Braves moving to suburbs in 2017 and I, for one, am not happy.

[RTFirefly]

@Ulf_the_Unwashed

Here’s the part that I find especially galling: (from http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/jay-bookman/2013/may/17/cobb-county-so-poor-it-has-lay-teachers/, published in May 2013)

“And yet this week, the Cobb County School Board closed an $86 million deficit by cutting 182 teaching positions from its local schools and requiring five days of unpaid furlough for teachers and other employees, among other steps. Because you see, as prosperous as Cobb County might appear to be on the outside, it is simply too poor to keep those teachers in the classroom and on the payroll.”

As a non-Atlantan, I can’t speak to the other issues. But if a county has to lay off teachers, it has NO BUSINESS spending $300 million on a ballpark. If I were in Cobb County I’d consider staging a revolt. And I say that as a person who loves baseball.

QFT. They don’t have $86M for their schools, but they’re going to find $400M for the Braves’ new ballpark.

I’m sure glad I don’t live in Cobb County.

[Marley23]

@Labrador_Deceiver

• The Braves didn’t own Turner firld, but will own the new ballpark. That makes good financial sense, and enables them to build a smaller stadium that will better fit their needs. That’s right, the stadium will be a good bit smaller than Turner Field.

This is common in new ballparks. Fewer seats means scarcity, which means you can charge more.

[wevets]

It’s not just Cobb County, voters and taxpayers all over the U.S. are getting screwed by the demands for public money for new and more-impressive stadiums. If anyone’s interested in the trend, here’s a good non-technical article on the process: America Has a Stadium Problem - Pacific Standard
Some snippets to whet your appetite:

@Aaron Gordon

Over the past 20 years, 101 new sports facilities have opened in the United States—a 90-percent replacement rate—and almost all of them have received direct public funding.

<snip>…

Economists have long known stadiums to be poor public investments. Most of the jobs created by stadium-building projects are either temporary, low-paying, or out-of-state contracting jobs—none of which contribute greatly to the local economy. (Athletes can easily circumvent most taxes in the state in which they play.) Most fans do not spend additional money as a result of a new stadium; they re-direct money they would have spent elsewhere on movies, dining, bowling, tarot-card reading, or other businesses. And for every out-of-state fan who comes into the city on game day and buys a bucket of Bud Light Platinum, another non-fan decides not to visit and purchases his latte at the coffee shop next door.

<snip>…

Economists have also been, according to Long, drastically underestimating the true cost of these projects. They fail to consider public subsidies for land and infrastructure, the ongoing costs of operations, capital improvements (we need a new scoreboard!), municipal services (all those traffic cops), and foregone property taxes (almost every major-league franchise located in the U.S. does not pay property taxes “due to a legal loophole with questionable rationale” as the normally value-neutral Long put it).

<snip>…

When I asked Professor Bradbury if he thinks the issue of stadium financing is fundamentally a public choice problem, he said, “You have classic concentrated benefits and dispersed costs, and politicians have time preferences. They want to get re-elected now, and paying it off later is someone else’s problem.” While Professor Johnson was more direct: “I think that’s really what’s going on here.” He recalled that voters in Pittsburgh initially voted down referendums on funding new stadiums for the Pirates and the Steelers, but they got built anyway (which is not an uncommon occurrence).

Ideally voters and politicians would know the risks of what they’re getting into, but the greater benefit incentive of the team owners and the longer time horizon for cost-benefit calculations almost always works out in the owners’ favor. I’m just glad my local sports teams are out of the area where I pay local taxes.

[BobLibDem]

@Marley23

This is common in new ballparks. Fewer seats means scarcity, which means you can charge more.

But it would seem that fewer seats mean fewer concessions as well. Seems like on a humid Atlanta night you could sell a nickel’s worth of Coke for about five bucks and more than make up for the slight decrease in ticket price.

[Grumman]

@wevets

Ideally voters and politicians would know the risks of what they’re getting into…

Ideally voters and politicians wouldn’t get into it, any any politician who tried would get beaten with clubs.

[Labrador_Deceiver]

@wevets

It’s not just Cobb County, voters and taxpayers all over the U.S. are getting screwed by the demands for public money for new and more-impressive stadiums. If anyone’s interested in the trend, here’s a good non-technical article on the process: America Has a Stadium Problem - Pacific Standard
Some snippets to whet your appetite:

Ideally voters and politicians would know the risks of what they’re getting into, but the greater benefit incentive of the team owners and the longer time horizon for cost-benefit calculations almost always works out in the owners’ favor. I’m just glad my local sports teams are out of the area where I pay local taxes.

Precious little of that article addresses the situation here. This isn’t a new stadium in the same location; it’s a part of town that wants the pro team in their backyard.

[Labrador_Deceiver]

@BobLibDem

But it would seem that fewer seats mean fewer concessions as well. Seems like on a humid Atlanta night you could sell a nickel’s worth of Coke for about five bucks and more than make up for the slight decrease in ticket price.

It only means fewer concessions if there is an actual decrease in attendance. The Braves aren’t currently putting 41,000 in the seats.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Labrador_Deceiver

I don’t know, maybe the fact that they’ll now own the stadium and 60 very, very expensive acres of land?

Which they can sell at a profit since the county is paying for most of it, and have their new county build them a shiny newer facility.

Public financing of stadiums is a crock, and I say that as a big sports fan. Financially, it benefits nobody except the owners and the leagues. Municipalities fall for it because of prestige. Now Cobb County can be the Home of the Braves, as though anyone gives a shit about some backwater county or baseball, and the county commissioners can have their names on a plaque in the bowels of the stadium.

[Marley23]

@BobLibDem

But it would seem that fewer seats mean fewer concessions as well.

Not if you build more concession stands and sell more expensive food. The Yankees gave up about 6,600 seats when they changed stadiums, but they built dozens of new luxury boxes and added all kinds of restaurants. There’s a Shake Shack and a sushi place in there for crying out loud.

[wevets]

@Labrador_Deceiver

Precious little of that article addresses the situation here. This isn’t a new stadium in the same location; it’s a part of town that wants the pro team in their backyard.

:dubious: Doesn’t matter where the stadium is: the article’s about public financing of new stadiums. Usually the taxpayer gets shafted. Sure, it’s a different taxpayer than it was when Turner Field was built, but why would that suddenly make it irrelevant?

[Labrador_Deceiver]

Because I’m not convinced that Cobb County (not Gwinett, btw) won’t see a return on their money over the next few years.

I’m tired of seeing these vague articles that claim “most stadium projects aren’t worth it to the taxpayers.” What about this deal? Why don’t we look at the specifics, because every deal is different. You can’t compare this situation to one where a municipality is building a replacement facility right next door to the old one. You can’t compare a baseball stadium’s impact on the local economy to a football stadium’s. One hosts 80 games, the other hosts 8.

Anyone saying that this is a bad deal for Cobb County is talking out of his ass, because you have no idea how much of the $450mm will even come out of the pockets of Cobb’s taxpayers. You also have no idea what the economic impact of the stadium will be, locally. The Falcons’ new sfadium is more expensive and won’t rely on Atlanta taxpayers for a single penny, and they know exactly how much money the college and pro games played there will generate.

They just announced that Turner Field will likely be demolished.

[BobLibDem]

Are there other examples of fairly new stadiums or arenas being abandoned? THe only one I can think of offhand is the RCA Dome in Indy.

[Labrador_Deceiver]

Georgia Dome, I guess. It’s about 5 years older than Turner Field.

They’ll be 20 and 25 years old when replaced.

[JohnT]

@Kiber

… Finally - this map shows where the ticket buyers are coming from. Look at the locations of Turner Field and the proposed new facility - and you decide which is closer to the majority of fans.

I note that the article says that TF was in bad traffic and difficult to get to, but as a person who lived in Atlanta for 25 years, the new location will suck just far worse. I’m not seeing how adding another 4-10k worth of cars to the traffic flow at the northern I-75/I-285 junction is a better solution than riding into downtown, against the heavy northerly-flowing evening traffic.

[Labrador_Deceiver]

Traffic isn’t flowing Northerly at Turner Field. It’s flowing in many directions.

Traffic sucks everywhere in this town. There’s really no getting around it.

[JohnT]

Sorry, I mean that the evening traffic is more heavy leaving Atlanta, heading north, than coming in to downtown from the north. My mistake.

With the new location, somebody from Lawrenceville will be even more put out in regards to the new location because (shudder) they have to get on the outer loop on 285 to go from 85 to 75. That stretch alone would convince me not to make the trip, whereas downtown from Lawrenceville? No problem.

(Yes, I know the traffic sucks. I grew up there and left in 1999 - I can’t imagine it has gotten any better. )

[Labrador_Deceiver]

It’s way worse than in 1999. That’s the problem, it sucks everywhere now.

You’re right, though. Lawrenceville residents would be crazy to come across the top of 285 for a game. The thought of it makes me shudder. Of course, they have their own Braves team now.

[wevets]

@Labrador_Deceiver

I’m tired of seeing these vague articles that claim “most stadium projects aren’t worth it to the taxpayers.” What about this deal? Why don’t we look at the specifics, because every deal is different.

You must have missed my earlier post (#16) with a link to a paper in an economics journal that measured in general that these deals tend to soak the taxpayer and the claims of increasing tax revenue from increased business activity are often bullshit:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16839812&postcount=16
Maybe this deal will be different, but I’ll believe that when I see someone post the detail about this deal that makes it different from public financing of other stadiums in general.

[cmkeller]

BobLibDem:

Are there other examples of fairly new stadiums or arenas being abandoned? THe only one I can think of offhand is the RCA Dome in Indy.

As I mentioned upthread, the Kingdome in Seattle had a lifetime comparable to Turner Field’s (once its lease runs its course), but it did have serious structural issues, replacing it wasn’t just a greedy money move by the Mariners and Seahawks.

[Labrador_Deceiver]

What’s the difference between a “greedy money move” and doing a good job running an organization? The Braves made the responsible choice, and will be able to put a better product on the field moving forward.