Check out Hoopshype 3 mins ago – via king5.com Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and the Oak View Group (OVG) have a formal agreement to build a $600 million privately financed arena at Seattle Center, with tens of millions more in transportation mitigation. The deal calls for construction to begin next year and be complete by 2020. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), as it is commonly known, will be formally submitted to the Seattle City Council on Tuesday. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE make these billionaires finance their OWN stadiums!!
Yeah for real they can afford it since they end up making bank when they sell the team later too. Public financing of arenas is a scam any way you look at it.
Weird that they're totally avoiding Chris Hansen...or whatever that guys name was, who tried to buy the Kings and wanted to build an arena on his own dime. I won't be surprise if the NHL moves to Seattle before they go to Portland, despite the fact the Winterhawks have better support and a *currently opened* arena ready (granted, no real ownership is there).
That's totally what the NHL is waiting for before expanding again. Seattle will be "good enough" for us just like it is with the NFL and MLB.
Go back and check the records, the amount cities and municipalities bring in are almost always less than they spent on the arena itself. Unless you have some evidence proving otherwise from what I have read the cities always get screwed. Plus who's benefiting the most when an owner later sells the team for magnitudes more than they bought it for? The city, or the billionaire who just quadrupled their investment after the city forked out all that money on the arena. Yeah F that I am not down to subsizdize billionaires, if they want a team they can pay full price; and that includes the arena!
They're not a "much" larger city, and they don't have an arena that is currently ready for the NHL. And their "fan support" is tepid at best.
Has the stadium been built? Until it has, with private money, I'm still going to plead with the American public NOT to finance stadiums for billionaires.
It's like this for me: An NBA franchise is a brick and mortar business. Spend money to come to my store to buy my product. We don't build stores for Nordstrom. They build/lease their own.
It's sad because I love the NHL, and I'd love my home town of Portland to get a team so I could root for them. No other reason
No, but it says that the MOU will be for a privately funded stadium, so it sounds like the proposal is for what you want.
I think fan support in Portland would be pretty "meh" for NHL, I'd be all about it but after the first honeymoon seasons and the reality that being an expansion team takes time the Moda Center stands would look this...
Why would the city care if the billionaire sold the rights to the team. They would be the one still collecting tax money on each ticket sold. You can go do that research. Logically, if the city paid it, set up a plan to tax each ticket to recoup and create a revenue stream, it should work. Sometimes it does not, but it 100% should in theory.
Yeah, but it's essentially an investment on behalf of the city. Theoretically they would recoup those costs and get an investment back. Don't you want them making more money on their own without having to ask you for more?
