C. C. Sabathia just landed one for $161 million over seven years), they should be flush enough to contribute more toward their new stadium and to the parks for people living nearby.
Mr. Bloomberg should insist that the Industrial Development Agency postpone consideration of this latest Yankee request and then renegotiate this deal. Is A-Rod’s agent available?
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Newsday
Bonds for Yankees is hardly a handout
Neil Best
January 16, 2009
In a purer capitalistic world, sports teams wouldn't ask cities to help with stadium financing, the federal government wouldn't bail out failing companies and the tax code wouldn't offer perks such as deductions for mortgage interest.
That's not the world we live in, though, for both better and worse.
Thus, while New York City's role in helping the Yankees and Mets build their new sports palaces is and should be a subject of intense public interest and debate, the core mission remains valid: Part of what government does is throw its financial weight around for perceived common good, whether that be attainable home ownership or iconic public gathering places, especially in depressed areas.
The former goal might be more obvious and noble, but the latter has its place, particularly in a city such as New York, whose unapologetic grandeur is part of its global brand appeal - just as with one of its most powerful sub-brands: the New York Yankees. That's a theory, anyway.
Yesterday, it confronted reality in a crowded meeting room in lower Manhattan in which the New York City Industrial Development Agency held a hearing on whether to approve more tax-exempt bonds for the new Yankee Stadium and Citi Field.
The Mets strictly were bit players in the ensuing drama, their relatively modest building and relatively modest financing getting relatively little mention.
It was the big, bad Bronx Bombers who were the subject of most speakers, pro and con, as the IDA heard arguments before today's vote - widely assumed to be a done deal -- on whether to approve $370 million in new bonds ($259 million of them triple tax exempt) atop $942 million the Yankees got in 2006.
Many of the pro-Yankees speakers were off-point, praising the team's largesse in the community.
Many anti-Yankees speakers simply were off, talking as if the city had handed over to the team the entire cost of the stadium, snatching it out of the hands of New York's hungry, homeless and undereducated. In fact, the point is to ease the financing path with government-issued bonds the Yankees will repay.
It was easy to get lost in the fog of information and misinformation, which only was exacerbated by the latest spat between Yankees president Randy Levine and Assemb. Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester), who seem to have developed a strong personal dislike of one another. Brodsky ripped the IDA, calling yesterday's hearing and events leading up to it "illegal" and "an abuse of the democratic process" and "disgraceful."
Levine once again accused Brodsky of "grandstanding on the Yankees name," called him "pathetic" and accused him of using "Soviet-style politics." "He'll say anything, do anything," Levine said.
"It's a shame people cover him because he's involved with the Yankees." I'm trying not to be naive here.
The city is picking up tens of millions in infrastructure costs, combined with lost tax revenue from the bonds.
It wouldn't hurt for the Yankees to try to ease that burden somehow, even with a token few million here or there, given the current economic malaise.
The most compelling community-oriented argument presented at the hearing was the loss of parkland in the Bronx, which has been "replaced" by a patchwork of small sites in the area. It's all spectacularly complicated, and there is no doubt the Yankees and city leveraged what they could in the inevitable back-and- forth of the project, as less visible businesses do all the time.
But beyond the financing data and free-agent spending sprees and typical Yankees overstatement when it comes both to the facility -- steakhouse, granite ramps, etc. -- and political rhetoric is a simple argument that Levine made yesterday: "At the end of the day, I would ask you one question: In this city, at this time, if you can find me another employer, one, who's putting this kind of money into the City of New York and employing this many people in the City of New York, I'd like to know.
I think the answer is there are none."
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