We are not envying the fine tax-paying folks of Kansas City and Tampa. For they are about to have their wallets molested to sate the appetites of the very rich barons of sport.
We take you first to Jackson County, Mo., where voters this month resoundingly rejected a new sales tax measure that, for the next 40 years, would have helped to pay for a new downtown Kansas City baseball park for the Royals and major renovations to the football Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium.
Fifty-eight percent of the voters rejected the plan. But the pressure now is on as the usual talk has begun about the franchises heading to greener taxpayer-funded pastures.
From one media report:
“The Royals, who had pledged at least $1 billion from ownership for their project, wanted to use their share of the tax revenue to help fund a $2 billion-plus ballpark district.
“The Super Bowl champion Chiefs, who had committed $300 million in private money, would have used their share as part of an $800 million overhaul of Arrowhead Stadium.”
Along with the coming tacit threats of moving, expect – as was the case in Pittsburgh 30 years ago – all manner of political machinations to orchestrate an end-around and, by hook and/or by crook, find another way to force the public to help pay the kind of huge capital costs that only the owners of the sports franchises should pay.
Now, let’s move on to Tampa Bay. That’s where we find reports “that a new Tampa Bay Rays [baseball] stadium could cost taxpayers far more than initially thought.”
As Gomer Pyle might react, “SooPRIZE! SooPRIZE!”
As The Center Square reports it:
“The new stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays would include the development of 65 acres in the historic Gas Plant District that surrounds the field, which would offer affordable housing, shopping and entertainment venues at an initial cost estimate of $1.3 billion.
“The cost of the project would be shared between the City of St. Petersburg, Pinellas County and the Tampa Bay Rays’ ownership group Rays-Hines.
“The city would pay an estimated $287.5 million, which would include $130 million toward infrastructure, while the county would pay $312.5 million and Rays-Hines would pay the remainder and any overruns,” Center Square says.
But it cites a report from Florida Tax Watch that pegs the “real cost of the project to the city and the county, which is estimated to be a total of $2.4 billion, not $600 million, when accounting for parking garages, infrastructure support and lost revenues.”
The report also says “the city would pay an estimated $1.6 billion, including $704 million for the new stadium and supporting infrastructure, $411 million in lost property taxes and $545 million in lost city revenue from the sale of 64 acres to Rays’ ownership.”
“Pinellas County would pay its share of $809 million, $587 million toward the new stadium and $222 million in lost property taxes. Neither the city nor the county has the funds to cover this expense.”
Talk about “public purpose” cluster-cluck, eh?
Kennesaw State professor J.C. Bradburry, in a posting on X referenced in the Center Square report, reminded that sports stadiums are “terrible development anchors.”
He said that while the initial $600 million proposal would have cost local taxpayers $5,263 per household, “according to the new estimated cost to the city being $1.6 billion, this would translate to $14,035 per household.”
How special is that?!
But what does all this have to with Pittsburgh? Past being prologue, this all very well could be a preview of what’s to come with the Pirates and Steelers as their leases near their ends on North Shore.
And we’ve already observed the Steelers beginning their behind-the-scenes maneuvering for their continuing taxpayer-funded future, as the Post-Gazette reported with this headline in late February:
“Walnut Capital, Steelers plot $30 million ‘commercial mixed-use’ development next to Acrisure Stadium.”
As this scrivener noted at the time:
“You simply have to love the use of the word ‘plot.’ For it’s a $30 million development for which the parties are seeking a $15 million state (i.e. taxpayer) grant to build across the street on the West side of the football complex. It’s a lot still controlled by what’s now known as the Kamin Science Center.”
And we’re sure this is just the beginning anew.
Thus, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County taxpayers should brace themselves for the coming, tawdry and very expensive re-hosing.
While it would be a watershed moment for local, county and state governments to reject such blatant corporate wealthfare — to refuse to turn on the subsidy water — we have every confidence that taxpayers not only will be on the hook for ever more sports subsidies but be charged a premium for the water with which they’ll again be hosed.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
