BY GOLLY THEY’RE AT IT AGAIN!

(David Egert, Associated Press, Detroit Free Press, Livingston Daily)

(Charles Coleman, USA TODAY, Huffington Post, Frazer Chronicle)

 

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any crazier…..it did, another proposed sports arena where people’s tax dollars go to help financially subsidize a professional venue…..then are charged to attend a game or other events like concerts, car shows, or other sports contests. Read on, cause you ain’t gonna believe who is tapping the poor old taxpayers.

 

The Detroit Red Wings are going to build a brand spanking new arena in the downtown to help revitalize the area…..forgetting the fact that downtown Detroit resembles a demilitarized zone…..I’ve been there, I know. And let’s face the facts of life…..hockey is not a black man’s sport…..and who populates the downtown area…..let me put it as delicately as possible…..the color ain’t blue!

 

The inhabitants of the inner city need a hockey arena like they need another burned out hulk of a building, they need help…..all kinds of help, but a hockey building, sorry Mr. Ilitch, you and your Red Wing hierarchy don’t seem to have a clue on this one.

 

The city of Detroit just last week filed for chapter 9 bankruptcy protection because they can’t pay past debt, or the current day to day operational costs. Included in the bankruptcy filing is an $18 billion dollar city employee pension fund payout that might be in jeopardy.

 

The city of Detroit has made a load of financial promises, past leaders have entered into a lot of agreements; have made a lot of decisions that cost huge amounts of money. But at the same time that the city made these debts that go out to close to 2040 and beyond, revenues have been shrinking. Contract agreements made with Detroit’s retirees require support years and decades into the future, projected in many cases to a minimum of 30 out.

 

Detroit’s industrial base and its metropolitan area have been reeling for more than sixty years in a kind of free-fall towards where the city finds itself in 2013. The high point for the population number was during the 1950 census when the city population was listed at 1,849,586, and the metro 3,219,256. However beginning with the 1960 census, the population figures began to show a steady migration to the suburbs, and a declining city population.

 

THE DECLINE

Detroit was long a major population center and a major engine of worldwide automobile manufacturing and the city has gone through a continuing economic decline. Like many other cities, Detroit saw it’s a decline in population beginning in the 1950’s, lasting to today.

 

The decline in manufacturing and in employment opportunity and growth and real wages has lead to severe urban decay and thousands upon thousands of empty homes and buildings throughout most of the inner-city.  Some areas of the city are sparsely populated, resulting in the city having difficulty providing the most simple of municipal services.

 

A lack of city services, (quick response by fire and police) has caused an exodus in some areas to more populated sites, and the city of Detroit is actually encouraging these moves through the removal of street signs, and overnight security street lighting.

 

 

Detroit has been a proud city, a city of firsts with regards to the automobile industry, and also has been a lightning-rod for opportunity for southern black people as well as immigrants of Polish, German and Greek nationalities.

 

The opportunities, the automobile industry and the wages and benefits that were part and parcel of that golden age seem long over. I was in downtown Detroit two years ago, and the city had a stench, a smell that reminded me of death.  I have driven to freight destinations throughout the city, and the suburbs, visiting many old buildings and warehouses that, although were in ill repair, still had a kind of air, and if you looked, you could see the past glories, almost hear the chatter of workers coming and going, and doing the work of automobile or some other products.

 

A NEW PUCK ARENA

I’m not sure where Mike Ilitch is coming from, oh I understand a new hockey arena with all the bells whistles would increase the Ilitch sports empire, (he owns the baseball Tigers) and I think that he, truly likes the city of Detroit, and cares where it’s going…..but tax money to help construct a sheet of ice, maybe its priority check time!

 

Since we’re talking about priorities, maybe this board should take stock of the financial shape Detroit is in right now. At the present time there are more than 300,000 parcels of property within the city limits that taxes aren’t being paid on, that’s a little more than 50% of the properties that lay vacant, unkempt and unoccupied.

 

The board which is in Lansing, Michigan, (state capitol) is the Michigan Strategic Fund, (MSF) board, which Wednesday, July 24^th approved issuing up to $450 million in bonds to finance construction of a $650 million project that would include a new arena for the Detroit Red Wings hockey team and other events plus $200 million more in the 45-block area between downtown and Midtown.

 

To move the project forward the city, state and the Olympia Development, (owned by Mike Ilitch) would have to complete a concession management agreement that would commit to the Red Wings playing there for the next 35 years with a 12 five-year options to follow.

 

The way that I read the above paragraph is that for the next 95 years, upon competition of the new arena, the Red Wings would be contractually bound to play at their new digs until the year 2112 (the completion date of the new facility is figured to be 2017). Given the attitude and the track record of every sports team owner today…..the usual length of use that an arena or stadium gets is…..at most, half as long as the Red Wings would be bound to a new Detroit hockey venue.

 

Now I’m no expert…..is anybody, but this deal smacks of pie in the sky thinking, if the planets are aligned, if the rivers don’t rise, and if all the ducks are in a row, the success of this project, which would cost a total of $650 million, ($284.5 million would come from taxpayers, and $365 million from the Red Wings) would be in use for, I’ll say it again, ninety five years sorry but I’m leery of anything after twenty or thirty years.

 

The arena itself would cost $450 million, and the financing would be 58% public and 42% private. For the $299 million ancillary retail, office and retail and residential projects in the development area, funding would be 88.5% private and 11.5% public.

 

 

 

 

ALL THE RIGHT PEOPLE ON BOARD FOR THE MISCONCEPTION

Count them on the fingers of one hand, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, Wings owner Mike illitch, the Michigan Strategic Fund, Detroit’s Downtown Development Authority…..and a whole bunch of Republican law makers. And worse yet, the hockey fan of the greater Detroit area.

 

You see, hockey fans are unlike any in the entire sporting world, rabid almost describes them…..but not quite, unless you call a kind of fanatical booster of the Wings somebody who throws a dead octopus on the ice after a Red Wing goal, personally I call that person bizarre, and in need of some inpatient care!

 

Hockey teams, and their host cities have a built in fan base that usually doesn’t wavier, for a city like Detroit (Hockey Capital), there is a core-base of maybe 30 or 40 thousand people who inadvertently attend a hockey match as few as once or twice a season. However there are probably 15 or so thousand who own season tickets, and are rabid in their support.

 

So you end up with those 30 or 40 thousand fans and a million or so, like me who check out the scores, have a passing interest, but wouldn’t walk across the street to attend a game at their arena. In the end, what it boils down to is the tax payer helping private industry, the pucksters in their drive for a better playing venue, and then, to top it off, the puck industry charges these same tax payers to come into their facility.  Who they are, I’m not sure, I mean do the Red Wings own the facility, or do the taxpayers?

 

LET’S TAKE A REAL LOOK AT REALITY

Here in a nutshell are reasons to reject any public funding of stadiums and arenas:

A. Providing public subsidies for private stadiums or arenas is corporate welfare.

B. Negligible economic benefits for a new sports venue, these places don’t create additional funds, they simple more them around.

C. Today the average cost of a new facility is about a half billion dollars, and it only creates about $80 million in long term benefits.

D. Can drive down wages because a sports team creates so few fulltime jobs.

E. In the long term does not increase attendance, nor does a new stadium or arena increase on ice or field performance.

F. Actually diverts recourses from funding priorities each and every time a new professional sports venue is built.

 

What a new hockey arena will do is to secure Rich Snyder’s legacy, but I’m not sure how much of a price tag Michigan voters should put on that aspect of the governors life. Jennifer Granholm was a hell-of-a lot better looking than the current top boss of Michigan, with the exception of that mole on her right cheek.

 

With Detroit going into Chapter 9 protection, I think a better time for a new hockey arena in downtown Detroit might be…..oh sometime after the 12^th of never. These politicians really need to get their act together before the whole damn state is pushed into declaring some sort of bankruptcy protection.

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!