OT: John Oliver Goes in on Owners Finessing Cities for Stadium Cash
Indeed, I shudder to think what "a point in society" where greed and avarice are considered vices would be like.
and Democrats have come out against giving these teams money. It's an issue that the two sides actually have found some common ground.
Snyder supported giving public money for the new Wings arena. Coleman Young did the same thing with Joe Louis Arena.
Scott Walker is supporting the new Bucks arena in Milwaukee. Kevin Johnson did the same thing in Sacramento.
It's actually harder to find politicians who oppose giving money to these teams, otherwise it wouldn't keep happening all over the country. Seattle is basically the only city that told the NBA to take a hike.
We all know that politicians are scalawags.
Let's be clear: The new Wings arena isn't being financed with public money in the same sense these other stadiums generally are.
I outlined this in another thread, but the "public portion" of the Wings arena is Downtown Development Authority money. DDA money is required by state law to be spent on economic development downtown. The DDA is financed by property taxes - but only that portion of property tax above the property's assessment prior to inclusion in the DDA.
In other words, a parcel's taxable value before inclusion was X, when it was included it became X+Y, and Y is taken by the DDA to support downtown economic development - which again, by state law, is the only allowable purpose. X continues to go to the city for police and streetlights and whatever. This is why the DDA is called quasi-public. It's basically a homeowner's association for downtown businesses. And the DDA, by the way, will own the arena.
This is a far cry different from the usual public funding mechanisms. The DDA exists precisely to fund things like this. And Oliver is not being honest by not noting the difference.
In isolation I wasn't too happy about this project (it just moves economic activity from one place to another), but across Woodward from the new Brush Park development, it suddenly becomes a big piece of the puzzle in this bid to achieve critical mass between Midtown and Downtown. Detroit is also getting a new hotel, residential and retail complex on the JLA site so in a way it could be a win-win situation.
If everything comes to fruition - never a safe assumption but things do seem to be rolling - the whole thing will work out brilliantly, I think. That's a huge empty space separating Midtown and downtown. The project as designed would be a huge, huge link, not to mention bringing very badly needed residential development to an area absolutely screaming for it. I don't know about the JLA site development, it sounded like a lot of wishful thinking, but it'd be great if they actually did build a 30-story skyscraper there, especially if that too was part residential.
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Idk why I was so nervous... That was pretty easy.