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There's Pork In More Than Your Hot Dog

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JOSEPH H. BROWN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 15, 2008

The owner of the Major League Baseball team was frustrated. He was stuck in an old ballpark that was considered out of date and unable to provide the revenue streams professional teams need to compete in the modern-day sport world.

So he appealed to the city to help him and his partners build a new ballpark, convincing them that the new stadium was a win-win proposition for taxpayers and the team. They even offered to put some of their own money into the deal up front. In the end he sold the mayor and a majority of voters on the idea, which also had a complicated land deal as part of the package.

Although this sounds similar to the plan Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg is pitching to the voters of St. Petersburg, it's not. It happened in the early 1990s in Arlington, Texas, and the minority owner of the team, the Texas Rangers, was George W. Bush.

I thought about all of this as I watched the Rays play the Rangers last weekend at the Ballpark at Arlington, as it's called. I guess if it's OK for a future president to pay for his team's ballpark, then it's OK for Sternberg to do the same.

They'll Still Come

At least the Texas Rangers were playing in an old minor-league stadium with no skyboxes or other amenities that help professional sports teams maximize their revenue potential. The Rays have only played in Tropicana Field for 10 full seasons - and it isn't even paid off.

Then again, we live in a time of throwaway stadiums and arenas, and it amazes me how quickly these edifices age. I remember watching the construction of all those "cookie-cutter" all-purpose stadiums in the late 1960s, only to see them imploded a few decades later because they didn't have enough luxury suites, skyboxes and club seats.

It's a wonder the Coliseum in Rome is still standing. After all, it doesn't have skyboxes.

Prior to the 1960s, government-funded stadiums were the exception. In 1950, Major League Baseball only had one publicly owned ballpark. Still, the question remains, if these owners need new stadiums, why don't they just pay for them out of their own pockets? Sternberg is being praised because the Rays are willing to put up $150 million of the $450 million needed to build their new ballpark on the site of Al Lang Field. Well, isn't that nice of him! He'll put up about one-third of the money for his new stadium.

I guess they figure that if you build a new stadium with private or public money, they'll still come, and taxpayers don't seem to mind that not all the pork at the local ballpark is in their hot dogs.

Owners, Not Players, Are Juiced

The Rays also tout the fact that their new stadium plan will not require any new taxes, just existing one. I guess that's a plus, but it still diverts public money which could be going to improve schools or infrastructure.

In 1991 in Arlington, voters approved a sales tax increase to build a new park for the Rangers by a 2-1 margin. Between the sales-tax revenue, state tax exemptions and other financial incentives, Texas taxpayers handed Bush and his partners more than $200 million in public subsidies. When the team was sold in 1998, Bush received a $14.9 million cut from the proceeds of the sale, quite a return on his original $606,000 investment.

Just how much the taxpayers benefited from this "win-win proposition" is unclear, but it's very clear who ended up the biggest winner.

Whether the Rays end up with a new ballpark will be decided by St. Petersburg voters later this year. Regardless of the outcome, voters should keep in mind that Sternberg is only doing what any modern-day owner of a sports franchise would do. Just ask the president of the United States.

Joseph H. Brown is a Tribune editorial writer.

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