Voters could bring the MLS to St. Louis April 4th

[Billiken Rich]

40 minutes ago, SShoe said:

Figured this was a good opportunity to post this Atlantic article about changes to federal antitrust and competition laws in the 1970s and 80s and their impact on St. Louis and places like it. Good perspective on how changes occurring at national or global levels can greatly impact regional economies and there is really nothing local politicians can do about it. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/how-americas-coastal-cities-left-the-heartland-behind/478296/

Interesting article.  Shocking that the Atlantic would blame Reagan for all the ills in the world.........

in any case, someone had to cut through the regulatory horror show that gave us air travel that only the wealthy could afford.  The article also didn't make any attempt to explain Why home grown St. Louis corps didn't go out and aquire other firms and remain rooted here.......

[brianstl]

2 hours ago, cheeseman said:

Right now SWA has made StL a hub but not in name.  Well over 200 flights a day and you can fly direct to many cities most would be surprised who haven't been paying attention.  I accept the international issue you raise as a problem but as you said nothing can be done about that.  Our loss of Fortune 500 and 1000 companies was not a function of StL but of the companies being bought by other companies.  Can you really fault successful companies being attractive to others?  Unless you are on the coasts lots of cities have suffered the same fate.  Seems like we get a company up and going well and another steps in like with Scott Trade.

200 domestic flights a day is not a major hub.  TWA had over 500 flights a day to over a 100 cities around the world

[Tilkowsky]

On 3/26/2017 at 7:02 AM, gobillsgo said:

Actually, it is a sure thing. If the stadium vote passes, we will have a team. And none of your tax dollars will go toward it unless you go to the games. (Or if you own a business that imports from out of state, then you will have a slight increase in use tax.)  If you can't understand this by now, no one is going to change your mind, which is a shame because our city needs a win. 

Except technically to get to Prop 2 Prop I had to be passed which does raise the sales tax on City residents. Now that money isn't going to the stadium true - but if Prop I had failed and Prop 2 had passed then nothing.

The business use tax will also cost City residents. Do you think the businesses in the City that are going to be taxed won't pass that on to consumers?

The problem for the City is that between 2000-2015 the City has granted 709 million dollars in TIF money and tax abatements.

That number should be closer to ZERO.

Whether it is IKEA or a soccer stadium neither should get City help.

 

[slu72 fan]

44 minutes ago, brianstl said:

200 domestic flights a day is not a major hub.  TWA had over 500 flights a day to over a 100 cities around the world

In order to become a hub, the host city needs to fill 60% of the seats going through the airport. That will never happen here, so a hub is never coming to StL. We don't have enough population or business activity. 

[almaman]

10 hours ago, brianstl said:

This isn't correct.  You voted for three candidates in the School Board race.  That means you divide the number by three to get the total amount of ballots cast in the School Board race.

 

hot thread this may of been said by now.this assumes that everyone voted for 3. In my local schools board I only cared about 1 candidate so I only voted for here not her and 2 others. guessing not alone in this strategy.

[Glorydays2013]

Doesn't most of the Stl soccer fan base come from the county who was ineligible to vote?

[SShoe]

3 hours ago, Billiken Rich said:

Interesting article.  Shocking that the Atlantic would blame Reagan for all the ills in the world.........

in any case, someone had to cut through the regulatory horror show that gave us air travel that only the wealthy could afford.  The article also didn't make any attempt to explain Why home grown St. Louis corps didn't go out and aquire other firms and remain rooted here.......

C'mon Rich, the first paragraph to discuss the changes in laws states how both sides of the aisle pushed for this legislation. Later, the article singled out a bill approved under Carter. Who are the snowflakes again?

[brianstl]

1 hour ago, slu72 fan said:

In order to become a hub, the host city needs to fill 60% of the seats going through the airport. That will never happen here, so a hub is never coming to StL. We don't have enough population or business activity. 

SLC is a hub airport for Delta with over 300 flights a day.  It has non stop service to London, Paris, Mexico City Amsterdam, and Toronto.

Salt Lake's metro population is less than half of St Louis. The GDP of St Louis is almost twice that of Salt Lake.

[hoppybeer]

2 hours ago, Tilkowsky said:

Except technically to get to Prop 2 Prop I had to be passed which does raise the sales tax on City residents. Now that money isn't going to the stadium true - but if Prop I had failed and Prop 2 had passed then nothing.

The business use tax will also cost City residents. Do you think the businesses in the City that are going to be taxed won't pass that on to consumers?

The problem for the City is that between 2000-2015 the City has granted 709 million dollars in TIF money and tax abatements.

That number should be closer to ZERO.

Whether it is IKEA or a soccer stadium neither should get City help.

 

I usually ignore what you type, but i just wanted to point where you're wrong. Any sales tax increase in the city automatically triggers a use tax increase. So the main point you harped on for the past few months happened even without the stadium proposal passing. The city now has approximately $5,000,000 a year in tax revenue from the use tax that was imposed when prop 1 passed. Prop 2 did not trigger the use tax, it just said that most of it would be used to fund the stadium.

 

[AnkielBreakers]

4 hours ago, Tilkowsky said:

The problem for the City is that between 2000-2015 the City has granted 709 million dollars in TIF money and tax abatements.

That number should be closer to ZERO.

Whether it is IKEA or a soccer stadium neither should get City help.

Right. Now I understand where you are coming from. You live in the land of Make-Believe.

edit:

You know what, I feel bad for this comment.  I think I am just venting frustration over something that seems so incredibly obvious to me, the potential benefits of the MLS in St. Louis.  It has been very frustrating for the past week to see two sides arguing with each other, and so completely out of touch with each other.  I am shocked by people who do not see with my vision.  I fully understand that it requires a leap of faith, but so many investments do, and this one felt right. I do feel that we have missed an opportunity.  Some are hung up on trying to definitively show a net benefit, when the better gauge is the potential loss.  The loss here is small.  5 million in taxable dollars over ten years.  Compared to the Dome, that is small.  The benefits, a sports team with a following potentially between the Blues and the Cardinals, with the potential to exceed the Cardinals in the long-term.  

I think soccer viewership is heading way up.  I see the NFL heading downward, plagued by several issues and soccer filling the void.  A franchise now would ride that wave. It would be like investing in baseball in 1890 or football in the 1950s. But, at the end of the day, you have to see that potential.

To be clear, I am not a soccer fan, I have always disliked pro soccer, and only really have watched the World Cup.  But the world is changing, America is changing.  It has always been rumored that this is a soccer town, and I was ready to embrace that moniker.  

It is frustrating that right now, on this vote, the city has figured out how to pay attention to economic analysis and see potential risk.  We have a massive edifice sitting right next to the river, built for almost no reason at all, thumbing its nose at risk, and it has worked out pretty well!  In fact, I can't imagine living here without it. I think we could have added to that legacy.

I am done on this stupid subject.  At least SLU basketball stays the third biggest sports draw in town.

[cheeseman]

14 hours ago, Bizziken said:

I respectfully disagree. I think downtown is the issue...or at least the city/county divide certainly is.

I have consistently said in this thread that the separation of the region is a problem. I believe in my post I also said that the region is the issue.

[Old guy]

14 hours ago, SShoe said:

Figured this was a good opportunity to post this Atlantic article about changes to federal antitrust and competition laws in the 1970s and 80s and their impact on St. Louis and places like it. Good perspective on how changes occurring at national or global levels can greatly impact regional economies and there is really nothing local politicians can do about it. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/how-americas-coastal-cities-left-the-heartland-behind/478296/

Thank you Sshoe, interesting article. St. Louis did well until a bit past mid XX century and then started its decline which continues to this day. That is an undeniable fact. The mention of Square a high tech company founded in St. Louis by St. Louisians and moved to SF in 2009 shows there is nothing wrong with the inventiveness of the people in the city, but they eventually decide it is necessary for them to leave the area in order to survive and be competitive. 

[cheeseman]

15 hours ago, Bizziken said:

I respectfully disagree. I think downtown is the issue...or at least the city/county divide certainly is.

I have consistently said in this thread that the separation of the region is a problem. I believe in my post I also said that the region is the issue.

[cheeseman]

13 hours ago, brianstl said:

200 domestic flights a day is not a major hub.  TWA had over 500 flights a day to over a 100 cities around the world

My point was that we have lots of direct flights now.  Yes we are not a hub in the sense that SWA flies everybody here to catch other flights - like if you want to fly to Seattle or Miami, AA sends you to Dallas - I get that but to say you can not get flights out of StL that are not direct is not correct.  I often fly direct to San Diego and Portland from and to StL.  Chicago - multiple flights, NY the same.  Denver, Phoenix, of course Dallas, Las Vegas, SF, LA AtL, are all available now.  You can now even fly direct to Panama City FL during season, and many others.  Not sure about Miami.  By the way I said over 200 flights daily - I think it is closer to 250 but I did not want to over state.

[gobillsgo]

13 hours ago, Glorydays2013 said:

Doesn't most of the Stl soccer fan base come from the county who was ineligible to vote?

In one word: yes. Although SC STL also claims that their internal polls actually showed the county to be less favorable than the city. Still, I often question the legitimacy of these polls... there are massive soccer communities in the county where word would spread much much faster. A hypothetical-- the coach on little Bobby's  U-12 select team has a parent meeting about it and why it's good for the area and that's probably good for at least ten more yes votes. I don't have the data, but I'd bet a lot of money that there's a lot more soccer being played in the county than in the city. And I'd bet money that it would pass in the county. But you can't bet on hypothetical situations

[Tilkowsky]

10 hours ago, AnkielBreakers said:

Right. Now I understand where you are coming from. You live in the land of Make-Believe.

edit:

You know what, I feel bad for this comment.  I think I am just venting frustration over something that seems so incredibly obvious to me, the potential benefits of the MLS in St. Louis.  It has been very frustrating for the past week to see two sides arguing with each other, and so completely out of touch with each other.  I am shocked by people who do not see with my vision.  I fully understand that it requires a leap of faith, but so many investments do, and this one felt right. I do feel that we have missed an opportunity.  Some are hung up on trying to definitively show a net benefit, when the better gauge is the potential loss.  The loss here is small.  5 million in taxable dollars over ten years.  Compared to the Dome, that is small.  The benefits, a sports team with a following potentially between the Blues and the Cardinals, with the potential to exceed the Cardinals in the long-term.  

I think soccer viewership is heading way up.  I see the NFL heading downward, plagued by several issues and soccer filling the void.  A franchise now would ride that wave. It would be like investing in baseball in 1890 or football in the 1950s. But, at the end of the day, you have to see that potential.

To be clear, I am not a soccer fan, I have always disliked pro soccer, and only really have watched the World Cup.  But the world is changing, America is changing.  It has always been rumored that this is a soccer town, and I was ready to embrace that moniker.  

It is frustrating that right now, on this vote, the city has figured out how to pay attention to economic analysis and see potential risk.  We have a massive edifice sitting right next to the river, built for almost no reason at all, thumbing its nose at risk, and it has worked out pretty well!  In fact, I can't imagine living here without it. I think we could have added to that legacy.

I am done on this stupid subject.  At least SLU basketball stays the third biggest sports draw in town.

Wal- Mart wanted to build a SuperCenter in Florissant near Halls Ferry and Lindbergh. They asked Florissant for TIF money. Florissant said no.

Wal- Mart built the store anyway. That is not make believe.

The State had a deficit of 500 million dollars and the City has a deficit of twenty million dollars heading into FY17. 

The reason. TIF money and tax credits.

How do you figure five million dollar loss in ten years.

Moody's just downgraded the City's financial position again.

Why? Lack of cash.

The stadium being built wouldn't have helped that much.

SCSTL's projections was a return of 77 million dollars over 30 years. Somehow Kavanaugh mentions the 77 million dollars neglects to mention the thirty years.

That means if all of the rosy projections come true - the City gets 2.5 million dollars a year or a 0.25 percent bump in relationship to their billion dollar annual budget.

 

[Tilkowsky]

11 hours ago, hoppybeer said:

I usually ignore what you type, but i just wanted to point where you're wrong. Any sales tax increase in the city automatically triggers a use tax increase. So the main point you harped on for the past few months happened even without the stadium proposal passing. The city now has approximately $5,000,000 a year in tax revenue from the use tax that was imposed when prop 1 passed. Prop 2 did not trigger the use tax, it just said that most of it would be used to fund the stadium.

 

The passage of Prop I triggers the use tax. I get it.

So City residents raised their sales tax - will see a lack of economic activity because of the use tax. Businesses may slow down their spending or not hire. Unless the use tax is passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

Do you think businesses will just eat that tax? It will be passed on to consumers.

 

[brianstl]

1 hour ago, Old guy said:

Thank you Sshoe, interesting article. St. Louis did well until a bit past mid XX century and then started its decline which continues to this day. That is an undeniable fact. The mention of Square a high tech company founded in St. Louis by St. Louisians and moved to SF in 2009 shows there is nothing wrong with the inventiveness of the people in the city, but they eventually decide it is necessary for them to leave the area in order to survive and be competitive. 

The city went through what a lot of cities went through in the post war era 50's and it was magnified because the city couldn't annex surrounding communities.  Even given that the region thrived economically.  What is really scary is what happened to the whole metro area economically beginning in the mid 80's.  The region started to bleed Fortune 500 companies.

I still remember when I was in high school in 1991 when General Dynamics moved it's HQ to the DC area.  People basically acted like it was really not a big deal because it was only a few hundred jobs.  That was incredibly backwards thinking.

One thing that that hurt the whole state were MO's banking laws in the 80's and 90's. It made it harder for banks like Boatmen's grow even bigger.  By the time these law were changed to catch up to other states, it was too late for MO banks to be among the big fish nationally.  That is one of the reasons why you can't go to a Boatmen's today.

[bonwich]

1 hour ago, Old guy said:

The mention of Square a high tech company founded in St. Louis by St. Louisians and moved to SF in 2009 shows there is nothing wrong with the inventiveness of the people in the city, but they eventually decide it is necessary for them to leave the area in order to survive and be competitive. 

Yeah but...if it doesn't already, Square will have more people in St. Louis than when it left, and eventually will have something like 20x it had when it left and will be Square's second largest office. (Tangentially, there's also an article floating around this week that a whopping 40 percent of people who live the Bay Area want to leave.)

[RiseAndGrind]

1 minute ago, bonwich said:

Yeah but...if it doesn't already, Square will have more people in St. Louis than when it left, and eventually will have something like 20x it had when it left and will be Square's second largest office. (Tangentially, there's also an article floating around this week that a whopping 40 percent of people who live the Bay Area want to leave.)

The Coasts suck. Rust Belt for life. 

[bonwich]

19 minutes ago, brianstl said:

What is really scary is what happened to the whole metro area economically beginning in the mid 80's.  The region started to bleed Fortune 500 companies.

I submit that, rather than scary, this is the best possible thing that could have happened to the local economy.

As that Atlantic article points out, St. Louis had an (adjusted for methodology) 23 Fortune 500 companies in 1980. And everyone here thought that this was a Good Thing. 

Except that giant businesses aren't what drives job growth. They, of course, help to support smaller businesses to start up and grow, but there's a problem: Those small businesses don't really innovate as much as they exist to serve the big businesses -- and, of course, they're almost completely dependent on the health of the big businesses.

That also meant that a bunch of rich white guys had terrifically disproportionate influence on local Civic policy (cap intended), and of course they favored policies that benefited them. Nothing wrong with self-interest, but it snuffed out many progressive policies, as well as making St. Louis an unattractive target for entrepreneurship. 

Flash forward to today, and you have the extreme irony of someone who got extremely rich precisely because of those policies (not Kavanaugh, btw -- he and Steward are the local poster children for entrepreneurial growth) bitching about the lack of "leaders" in the area. There are plenty of potential leaders -- the problem is that the region still operates largely on the (failed) 1980s model. 

[JohnnyJumpUp]

On 4/5/2017 at 7:27 AM, slufan13 said:

The metrolink is great if you like getting shot.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/man-shot-dead-on-metrolink-train-near-umsl/article_eb441c1a-6771-5a7f-bd57-6bf034846a1e.html

[cheeseman]

2 hours ago, Old guy said:

Thank you Sshoe, interesting article. St. Louis did well until a bit past mid XX century and then started its decline which continues to this day. That is an undeniable fact. The mention of Square a high tech company founded in St. Louis by St. Louisians and moved to SF in 2009 shows there is nothing wrong with the inventiveness of the people in the city, but they eventually decide it is necessary for them to leave the area in order to survive and be competitive. 

Any tech company that starts in a place like StL will always be pushed/forced to move to the Silicon Valley area because the investors are out there and they usually end up requiring that move to happen.  Founder - Twitter guy - wanted to stay in StL.  He even just opened an office in CA but eventually that was not enough.  It has nothing to do with being able to survive and be competitive they can do that here if there were enough money to invest available.  They who founded the sports social network - Locker something - he is still here but he has had to pass up the CA money. Eventually he will sell and then it may move.

[WestCoastBilliken]

I remember a 60 minutes interview with the Twitter founder.  He had a lot of good comments about the decline of St Louis and why he had to move the company out. People should google for the video and watch it.

 Just as an outside perspective on St Louis (someone who was born, raised and now lives on the Coast), during my time in St Louis, the majority of people seemed to have a NIMBY attitude toward virtually anything new or different.  St Louis is a very slow moving City that does not seek innovation.  

On a personal note, from my conversations with virtually anyone not from St Louis... St Louis has a very very bad image problem. People would never consider moving to St Louis, no matter how unaffordable the coast is.  They would rather spend 75% of their income to live in a shoe box then move to a place like St Louis.  The only thing that people think they know about St Louis is that "their is a ton of crime and nothing to do but go see the Cardinals play".  If you are trying to attract the young and bright in this global economy, St louis needs to fix their image first and foremost. 

[Old guy]

1 hour ago, cheeseman said:

Any tech company that starts in a place like StL will always be pushed/forced to move to the Silicon Valley area because the investors are out there and they usually end up requiring that move to happen.  Founder - Twitter guy - wanted to stay in StL.  He even just opened an office in CA but eventually that was not enough.  It has nothing to do with being able to survive and be competitive they can do that here if there were enough money to invest available.  They who founded the sports social network - Locker something - he is still here but he has had to pass up the CA money. Eventually he will sell and then it may move.

Look at what you wrote cheeseman, I have boldened the spot for your convenience. This is exactly what I mean by "survive and being competitive", you must have relatively free access to money to survive and be competitive. You get it?