I don’t know that anyone is covering the stadum debate like Mr. D.
On the debate between Minneapolis and Arden Hills sites:.
The Arden Hills site may not make it through the legislature this time around, because there are far more important issues than a Vikings stadium. But one thing is clear — the Arden Hills proposal is the only one that has any chance. At this point, Minneapolis has to be rooting for gridlock.
Read the link to see why.
And re Sid Hartman’s crabbling about the team leaving downtown (and his employer’s backyard):
Sid’s been grumpy since well before any of us were born, so you have to take this statement with at least two grains of salt. He’s a company man and if the Vikings were to somehow find a way to stay near the Metrodome, it could potentially benefit his longtime employer, which owns a fair amount of real estate in the area. He’s also a Minneapolis man and in the eternal struggle between the Mill City and the Capitol City, he cannot in good conscience support any advantage going to the hated rival to the east (and I don’t mean the Packers).
He’s got several posts on the subject. Check ’em out.
Then call your legislator and tell them not one dime of taxpayer general fund money. Wilf is going to make out like a bandit on either site, especially the Ammo Plant site. His takeaway, and his progeny’s, is going to be well into ten figures in the nine figures.
Thanks, Mitch!
Ziggy wants the taxpayers to build him a stadium in Arden Hills (vs Minneapolis) so he gets the parking revenue from 20,000 cars, vs 0 cars downtown.
Governor Moonbeam has already expressed his support for a new stadium. There will be many, many public dimes pumped into the project. If its at the old ammo plant site, Hwy 10 will have to be rebuilt, new exits, improve interchange with 35W, major sewer and water upgrades, etc. That’s millions of public dimes before we even kick in $200 million for the stadium.
The sun will rise in the East, Obama will lie to your face, and we will have a new Vikings stadium built with some public financing.
The “economic multiplier” will be offered as fuel for the debate. It’s a bogus argument. If I had $100 dedicated to “recreation,” and pro football were not an option I would go to a movie, or fishing, or camping. Every dollar spent on “recreation” will go somewhere. By building a stadium, we’re picking winners for our recreation dollars. The jobs being created with a stadium are at the cost of jobs taken away elsewhere.
If its at the old ammo plant site, Hwy 10 will have to be rebuilt, new exits, improve interchange with 35W, major sewer and water upgrades, etc. That’s millions of public dimes before we even kick in $200 million for the stadium.
Yep. And they’ll frame the argument this way — well, those road improvements were going to happen anyway, so they really shouldn’t count against the project cost. And that’s true as far as it goes. The impact is that the road construction projects for the area would move to the front of the line.
The underlying question is — ought the project go to the front of the line? From my own selfish perspective, I’d surely love to see the horrific traffic snarls we get at the 35W/694 interchange solved, which would be a by-product of the project. But that’s the eternal problem with these things: should I and my neighbors derive public benefit at Kermit’s expense? And why should Zygi Wilf get a lot more than that?
I don’t have a huge problem with public money going to build a municipal stadium, say a baseball stadium in downtown St Paul that will be used by minor league, little league, college and high school teams. I do have a problem with taxpayer money used to prop up salaries like this:
Jared Allen DE $8,979,438
Adrian Peterson RB $7,720,000
Antoine Winfield CB $7,550,000
Steve Hutchinson OG $6,680,000
Pat Williams DT $6,000,000
Madieu Williams S $5,400,000
Bryant McKinnie OT $4,900,000
Erin Henderson LB $4,700,000
Bernard Berrian WR $3,900,000
Visanthe Shiancoe TE $3,100,000
Jim Kleinsasser TE $3,000,000
Anthony Herrera OG $2,650,000
Heath Farwell LB $2,583,000
Chuck: Then you support the “lock-out” by owners? I certainly do. They have to get a handle on labor costs.
I don’t like greedy owners, but what the highest paid players are proposing is nuts. They want the top tier players income to skyrocket even higher yet.
I have no problem with somebody being filthy rich because the public will pay to see them (think about the worst celebrity goofs). But this isn’t totally free market. The salaries are being artifically propped up with public money.
If its at the old ammo plant site, Hwy 10 will have to be rebuilt
Or football fans will have to sack up and head out early or be ready to wait in long lines. Buncha pansies.
Buncha pansies.
Wearing nothing but pants and body paint outdoors in January. Go Pack, Go!
What Chuck says. We’re proposing paying more and more millions so the ViQueens can pay their hired thugs even more? Why? Do we have so few criminals in Minnesota that we need an NFL franchise?
Never mind that I think you could get a perfectly good stadium for a LOT less than the Queens want here. And why didn’t they work with the Goofers to get TCF Stadium NFL-ready?
If its at the old ammo plant site
I believe it’s a Federal Superfund site. It will take hundreds of millions, if not billions of $’s to clean up in order to build anything on it.
It would be a better world if the term “economic multiplier” wasn’t so often misused by politicians and so frequently misunderstood by citizens.
In the sense of the word often used by pols it means shifting expenditure from a lower tax regime to a higher tax regime. Spend public money to build municipal liquor stores and people spend more of their money on highly taxed booze instead of lower taxed food and clothing. Net economic growth, zero.
Or pols can use it to mean Keynesean multiplier, which is designed to increase aggregate demand (though it is rarely that simple). In fact pols have constituencies, and the demand that is fostered is usually not aggregate, it is focused on a special interest group, democrat supporting union construction workers, for example, or Republican supporting developers. In any case it only deals with demand, not supply, as in the “stimulative” cash-for-clunkers and the Home Buyers Tax Credit.
The theory is that stimulating demand in a depressed economy actually makes the economy more efficient because it makes better use of unused productive capacity. An idle factory cost money to build yet produces nothing.
In the real world “economic stimulus” shifts money from the unprotected to politically favored communities. The least protected of all are the generations yet unborn, and the communities with the greatest incentive to become politically protected are those that are the least economically productive.
Since the rest of the state is partially on the hook no matter where it gets built, I was hoping the Boy Mayor’s plan would overcome the challengers. The city of Mpls would pay $195 million all by themselves, as long as the state legislature overrode the city charter amendment (passed by popular vote, mind you) that limits “funding of public sports facilities” to $10 million.
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving group of voters.
The city of Mpls would pay $195 million all by themselves
They could always use LGA money. We’re all in this together, after all.
so Mitch I am very passionate about this issue and think its a good deal (I guess it would also be fair to say I’ve been a sports/vikings fan a decade longer than I’ve been a Republican/conservative/libertarian). Want to debate sometime this summer? You name the time and place and I’ll be there, and you can bring anyone you want to support your point of view and help and I’ll go at it alone. Loser donates $100 to the winners specified charity. Captain Ed and Lieliks could moderate. Seriously I’d love to do this.
If Sid Hartman is fer it, I’m agin’ it.