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Re: The Commons - Downtown East Park

Posted: September 15th, 2015, 1:45 pm
by grant1simons2
All I said was I want the sport to stay in Minneapolis. It's huge for business downtown. I disagree with giving a huge huge tax break on them and paying for half of it, but I want it to stay. Also I'd like to know how the stadium is taking money away from schools and our infrastructure?

Re: The Commons - Downtown East Park

Posted: September 15th, 2015, 1:50 pm
by Wedgeguy
I believe that the morgue was built where it was, was because the county owned the land, it was close to the HCMC, and as has been said many times in the past, no one else wanted to build anything with private money so the county built on what they owned. So blame the capitalist market for not building on the land first when the Dome was new.
I'll meet you half-way. The former owners of the StarTribune owned much of the developable land and refused to sell to developers. I suspect they were always waiting for some mythical ship to come in and make the land more valuable by multiples.

I will disagree with you in that a vastly underreported subtext is that the City of Minneapolis closed off the East Side to entertainment development when they decided that all such efforts should focus on Hennepin Avenue. Building 2 jails between the downtown core and the Metrodome certainly didn't help either.
I'll agree with you in that the city council of the 80's and 90's did much to prohibit development east of 5th Avenue. Between the jails and the parking ramps they basically walled of the east from being developed. Also agree with you on the Strib blocking some of the developable land from even being looked at. The development now shows that you can right a wrong idea, but it takes a lot of capital to do it.

Re: The Commons - Downtown East Park

Posted: September 15th, 2015, 2:06 pm
by trigonalmayhem
Also I'd like to know how the stadium is taking money away from schools and our infrastructure?
Opportunity cost. Money from a finite pool spent on this is money that cannot be spent on something else more useful to us as a society. You could theoretically just keep raising taxes to cover everything but that's politically impossible so it shouldn't be treated as an actual option until the politics of it change.

Re: The Commons - Downtown East Park

Posted: September 15th, 2015, 2:17 pm
by VikingFaninMaryland
Good for you. They still should have let us vote. Giving money to billionaires is stupid when your schools have budget problems and your infrastructure is crumbling. Enjoy your bread and circus.
Minneapolis is staking its downtown residential growth (70,000) on the notion that it is a sports and entertainment destination. Losing the crown jewel of American sports, an NFL franchise, would have cratered that claim. It also would have cratered east side development.

Note the development around the Twins new stadium. Its the first stadium the Twins have ever played in that could make claims to being an elite MLB stadium when built. It had to wait 50 years to get it. The same is true for the Vikings. Look at the development the new Viking stadium has already spawned - around $1 billion and the stadium has yet to open its doors. While I admit to not really caring about Major League Soccer (MLS), I think Minneapolis would be crazy not to do what it has to do to get it built downtown. Along with the Wolves facility (NBA) in the downtown core, this makes Minneapolis a bona fide national sports destination capable of keeping downtown Minneapolis in the news year round. Beginning with camera shots that show beautiful facilities in the context of a great skyline, Minneapolis simply cannot pay for such national and international exposure.

Even if the bonds to fund the Twins and Vikings stadium never fully pay off (and I’m told the Twins bonds are on schedule to pay off years early), those facilities will still add to the state coffers by virtue of the development that is already in production or is foreseeably so that will dramatically expand state, county and city revenue. It will also increase travel and hotel usage creating jobs from out-state revenue that will also add to the tax base. This is the type of revenue that can transform education budgets. Minneapolis without major league sports would be like Omaha or Oklahoma City.

Both the Twins and Vikings stadiums are anomalous precisely because they actually have spawned development around them that can reasonably be shown to be due to their being built. (The rule is that such claims are made but don’t pan out).

Minneapolis is not giving money to billionaires, it is investing in its own future and massively expanding its tax base in the process. This is true even if the localities grant tax increment financing. Under the Wilfs, the Vikings brand is set to double over the next few years, the value of the Vikings have doubled, and may dramatically increase again when the stadium opens.

I think the politicians understood that pressure groups could have influenced voters not to fund a stadium. The paradox that they are also well aware of is that those same voters would have voted them out of office once the reality of losing an NFL franchise set in.

I lived in Minneapolis for a very long time, the Vikings is a Minnesota institution and clearly the state favorite. Don’t make yourself the victim of your own rhetoric.

“Professional crooks and liars”? Are you saying the Wilfs engaged in an unlawful bargaining practice when dealing with Minnesota’s State, County and local representatives? To my knowledge, its all a matter of public record. [Caveat: for those not familiar with the oft-times brutal nature of New Jersey business and especially construction when juxtaposed alongside the viciously partisan political environment there, hyperbolic language in civil cases is often measured in terms of whether actual equivalent criminal complaints are leveled. None were. For those on the list with friends familiar with NJ construction practices, you might want to fill them in.]

Re: The Commons - Downtown East Park

Posted: September 15th, 2015, 2:26 pm
by Tiller
Also I'd like to know how the stadium is taking money away from schools and our infrastructure?
Opportunity cost. Money from a finite pool spent on this is money that cannot be spent on something else more useful to us as a society. You could theoretically just keep raising taxes to cover everything but that's politically impossible so it shouldn't be treated as an actual option until the politics of it change.
Was the money to pay for the stadium taken out of some kind of general fund (I didn't really pay attention to how it was funded beyond that the city was paying for half)? If not, and it was paid for by a tax increase like Target Field, then it isn't really a direct opportunity cost, and it's misleading to claim that money was taken away from schools.

While the potential to raise taxes in the future may be diminished by it, it is also fully possible that the specific circumstances allowed for revenue increases that would not have been possible otherwise.

*also yay for rehashing arguments that have probably been thoroughly discussed already!*

Re: The Commons - Downtown East Park

Posted: September 15th, 2015, 2:28 pm
by amiller92
Opportunity cost. Money from a finite pool spent on this is money that cannot be spent on something else more useful to us as a society.
Except that's not how public spending works, where paying for project A has one set of supporters and paying for project B has another.

Re: Vikings Stadium Legislation/Financing Package

Posted: September 15th, 2015, 3:01 pm
by trigonalmayhem
People seem quick to cite the 'political realities' of how hard it is to find funding for some things they don't care about, but balk at the same logic applied to saying spending a boat load of money on a stadium diminishes the political will to raise more tax money for other things. I don't really get it.

Re: Vikings Stadium Legislation/Financing Package

Posted: September 15th, 2015, 10:10 pm
by mattaudio
Please don't feed the distant troll.

Re: USBank Stadium LRT Station, Ped Bridge & Plaza (MSFA blo

Posted: December 7th, 2015, 9:44 am
by Rich
Interesting how mandates break down systemic barriers
Public funding makes those mandates possible, right? It’ll also be interesting to see how many minorities make up the privately-funded MLS stadium workforce.

Re: Vikings Stadium Legislation/Financing Package

Posted: February 8th, 2016, 12:17 pm
by mattaudio
The Host City Always Loses the Super Bowl
Historically the event has hurt local taxpayers and the poor, and Super Bowl 52 in Minneapolis is shaping up to be no different.
http://www.citylab.com/work/2016/02/sup ... er/460077/

Re: Vikings Stadium Legislation/Financing Package

Posted: February 8th, 2016, 12:29 pm
by Nathan
To be fair, there's no mention of Minneapolis in the article. Valid concerns that tie into the conversations we've had multiple times re:stadia, re:olympics... etc etc.

Re: Vikings Stadium Legislation/Financing Package

Posted: February 8th, 2016, 1:33 pm
by amiller92
Makes me want to survey the downtown hotels and restaurants about how full they've been over the last week or so.

Re: Vikings Stadium Legislation/Financing Package

Posted: February 8th, 2016, 1:35 pm
by nordeast homer
The Host City Always Loses the Super Bowl
Historically the event has hurt local taxpayers and the poor, and Super Bowl 52 in Minneapolis is shaping up to be no different.
http://www.citylab.com/work/2016/02/sup ... er/460077/
Seemed like a fiarly biased article that didn't take into account the tax money that comes in from hosting an event like that. Between visitors, media, players, etc, the taxes would more than pay for the cities portion of the bill.
The cities look to events like this as a marketing tool. I'm guessing this is cheaper than most national marketing campaigns.
The Olympics is a different story. The host cities are expected to build villages for the athletes and provide extra transportation, the price tag runs into the billions and in the long run there is no way to make up that kind of expense.

Re: Vikings Stadium Legislation/Financing Package

Posted: February 8th, 2016, 2:13 pm
by amiller92
Seemed like a fiarly biased article that didn't take into account the tax money that comes in from hosting an event like that. Between visitors, media, players, etc, the taxes would more than pay for the cities portion of the bill.
Nah, the linked studies take that into consideration. But they don't fully support the headline, as it seems to be true that for places like Miami and New Orleans - places that have active hospitality industries at that time of year anyway - that there aren't really any gains because they'd have people in town anyway. If there's no (or little) marginal benefit, there are very real actual costs in hosting, so it's a money-losing game.

The exception to that general rule, at least the last time I looked at the relevant studies, was Indianapolis, which apparently had hospitality capacity that would not otherwise have been in use. Even the pessimistic view of it's Super Bowl left it making money, although nowhere near the numbers the NFL claims.

I have to think the first week of February is a relatively slack time for the local hospitality industry, which means that Minneapolis should be able to do better than average, but it's definitely not the big money-maker that the leagues says it is.

Re: Vikings Stadium Legislation/Financing Package

Posted: February 8th, 2016, 2:39 pm
by trigonalmayhem
But who's going to pick up the tab for the police state that is apparently required to host the super bowl? The way most sources of tax revenue are somehow controlled by the state makes me feel like the state will take as much of the tax revenue as they can get and leave the city holding the bag for costs without reimbursement because that's generally how most things work here.

Re: Vikings Stadium Legislation/Financing Package

Posted: February 8th, 2016, 3:30 pm
by amiller92
Oh, I'm sure the city will send the league a bill :?

Re: Vikings Stadium Legislation/Financing Package

Posted: February 8th, 2016, 5:07 pm
by Rich
But who's going to pick up the tab for the police state that is apparently required to host the super bowl?
Minnesota’s Super Bowl organizers say security costs will be covered by private fundraising, not taxpayers. The Minnesota host committee is working to raise more than $30 million to stage the event
http://www.startribune.com/houston-on-d ... 368084831/

Re: Vikings Stadium Legislation/Financing Package

Posted: February 9th, 2016, 8:29 am
by Rich
The “host committee” is just rich people (the 1%). And the $30 million they raise privately will be largely spent paying time-and-a-half to local working folks, and purchasing supplies from local businesses, right? Likewise, don’t the hundreds of millions that wealthy visitors spend on hotels, bars, restaurants, retailers, limousines etc. end up lining the pockets of local working folks? And don’t those working folks then spend those earnings elsewhere in the community?

We’re pretty much getting rich people to liquify some of their offshore assets and shower it all on Minneapolis at a time of year that’s normally the low point for tourism. Is that really a bad thing for our economy?

Re: Vikings Stadium Legislation/Financing Package

Posted: June 1st, 2016, 9:15 am
by mattaudio
I just had a moment where I remembered how much we're getting ripped off. Feel free to join me in it.

Re: Vikings Stadium Legislation/Financing Package

Posted: June 1st, 2016, 9:17 am
by acs
Nope.