This is about as pervertedly precious as it gets:
The board of the Pittsburgh-Allegheny County Sports & Exhibition Authority (SEA) and Allegheny County Executive (ACE) Sara Innamorato are incensed – incensed, we tell you – times two at Fenway Sports Group (FSG).
First, the SEA and the ACE believe that FSG did not “honor its promises” to develop the former lower Hill District site of the former Civic Arena.
Second, they are darn near apoplectic that Fenway will be making an 89 percent return on its investment (over four years) in the Pittsburgh Penguins when it closes its $1.7 billion sale to the Hoffman Family of Companies.
The hissy fit came after the SEA signed off on the ownership transfer. To a Hoffman company that, reportedly, has not agreed to fulfill any of the pledges FSG is alleged to have broken.
But, but , but… FSG should donate a portion of its “profiteering on this community” for “its refusal to honor its promises to the people of the Lower Hill,” said SEA Executive Director Aaron Waller.
Egads! Profit! We simply can’t have that! Shake ‘em down!
Innamorato piled on after the SEA meeting, parroting the Waller talking points, claiming that “FSG leaves Pittsburgh on a path of broken promises.”
“They alienated allies and fans and wrung every dollar out of a public asset and public land to make a[n] $800 million profit with little investment back into the community and Penguins’ fans.”
Additionally, the ACE said that “FSG is able to get away with that because when leases are negotiated, the public is often forced to choose between keeping their team in Pittsburgh or protecting precious tax dollars. We will make every effort to negotiate better leases going forward.”
Gee, Sara, we sure hope you pipe up when, in a few short years, the Pirates and the Steelers, their leases up, come hat in hand to engage in their own “profiteering” at public expense.
Considering insiders say those new lease negotiations have been going on behind closed doors already, how loud has your pipe been a-piping about those talks?
Well?
For the record, FSG says it “fully complied” with all its legal obligations. It, through the Pens, gave up its development rights after two decades when it decided not to seek yet another extension to meet government-set redevelopment deadlines. Those rights have reverted to the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh (URA).
But here’s the critical question for the Wallers and Innamoratos of this debate: If FSG was so egregious and, in actuality, ripped off a “public asset” and “public land,” why did the SEA approve the Penguins’ sale?
“WAAAA!” went the SEA, then openly reminding that its and all the other usual suspects’ shoveling of public money to the ‘Guins to build a new hockey arena enabled the alleged behavior it now so derides.
The fault, dear SEA, is not in the Penguins or FSG; it’s staring right back at you in the mirror.
Again, and for the umpteenth time, the SEA and the URA never should have given the Penguins such redevelopment exclusivity.
The 28-acre tract should have been put up for public bid. And not as one single, huge tract in pursuit of some grand central plan doomed to failure but in tracts of various size that would have facilitated various uses.
“This is what happens when the ‘private-public’ partnerships leaders (of both sides) ballyhoo something and it goes bad,” said Frank Gamrat, executive director of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy.
“If the government would have just gotten out of the way and let it develop naturally, the Lower Hill would have been developed by now as the market sees fit and the city would be realizing healthy tax streams.
“But instead, they are crying over spilt milk—milk they helped spill,” Gamrat concludes.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
