Assigned reading for today: Huffpost article on the pros and cons of publicly subsidizing wealthy NFL team owners’ desire for new stadiums. Along with other stuck-in-the mud cities, the article cites otherwise impoverished St. Louis’ current pathetic efforts to retain a NFL team (any NFL team). The money quote:

If the benefits aren’t flowing to cities, they are instead going primarily to NFL owners. A 2012 Bloomberg analysis found that since 2000, new stadiums had helped double team values across pro sports, and Baade noted that while it appears NFL teams are now putting more of their own money in than they used to, they are doing so primarily out of revenue streams — luxury boxes, personal seat licenses and other in-stadium revenues — that either wouldn’t exist without a new stadium or are larger because of it.”The public sector is underwriting most of the risk,” Baade said, “while most of the benefits that accrue, accrue to the teams.”

No real news there, but the point of view still seems to be too revolutionary for set-in-their-ways Missouri political elites represented by Governor Nixon and St. Louis Mayor Slay.

I do understand that Mayor Slay and Governor Nixon like the idea of union jobs that would probably result from a stadium project along with what they possibly hope would be some concomitant North Side development. But there are other ways to spend infrastructure dollars and create jobs that would actually benefit the city’s citizens instead of ripping off taxpayers. In this regard, the article notes that a new report “links the subsidization of new stadiums to higher poverty rates and lower median incomes in their home cities, and it found that most NFL cities fared worse by both measures after paying for a new stadium.”

[This post was originally published on Show Me Progress.]

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Football and God rarely clash in the South. But the neighborhood surrounding the future $1 billion new Falcons’ stadium may be forced to lose two of its historic churches due to the new stadium, scheduled to open in 2017.

Local officials claim that that the new stadium will revitalize the western portion of downtown that struggles with unrelenting crime, high unemployment, and poor school performance. Per The New York Times,

“Politicians are also trying to portray the new stadium as a way to help redefine the beleaguered western flank of downtown, a civic jewel that would re-energize the core of a city that has long considered itself the glittering capital city of the South.”

The new stadium comes with a $45 million fund dedicated to benefit the surrounding communities of English Avenue, Vine City and Castleberry Hill.

But neighborhood residents who attend Friendship Baptist Church and Mount Vernon Baptist Church, the two churches in the way of the stadium’s development, do not agree with the city’s priorities. After all, these churches offer more than a place of worship. Friendship Baptist is one of the most historically important black churches in the region. It was established in 1862, in the days after the Civil War, as the first independent African-American Baptist congregation in Atlanta.

Regardless, “We want what the Buckhead kids have,” said Andrew A. Motley, pastor of Lindsay Street Baptist Church in the English Avenue community.

“Resources. Our children’s needs are no less. They don’t have options for resources. We need recreational facilities and green space. All they have are the drug deals and the users, the appearance of glamour from the drug dealers (and) police not as friends but as occupiers. We know the stadium will be built, but it is a luxury among all the needs around us.”

The stadium will be both privately and publicly funded. Although Arthur Blank, owner of the Falcons, will cover $800 million of the stadium cost, the city will likely provide $200-300 million through city-issued bonds and revenue from the future hotel-motel tax.

If the public is going to fund this stadium, it should offer more than a flashy arena that will likely be used for fewer than 10 NFL games a year.  Legislators should ensure that the future neighbors of the stadium, who will likely sacrifice a part of their history and identity in the loss of two of their churches, should benefit from the new stadium.  There are already too many instances of promised revitalization from politicians that ultimately only bring commercial activity benefitting the larger city while ignoring the most dire needs of the neighborhood.

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I always thought that it was a problem for the Occupy Movement to begin in late summer (2011) and then basically close up shop as fall turned to winter. Demonstrations like those of Occupy Movement are more what we would call “fair weather sports.” It takes a great deal for a person to camp out in an urban center under the best of circumstances, and only the real pioneers among us can endure the hardships of winter camping.

Since the movement began, there has not been a massive flow of money from the very wealthy to poor and middle income citizens. If economic conditions have gotten better for those who were suffering in late 2011, it is primarily due to the “rising tide lifts all ships” phenomenon. The wealthy seem to have their status in our society well established, maintaining their so-called fair shares of the income and wealth pies.

I recently read a critique of the Occupy Movement, suggesting that what the movement lacked was a clear and definable goal. I’m not sure that I thoroughly agree with that contention. But if organizers were looking for an issue that is clear, definable, concrete and outrageous, they might want to focus on the way professional sports barons in America and the players who do the heavy lifting for them systematically screw communities in need all across America.

Nearly twenty years ago, the civic and state leaders of St. Louis, Missouri ponied with hundreds of millions of dollars to lure the Los Angeles Rams football team from the West Coast to the Midwest. It may seem odd, an aging rust-belt city like St. Louis out-bidding a fast and furious metropolitan area like Los Angeles, but the situation was complicated. St. Louis private financiers  who were willing to underwrite what Los Angeles’ leaders would not. The state of Missouri had fewer obligations than the state of California, and so the situation was ripe for Los Angeles’ loss to be St. Louis’ gain.

The St. Louis consortium wanted the Rams so badly that they focused almost all of their attention on the front end of the agreement, feeling that, if they could perform magic for 1995, they would be able to duplicate it in the future. The tail end of the twenty year stadium agreement had a “killer provision” in it. It stipulated that the Rams were free to leave St. Louis if, in the team’s opinion,  the St. Louis stadium was not in the top 20% of all NFL stadiums. In another era, such a provision might not have been a problem. For instance, when the Astrodome opened in 1965, it was so far advanced compared to other facilities for both football and baseball that it was certain to be among the top 20% in 1985. It was, but then a plethora of new domed and outdoor stadiums were built for prosperous teams. The status of the Astrodome sank so quickly that by 1998 the Oilers football team left America’s fourth largest community and fled to Tennessee. A new domed stadium had to be built in Houston in 2002 to attract an expansion franchise.

Here’s a key thing about the St. Louis Stadium (currently named the Edward Jones Dome). Even if it’s somewhere in the bottom 80% of NFL stadiums, it’s in excellent condition, and it’s a fine place to watch football, as well as a number of other events. Presumably fans go there to see two teams compete against one another in one of America’s most popular sports. They can do that. No additional money other than for normal maintenance needs to be spent.

In Miami, the Dolphins football team is trying to get hundreds of thousands of public dollars to cover the cost of improvements to Sun Life Stadium. Again, the football team can play there for decades, and the fans can enjoy the game for decades without any major improvements.

What’s key is that the NFL is forcing perpetual “improvements” to existing stadiums of construction of new stadiums, all to bring in more revenue for the teams and its players. If St. Louis spends money to put its venue in the top 20% of stadiums, then some other city’s stadium falls out of the top 20%. The NFL will then push that city to put in improvements, needed or not. The public continues to get screwed and the wealthy become richer. The same is happening in virtually every other major sport in the United States and many other countries as well.

So if the Occupy Movement wanted to focus on an example of the top 1% getting richer while the poor and middle class citizens getting poorer, the National Stadium Subsidy Dance would be a good place to start. The more silent the public in any one city, the easier it is for teams in other cities to screw their fan bases, the residents of their community, and America at large.

If I ever was a decent organizer, those days are behind me. But I would love to see a community organizer in any of the three dozen or more U.S. communities with professional sports franchises come forward to network with like-minded people in other cities and get such a movement rolling. Maybe for the sake of theater, they could even occupy a stadium or two.

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