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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (321380)	1/17/2007 4:50:32 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1578122

re: Its unsound economic policy for municipalities to be building these sports palaces that rarely pay for themselves. Again why is that unsound economic policy okay with you but the other not? I always thought the major league sports teams should be owned by the cities/taxpayers like the Packers. Fan interest would increase - most places I know the fans love the team but hate the owners. When I first got here, I happened to see the construction budget for the Mariner's stadium. Previously, I have never bothered to crunch the numbers even though I was in development. First of all, I was shocked at how expensive stadium construction is. Whenever you build a non standard structure, I knew that costs tend to be much higher than with standard construction such as office buildings and industrial plants. However, these costs were threw the roof. Adding to the cost are the special requirements by the owners such luxury boxes for their wealthy ticket holders. Plus, the owners of the Mariners insisted on a moveable roof should it start to rain.......a very costly item. Finally, the stadium gets a break on its property taxes. I can't remember now the exact numbers but the city/state picked up a lot of the amortization costs. How the state justifies their involvement is that Seattle is THE city in the state: the state's crown jewel and a major tourist draw. So what did the city get.....for starters, its a nice stadium that's used only half the year. The cheapest seats at $15 are nearly in Tacoma which means you might as well watch the game on the tube. Most seats are $25 and up. That means most middle class families of four can't afford "an outing at the ballpark". There a couple of days during the season that are set aside for the kids and the tickets are cheaper but really the stadium is a venue for those people who have a decent disposal income. Nonetheless, the entire community foots the bill. And then the owners turn around and pay their players $5, $10, $15 million salaries. As much as I like going to watch the Mariners, I think this arrangement is questionable. An arrangement that is sold to every major or wannebe major city in the country....."if you want to be in the big leagues [of cities] then you have to snag a big league team". So far, the only city that has ignored that siren call is LA. Its been nearly ten years that LA hasn't had a NFL team......and unlike the predictions, the sky hasn't fallen. Maybe more cities will wise up.