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MLS 4 the Lou


Bills_06

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4 minutes ago, gobillsgo said:

Not if it's too late and the city misses out.  And I would also argue that it can still be a gift even if they aren't paying the whole thing.  But it's pointless to try and change people's minds on an internet forum.

You seem to be misplacing your blame with the city voters and not the group that a) failed to win the election and b) had no backup plan in place

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32 minutes ago, brianstl said:

The city doesn't have enough money to increase salaries to retain or hire quality police officers, but people think the city should have gave millions of dollars to a billionaire who lives in Boston. 

This will be my last post in this topic.   You understand investment right?  $60 million up front is a lot for the city, sure.  But a professional sports franchise in likely THE fastest growing league in the US will return much more than $60 million over the next 50 years.

Reading this thread, it's easy to see why the Proposition failed.  I hope the city doesn't regret telling MLS to take a hike.

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Just now, gobillsgo said:

This will be my last post in this topic.   You understand investment right?  $60 million up front is a lot for the city, sure.  But a professional sports franchise in likely THE fastest growing league in the US will return much more than $60 million over the next 50 years.

Reading this thread, it's easy to see why the Proposition failed.  I hope the city doesn't regret telling MLS to take a hike.

At this point I believe there is enough examples to say that public financing of arenas rarely works out as some sort of gold mine for cities. Billionaire owners, who are billionaires without their sports team toy, use the fear of losing a team to hold a city hostage every 15-20 years when they want upgrades or new facilities. There are plenty of examples - even new Busch stadium didn’t spur anything exciting. it’s over 10 years old now and they’re just now on phase 2 of ballpark village. 

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Just now, gobillsgo said:

This will be my last post in this topic.   You understand investment right?  $60 million up front is a lot for the city, sure.  But a professional sports franchise in likely THE fastest growing league in the US will return much more than $60 million over the next 50 years.

Reading this thread, it's easy to see why the Proposition failed.  I hope the city doesn't regret telling MLS to take a hike.

No they really don't return the investment.  The three fastest growing metro areas (Las Vegas, Austin, Raleigh) from 2000-2010 had no teams in teams in the top sports leagues during that time period.  You are better off making investments in other areas.

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26 minutes ago, brianstl said:

No they really don't return the investment.  The three fastest growing metro areas (Las Vegas, Austin, Raleigh) from 2000-2010 had no teams in teams in the top sports leagues during that time period.  You are better off making investments in other areas.

This is def. true. Economic analyses have shown again and again that cities don't typically recoup their financial investments from paying for these things. 

Receipts:

Forbes

Bloomberg

It can and has been done without taxpayer funding (e.g. the San Francisco Giants stadium, which IIRC was built 100% with private funds-could be wrong, though). Or it has been done successfully with taxpayer support (e.g. the revitalization of downtown Detroit with the help of Comerica park and Ford field).  Personally I don't think taxpayers ought to be subsidizing billionaires' for-profit organizations. It reminds me of people who go out to eat and complain about tipping. Like, no, actually, if you can't afford to tip, you can't afford to eat out.  Imo, if you can't find private funds to build a stadium, you can't afford a pro team, and you shouldn't be asking for a handout from taxpayers.

Having said that...if people had wanted to vote "yes" because they wanted a team to come to STL that badly and think it's worth it, more power to them. In any event, it seems to have worked out for the best.

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47 minutes ago, gobillsgo said:

 You understand investment right? 

$60 million up front

will return much more than $60 million over the next 50 years.

Reading this thread, it's easy to see why the Proposition failed.  I hope the city doesn't regret telling MLS to take a hike.

0% return over that time period 🤔

Not an ideal ROI, for those that "understand investment"

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1 hour ago, Duff Man said:

The previous MLS ownership group didn't do a good job of selling their proposal to enclaves within the city (Tower Grove South/East, CWE, Cortex, The Grove, Cherokee) that would have rather seen that use tax $$$ spent in ways that could help their neighborhoods.

So true. As a sports fan I certainly want(ed) the MLS in town, but the previous ownership group rubbed me the wrong way and never presented a compelling case in my opinion. They had that one press conference as a group where they came across fairly smug to me and kind of mocked any media members asking fairly valid questions about the deal for the city. I heard the group asked a number of times about whether they could tie in some more $ to the ownership group to avoid relying on taxpayers or put the burden on those attending games and the responses were always non answers and how it was a great deal for the city and failure to vote it thru would result in the city continuing to fall behind (I remember Taylor Twellman kind of making doom or gloom type of comments and the image of a private school kid and former soccer player wearing a slim fitting suit warning/screaming at city residents about how the city will perish without a soccer team was bad optics from my perspective). To me it was like this is how you are making your case to taxpayers, essentially threaten them? Ultimately, that group failed and now we have a prominent St. Louis family stepping up and changing the deal (similar to what they did for the Blues). As Pistol said, doesn't that show that city voters made the right call? I am fully on board with this new group, lets hope we aren't late to the party.

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FYI it looks like they are having a groundbreaking ceremony for the Fairfield Inn on the old Harry's spot today.

Who knows, maybe the Taylor's don't plan to build there anyways. Maybe they plan to build a riverfront stadium to house their MLS team AND their NLF team: the St. Louis Chargers

 

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10 hours ago, Slu let the dogs out? said:

FYI it looks like they are having a groundbreaking ceremony for the Fairfield Inn on the old Harry's spot today.

Who knows, maybe the Taylor's don't plan to build there anyways. Maybe they plan to build a riverfront stadium to house their MLS team AND their NLF team: the St. Louis Chargers

 

The Fairfield Inn will not be in the plot where the stadium would go, it is adjacent.

People don’t realize the enormous footprint of that I-64 interchange area.

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On 10/15/2018 at 9:12 AM, gobillsgo said:

This will be my last post in this topic.   You understand investment right?  $60 million up front is a lot for the city, sure.  But a professional sports franchise in likely THE fastest growing league in the US will return much more than $60 million over the next 50 years.

Reading this thread, it's easy to see why the Proposition failed.  I hope the city doesn't regret telling MLS to take a hike.

If a MLS team is even remotely as successful as they think it could be the stadium will need to majorly expanded/retrofit in 20 years.  

Some of the minor investors from the previous group were telling people their plan only expected a single digit ROI over the first couple of decades.  

The $60 million in public money wasn’t about an investment for the city.  It was $60 million dollars in risk reduction for an ownership group (mainly Edgerly) who wanted a certain level of return and risk to make the investment worthwhile. That’s why just plugging in another investor wasn’t an option for them.  It had to be a funding source that wouldn’t be owed a share of the bottom line revenues.

The Taylors are likely accepting a higher level of risk or lower level of return in making their pitch.  Maybe out of civic pride, maybe out of faith in Jim’s vision.  

 

That is how you understand the investment.

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14 hours ago, ARon said:

The Fairfield Inn will not be in the plot where the stadium would go, it is adjacent.

People don’t realize the enormous footprint of that I-64 interchange area.

Yeah they can definitely fit both on that land (guess I should've used blue font on the entire post), which is what the plan was last year when both the hotel developer and MLS2STL groups unveiled their plans. As I stated in an earlier post, the Taylor's could fit a 550' X 450' stadium next to the Fairfield Inn with room to spare.

Interesting to note what the overlay appeared to look like prior to the hotel developer revising their plans last year (the blue box being the old Fairfield Inn construction site). I'm curious to see if the Taylor's scrap the MLS2STL stadium plans completely  and design their own stadium. I can't wait to see how it all looks once plans are finalized.

Image

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2 minutes ago, billikenfan05 said:

Yeah, it would be incredibly stupid to name the team the same as a local club. Really alienate the rest of city 

Well, there would be more consequences if they did name the team that (lawsuit). I think we would rather say St. Louis Gateway, though it doesn't really sound good.

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8 hours ago, Slu let the dogs out? said:

Yeah they can definitely fit both on that land (guess I should've used blue font on the entire post), which is what the plan was last year when both the hotel developer and MLS2STL groups unveiled their plans. As I stated in an earlier post, the Taylor's could fit a 550' X 450' stadium next to the Fairfield Inn with room to spare.

Interesting to note what the overlay appeared to look like prior to the hotel developer revising their plans last year (the blue box being the old Fairfield Inn construction site). I'm curious to see if the Taylor's scrap the MLS2STL stadium plans completely  and design their own stadium. I can't wait to see how it all looks once plans are finalized.

Image

Where is the new Fairfield construction site?  You said this is the old one in blue.

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https://soccerstadiumdigest.com/2018/10/handicapping-the-next-mls-expansion-round-october-2018-edition/

Here is another resource handicapping the MLS expansion race.  I believe that since this article was written, Detroit's group has said that no, they will not install a retractable roof on Ford Field.  IMO, that screws up their odds big time.

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13 minutes ago, HoosierPal said:

https://soccerstadiumdigest.com/2018/10/handicapping-the-next-mls-expansion-round-october-2018-edition/

Here is another resource handicapping the MLS expansion race.  I believe that since this article was written, Detroit's group has said that no, they will not install a retractable roof on Ford Field.  IMO, that screws up their odds big time.

So our competition is Phoenix for the last spot.  If the Columbus deal falls through then we move to top of the list given that the owner would move that team to Austin.  Good info

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39 minutes ago, Bills_06 said:

Looks like Chris May is at the hearing today for the MLS.  

 

I don't see us ever using the stadium for Billiken Soccer games but this stadium would give us an opportunity to host NCAA Soccer and  Lacrosse final fours. I wonder if an athletic department can host a final four in a sport they don't field a team... I know my opinion means d!ck and is bias but I always though st Louis should be an every year host city for an NCAA sport like OKC and Omaha 

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