Robin Hood (in reverse). Absolute insanity…yeah, i know, Detroit cannot be “a world-class” city without pro sports teams. Tell me exactly how this helps the city?
If politicians focused on three things, their cities would be attractive places to live and invest:
-education
-crime control
-clean streets and infrastructure
But given what the Detroit leadership has been ding for the last 50 years, it appears none of these things are a priority.
Hahahah, what? I have no idea how you managed to draw that conclusion from what I said. I agree the stadium is not a priority given Detroit’s other problems. But I think it’s better than nothing.
I’m not a Red Wings fan, but I’m a big fan of Detroit. As far as I know, Michigan is doing next to nothing to help Detroit, which is reprehensible. Snyder-appointed city managers like Orr are shit, and have almost never helped the cities to which they’re assigned. Orr, a bankruptcy specialist, seems to have been appointed not to save Detroit, but to push it to declare bankruptcy.
But here’s one thing, a publicly funded stadium in Detroit, projected to bring money and jobs and other businesses. It won’t save Detroit. There are larger priorities than a redundant sports stadium. But it’s something.
It’s a half-billion dollars. Just maybe, there are more important things to spend it on in trying to resuscitate Detroit. We could come up with a logo for them, if that would help.
I spent much of my life in a town whose last mayor (and maybe still) was a former NBA player whose entire platform and entire administration was about building a lavish stadium to retain the only pro sports team there. I’m really, really familiar with all the arguments and the kool-aid doesn’t mask the smell of self-serving bullshit the proposition is molded from.
:dubious:
I don’t see people lining up to move to Omaha.
I’m generally against publicly funded stadiums but could a case be made that some public funding is warranted because it will be returned via taxes? This may not apply in this situation because the Red Wings already have a place to play.
See, that’s the thing, Deeg. The sports teams in Detroit seem to be competitive with each other, in addition to competing against other teams across the country.
It’s like a nuclear arms race: “they” got a new stadium, so we **deserve **a new stadium, ad nauseum. The public, through their taxes, props up billionaires who suddenly don’t have the cash to build the new stadium that the team suddenly deserves.
The rah-rah, civic pride, team pride stuff gets cranked up, and voila! You have a city with new sports complexes all over the place. Some are active, some are abandoned and going to ruin. More eyesores. More “beautiful ruins of Detroit”.
I’ve never been to Joe Louis Arena (or “the Joe”) but from what I have heard from those who have is that it really isn’t that good of an arena. The Ilitches put plenty of their own money into Comerica Park, if it takes a little public funding to get a proper arena for hockey I’m all for it. It isn’t like they haven’t invested plenty in the city already, Detroit owes a lot to the Ilitches and selling bonds for an arena is a pittance. Hockeytown needs the best arena in the NHL.
As to blackouts, virtually all the games home and away are on Fox Sports Detroit. That isn’t going to change.
This is a horrendous example, and an incredibly poorly written article. The Ballpark in Arlington financing passed by a large majority vote, and the debt was paid off early. Just because Bush was involved doesn’t make it a bad deal. The public wanted it, got it, and it cost them less than originally estimated. How is that a bad deal?
The Cowboys example used in the article was even worse. The article is written to make it look like Arlington paid for all of it and Jerry Jones paid for none of it. The stadium cost $1.15 billion; Arlington paid $325 million and the NFL gave a $150 million loan. Jones paid for $675 million. Jones absorbed 100% of cost overruns, which ended up being $500 million because Jones kept adding on to the original design. They then make one of the stupidest statements that I have ever seen made by any member of the media.
[QUOTE=Daily KOS]
The Cowboys emphasized during the tax initiative campaign that they were putting up half the money for the stadium–$325 million–but that isn’t quite true. While the city will use the new taxes to retire its side of the debt, Jones will be able to slap his own 10 percent “tax” on tickets and a $3 tax on parking to retire his side. That will raise about $10 million a year, or $300 million over 30 years.
[/QUOTE]
Disregarding the fact that the $325 million ended up being $825 million with $150 million coming from the NFL and $675 million coming from Jones, are they seriously trying to say that if the Jones’s portion comes partially from ticket and parking revenue then he’s not really paying for it? How the hell else is he supposed to pay for it other than through operating income? Is he supposed to pull it out of thin air? He did it exactly how one would expect, he got a loan and is paying that off with interest over time through operating income.
Then, there can be absolutely no doubt that the Cowboys stadium has been a boon to Arlington. In addition to the Cowboys moving from Irving to Arlington, the also moved the Cotton Bowl New Years game, have attracted 1 and soon to be 2 Super Bowls, have hosted numerous big non-bowl game neutral site games (such as Alabama and Michigan last year), NCAA Final Four, NBA All Star game, and numerous other events, none of which would have been in Arlington if not for the stadium. It’s possibly the best example ever of a stadium adding value to a city.
While I would agree that many if not most of the new publicly financed stadium deals are poor public policy, they possibly picked the absolute worst example possible for one and picked another bad example just because it had Bush’s name attached to it.
Wow, just wow, what a horrible article.
the over-arching issue is that Joe Louis Arena is physically attached to Cobo Hall, and is slated to be gutted/demolished in the not-too-distant future and be consumed by the expansion of Cobo. Which is something “needed” lest the city lose NAIAS.
I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me what else the state was supposed to do. There was a consent agreement which council rejected. There was a lease deal for the state to run Belle Isle for a period, which council rejected. City council rejected every single proposal from the state as “not good enough,” as if you get to dictate terms when you’re the one who needs assistance. The state of Michigan simply doesn’t have nearly enough money to address Detroit’s crushing debt. Detroit simply is bankrupt, with or without a court filing. having the state throw a few million at them might pay for a couple of things but once that is burned through, things will be right back where they started. It’s all about control with the jackasses on council. They cling desperately to their Department of Public Lighting even though they haven’t been remotely competent for as long as I can remember. Detroit’s been wasting tons of money trying to keep “big city” departments long after it has ceased being a “big city.” There was no reason to keep DPL when DTE could have taken on that role like it does for most of the metro area. There was no reason to keep DDOT when SMART could run it like it does for the rest of the area.
This has been decades in the making, yet somehow this is the fault of a guy who has been governor for less than one term. Give me a fucking break.
Step 1: Don’t build a city that’s dependent on one industry for survival.
At least at the 2010 Census, Detroit had over 700k residents and was still more populous than Boston, Seattle, or Denver, all unquestionably “big cities.” Link. Just because it’s a shadow of its former self doesn’t mean it can be policed by Sheriff Andy Taylor and his deputy or protected by the volunteer fire brigade.:rolleyes:
No, no reason to be wary of bus routes in the city being run by “Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation” with a Board of Directors “balanced” 5-2 against Wayne County. There’s no possibility that such a bus system would have a suburban focus to the detriment of more transit-dependent city residents. :dubious:
Step 0: construct a time machine, Captain Hindsight.
Seriously, saying “don’t do what you did 100 years ago” is pointless and doesn’t address anything.
And that right there is another big problem. The “us vs. them” or “ours vs. theirs” mentality that permeates the area.
One of the main things “wrong” with Joe Louis is that is is a windowless, butt ugly bunker sitting on a huge piece of prime riverfront real estate.
Once the new Arena is built and the Joe is torn down, that land will be worth a ton to the city.
Agreed. It’s definitely a two-way street: the city residents don’t trust the suburbs/outer counties, and the suburbanites don’t trust the city. Both have incidents and precedents they can cite for their position. 
However dysfunctional Chicago/Illinois politics gets 
and despite the occasional city-vs-suburb rumblings, the Chicago suburbs and collar counties “get” their interdependence with Chicago proper, and vice versa. To keep to the transit example, the prospect of the city bus or L systems being gutted to the benefit of the suburbs is almost unfathomable. Downstate (outside the six metropolitan-Chicago counties) is sometimes a different story, but Chicago and the rest of Cook County generally hang together with the collar counties so that the roughly four-million Downstaters have little prospect of overriding the seven-million residents of metro Chicago. 
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Humor alert.
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Pointing out the fundamental, nearly insoluble problem that underlies all of Detroit’s woes. When the money packs up and leaves, there’s not a hell of a lot you can do about it.
I’m pretty sure the industry built the city. It wasn’t so much short sightedness on the part of the builders, as it was the complete rejection in recent years of the notion that there would be a mass exodus of industry.
A pretty typical human failing is to believe when something hasn’t changed much in half century it is ever enduring. Be it business, weather, shore line, finance, you name it.
OCP - Building the city of tomorrow.
This is what desperate cities do: first build an amusement park to celebrate why you used to be great, i.e., AutoWorld in Flint, MI, because surely people will flock there to see. . .something. When that doesn’t work, build a hugely expensive sports arena which will surely bring in all those broke, unemployed folks from the urban areas and entice people to move to your broken down city that has almost no infrastructure or functional public safety departments.
- Comerica Park, Joe Louis, and Ford Field are regularly packed.
- There already is a hockey arena in the city, so don’t act like this is part of some grand plan to “Revitalize” anything.
Look people, the reason there’s planning for a new arena for the Red Wings is because Joe Louis Arena is going away. It is going to be absorbed into whatever Cobo Center becomes when the overhaul is complete. Yes, the Wings could go to Auburn Hills and play at the Palace (and there’s been talk about them doing so albeit temporarily,) but Mike Ilitch really wants to keep it in the city.
you could say the same thing about Cobo. Whoever designed Cobo Center should be shot. Unless he/she is already dead, in which case he/she should be dug up and shot. I mean, you’re building a convention center right on the bank of the Detroit River. So what part of the building do you have facing the river? Fucking shipping and receiving.
What was Singapore 60 years ago? It was a crime ridden, drug infested dump.
Now its one of the fasted growing economies in the world. How was that done?