why stadium deals are so secretive

[Millhouse]

Millhouse - the long-run result of your vision of the world would be that very northern city would look like Detroit, and every southern city would be a sprawling unplanned strip-mall and stripper laden cess pool like Houston, charmless cultureless and sad.

maybe we should be more like all those chinese public private partnership ghost towns

 

[cuseinchina]

The city of Altanta has about 475,000 people (give or take). ITP (inside the perimeter, 285) has about 800,000 (give or take). The metro Atlanta area as a whole has 5.5 million.

There are a lot of moving parts here. Demographics playing a big part. Some areas are getting screwed. Grant Park is absolutely 1 of them. So I do feel bad for your friends. But the majority of Braves fans are in favor of this move - just the opposition is a very vocal minority.

They are vocal for 2 main reason in my opinion - and neither are rational.

1. It is a black eye for the city of Atlanta that they will no longer be in the city proper of Atlanta. but it is literally in a 10x better location than the current Turner which is south of Downtown and West of Grant Park literally in a wasteland of poverty. By being south of Atlanta, the core fan base (who overwhelmingly live north of Atlanta) had to deal with the connector (75/85 merge) which causes some of the worst traffic in the country.

2. it is moving to Cobb County. ITP'ers HATE Cobb County because it is conservative, somewhat anti-gay, religious, and has 1/2 the taxes of Atlanta and Fulton County. Some of the hate is legit in my opinion, some of it is crazy.

For the record, I lived in Inman Park for 5 years and Brookhaven for 1 year (both ITP) and now live in Smyrna about 2.5 miles from the new stadium. I wasn't really pro-smyrna move. But i was without a doubt pro-get the hell out of the current turner field area. It was a dump with NOTHING to do other than drink next to your car and try to avoid homeless people trying to sell you stuff or beg for money. It was not a nice place to bring out of town friends/family.

yeah we went to a game while we were there - and there was NOTHING in the area of the stadium. But it did seem like the area was prime for development if they got their act together. It also seems like from an urban planning perspective Atlanta has way way too much sprawl and putting a stadium in the suburbs is not favorable if your goal is to reverse some of that. But I don't know Atlanta well enough to have a coherent opinion (I would move there though, every time I've been down there it's been great). thank you for adding something meaningful to this thread.

 

[cuseinchina]

maybe we should be more like all those chinese public private partnership ghost towns

ok now your just being lazy and spouting something vaguely insulting based on a partial unrelated truth.

 

[Millhouse]

ok now your just being lazy and spouting something vaguely insulting based on a partial unrelated truth.

i'm sorry, I didn't intend for the insult to be vague

 

[CusefanATL]

So they are replacing a stadium built for the 1996 Olympics. In 2014. Amazing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_Field

Keep in mind that it wasn't built for the Braves. It had the braves in mind - but it was built for the olympics. The stadium is kind of backwards also requires a reported $150-$200 million in renovations.

Also keep in mind that the Braves have no control over anything in the area.

 

[mscanlo]

The city of Altanta has about 475,000 people (give or take). ITP (inside the perimeter, 285) has about 800,000 (give or take). The metro Atlanta area as a whole has 5.5 million.

2. it is moving to Cobb County. ITP'ers HATE Cobb County because it is conservative, somewhat anti-gay, religious, and has 1/2 the taxes of Atlanta and Fulton County. Some of the hate is legit in my opinion, some of it is crazy.

a little bit of an exaggeration. i dont think ITP'ers hate Cobb county residents. You're stereotyping cobb county residents as what many syracuse people would consider the standard southerner. not necessarily the case for this example

it's more ITPs don't like the fact that they now have to travel to cobb county for a game, and the appearance the city politicians didn't put up a real fight for the braves to stay here while the public had no knowledge the team was moving.

 

[AZOrange]

representation is representation - whatever it looks like. and when you control even by consortium more than 50% of the voting shares of a company you can do as you please with management.

Ok so other than you having whiffed on the corporate analogy altogether, you still didn't answer my question as to why this fuzzy public benefit isn't exactly the same if funded by the wealthy owners themselves.

 

[cuseinchina]

i'm sorry, I didn't intend for the insult to be vague

It would carry more weight if it made any sense.

Do you think the overbuilding in some Chinese cities is due to public private partnership building too much public housing or something? There is a tremendous shortage of low income housing in the people's republic. Developers are building high-end product and selling it to cash buyers who hold those empty properties in lieu of being able to invest outside of China...they don't trust the Chinese stock market and capital controls restrict them from allocating capital outside of the country - so they buy apartments and wait for the demand to match the supply. Most cities do not have a problem with over-supply btw, it's mostly a few interior cities that have been overbuilt. The government is complicit in that the municipalities sell the land to the developers - but there is no public private partnership going on, no stake in the profits or loss of the business for the taxpayers or the government.

 

[AZOrange]

this is more like a private equity deal - longer time horizon. Most capital is private btw.

This is nothing like private equity, private equity requires a return or at least the potential for one. You keep looking for analogies...here is one...this stadium deal is like you stealing 40 bucks out of your dads wallet for beer. If you're happy, then your family should be happy too.

 

[cuseinchina]

Ok so other than you having whiffed on the corporate analogy altogether, you still didn't answer my question as to why this fuzzy public benefit isn't exactly the same if funded by the wealthy owners themselves.

Because fuzzy public benefit does not drive private investment - that's why government spending exists.

 

[cuseinchina]

This is nothing like private equity, private equity requires a return or at least the potential for one. You keep looking for analogies...here is one...this stadium deal is like you stealing 40 bucks out of your dads wallet for beer. If you're happy, then your family should be happy too.

Most public private investments are in fact private equity deals, generally financing comes from insurance companies looking to diversify their risk. the other side comes from the taxpayers. there is a developer or team of developers in there who are bearing limited risk. But they are most definitely private equity deals with long term time horizons.

 

[Millhouse]

Most public private investments are in fact private equity deals, generally financing comes from insurance companies looking to diversify their risk. the other side comes from the taxpayers. there is a developer or team of developers in there who are baring limited risk. But they are most definitely private equity deals with long term time horizons.

private with a side of public but definitely private

 

[Millhouse]

just like Syracuse stadium talks, infrastructure needs are a total afterthought

http://www.fieldofschemes.com/2014/...m-plan-after-barring-opponents-from-speaking/

 

[AZOrange]

Because fuzzy public benefit does not drive private investment - that's why government spending exists.

Ugh... If the stadium gets built by the rich owner the public is in no less worse a place and arguably better...

 

[AZOrange]

Most public private investments are in fact private equity deals, generally financing comes from insurance companies looking to diversify their risk. the other side comes from the taxpayers. there is a developer or team of developers in there who are bearing limited risk. But they are most definitely private equity deals with long term time horizons.

Most? Where is the private insurance company equity component in the braves stadium deal? And why is it not liberty media?

 

[AZOrange]

private with a side of public but definitely private

With virtually no monetary upside to the public and all of it to the entity that puts up very little. It makes no public finance sense and less economic sense.

 

[SWC75]

Keep in mind that it wasn't built for the Braves. It had the braves in mind - but it was built for the olympics. The stadium is kind of backwards also requires a reported $150-$200 million in renovations.

Also keep in mind that the Braves have no control over anything in the area.

It's called "Turner Field".

 

[oldpinepoint]

ordinary business deals don't involve hundreds of millions of dollars of other peoples money.

if you don't like politicking, don't take money from taxpayers.

Sure they do

 

[Timonen]

politicians don't make business deals. they make political deals.

if it involves other people's tax dollars it's not a business deal

aren't business deals, capital investments, etc often done with shareholder dollars? spending people's money through a proxy by a decided-upon entity isn't unique to a specific category. We can get wrapped around semantics all we want, but politics are business in a million ways.

If this was bringing a plant to town or saving one from going to China, that's a business deal. We can debate the cost/benefit, the impact of ethics, the accountability, the opportunity cost, etc...but they're still business deals and analogous to the Braves (since scale doesn't impact the definition).

 

[Millhouse]

aren't business deals, capital investments, etc often done with shareholder dollars? spending people's money through a proxy by a decided-upon entity isn't unique to a specific category. We can get wrapped around semantics all we want, but politics are business in a million ways.

If this was bringing a plant to town or saving one from going to China, that's a business deal. We can debate the cost/benefit, the impact of ethics, the accountability, the opportunity cost, etc...but they're still business deals and analogous to the Braves (since scale doesn't impact the definition).

you have a choice about whether to own a share.

business deals involve willing participants. political deals involve killing people who refuse to comply

 

[cuseinchina]

Ugh... If the stadium gets built by the rich owner the public is in no less worse a place and arguably better...

Yes but a stadium has many ancillary effects, both positive and negative, that have a very direct impact on the city in which it is (or isn't) built. The taxpayers have a stake in this whether their capital is invested or not. And if an owner can choose where to build based on availability of public subsidy as is clearly the case, it's up to elected officials to think about he intangibles implicit in a stadium and decide (as it is their job to do so) if those intangibles justify the investment of the taxpayer funds that they have been elected to steward on behalf of the people.

Both you and Millhouse are looking at this through an 'all-else-equal' lens that ignores many many important factors in this kind of decision making. In the real world, nothing is held constant which is why that level of analysis always falls flat in the real world despite its simplistic appeal.

 

[Timonen]

you have a choice about whether to own a share.

business deals involve willing participants. political deals involve killing people who refuse to comply

if i live in a country/county/municipality, elected officials set tax rates and dole out the money to align with constituent need/interest. laws and the market system compel them to not do anything too atrocious with the funds. people can use tax rate as a variable when they decide where to live (e.g., cobb county is MUCH more affordable than Fulton). cobb county residents are certainly willing participants. it's our assumption that counties (like corporations) make both short and long term investments. maybe it'll work and maybe not...but not out of bounds to get it done.

 

[cuseinchina]

if i live in a country/county/municipality, elected officials set tax rates and dole out the money to align with constituent need/interest. laws and the market system compel them to not do anything too atrocious with the funds. people can use tax rate as a variable when they decide where to live (e.g., cobb county is MUCH more affordable than Fulton). cobb county residents are certainly willing participants. it's our assumption that counties (like corporations) make both short and long term investments. maybe it'll work and maybe not...but not out of bounds to get it done.

People can decide where to live, and who to vote for based on the policies they support.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

Yes but a stadium has many ancillary effects, both positive and negative, that have a very direct impact on the city in which it is (or isn't) built. The taxpayers have a stake in this whether their capital is invested or not.

I think where this breaks down is if taxes are raised or a bond is floated or something. If we're talking a budget surplus (humor me for a second) and government needs to decide where to put those funds... ok, I guess I can see a stadium being one of the choices. My understanding though is that's not how it gets funded. It either ends up costing more down the road, or may have some type of associated tax increase.

 

[CusefanATL]

It's called "Turner Field".

Im not sure what that means... are you referencing Ted Turner?

I have been to no less than 100 games. I know exactly what the stadium is called and who it is named after.

That doesnt mean that the place sucks to go to. That doesnt mean that the city wont let the Braves control the development in the area. That doesnt mean that the contract states they can move out after 20 years.