It wouldn’t shock us if the McCaskey household, homeowners of Chicago’s beloved, ever-struggling Bears, felt a pang of optimism following a preseason wherein the workforce went undefeated and seemed a bit much less like an Arena Football League also-ran. In their last tuneup towards the Cleveland Browns, the offense gelled as quarterback Justin Fields threw three touchdowns within the first half. Perhaps the workforce’s arrow is up — Bears followers can solely bear down and hope.
But there’s one other mission on the McCaskeys’ minds that’s arguably much more tantalizing than the workforce’s prospects for the 2022 common season. Bears executives proceed to forge forward with the workforce’s declared intent to buy Arlington International Racecourse in northwest suburban Arlington Heights and construct a brand new stadium on the website. The closing might happen someday in 2023.
Whether the Bears truly find yourself in Arlington Heights stays an open query. Though the workforce has stated that’s their goal, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has stepped up her bid to maintain the Bears within the metropolis, providing a colossal sweetener within the form of a proposal to revamp Soldier Field right into a domed stadium that may increase seating capability from 61,500 to 70,000.
We’ve been skeptical in regards to the “Hail Mary” nature of Lightfoot’s provide, and insistent that any Soldier Field makeover that advantages the Bears needs to be paid for by the Bears and never taxpayers.
But what about Arlington Heights? Is there an urge for food within the northwest suburb for shelling out taxpayer cash to have the Monsters of the Midway operating curl routes and security blitzes on their house turf?
A current ballot means that residents of Arlington Heights relish the thought of the Bears coming to city. The survey, carried out by a libertarian-minded group referred to as Americans for Prosperity-Illinois, discovered that 72% of respondents backed the Bears’ bid to construct a stadium on the website of the racetrack.
But the ballot additionally requested one other necessary query. Would residents assist utilizing tax {dollars} to assist the workforce construct its soccer stadium? Among respondents, 68% stated no means.
That’s a message that the Bears, and Arlington Heights Mayor Tom Hayes, ought to heed.
The Bears aren’t a semipro workforce from Sioux City, Iowa. They’re a constitution member of the National Football League and a $4 billion enterprise, in response to Forbes journal. They have the means to construct a stadium from the bottom up, in the event that they select. There’s no want in anyway for the workforce to strategy Arlington Heights taxpayers for a serving to hand.
A disturbing development surrounding the development {of professional} sports activities stadiums within the U.S. has made an enormous comeback within the final couple of years. Once once more, multibillion-dollar franchises are constructing new multimillion-dollar stadiums, and getting huge tranches of money from taxpayers to do it.
According to the Athletic sports activities web site, NFL, Major League Baseball and National Basketball Association groups constructed or revamped 60 stadiums and arenas between 1992 and 2008 for a collective price ticket of $17.1 billion, and 68% of that quantity got here from public sources. That reliance on taxpayer cash dropped off sharply from 2009 to 2020, largely because of the financial broadside that the Great Recession delivered to cities.
But the development towards groups getting big-time assist from taxpayers has returned — and state and native politicians appear clueless in regards to the development’s prices and penalties.
One of probably the most egregious examples is Buffalo, New York, the place state officers have agreed to heap onto the shoulders of taxpayers $850 million of the $1.4 billion price ticket for a brand new stadium for the Buffalo Bills. The workforce’s homeowners, Terry and Kim Pegula, are reported to have a internet value of $5.8 billion. Having taxpayers foot a lot of the invoice for a billionaire couple’s new soccer stadium makes as a lot sense as coaxing former quarterback Jay Cutler out of retirement to run the Bears offense another time.
New York taxpayers aren’t the one victims of reckless administration of public cash. Maryland plans to spend $1.2 billion to overtake the Camden Yards Sports Complex, house to Baltimore’s Orioles baseball workforce and town’s Ravens soccer franchise. Tennessee’s governor desires state lawmakers to say sure to $500 million in bonds for a brand new stadium for the Tennessee Titans. Virginia officers are dangling $350 million in taxpayer cash to entice the Washington Commanders to construct a brand new stadium of their state.
Governors and mayors who push the thought of subsidizing NFL stadium building with hard-earned taxpayer cash usually be part of the groups in saying to taxpayers, don’t fear, the funding will greater than pay for itself within the financial affect it generates in years to come back.
But consultants who’ve studied the usage of subsidies for stadiums say that’s not the case.
Dennis Coates, an economics professor on the University of Maryland at Baltimore County has studied the financial affect of professional sports activities groups in main cities. “The data disprove the claim that a city can use stadium and arena construction, or the attraction or retention of a professional sports franchise, to enhance the income of its citizens,” Coates wrote in a 2015 op-ed within the Orange County Register. “In the economics of both sports and public policy, resources are scarce and must be put to their best use.”
Arlington Heights residents’ reluctance to make use of taxpayer subsidies for a Bears stadium of their suburb, as mirrored within the ballot outcomes, hews carefully to Coates’ pondering. Spending mounds of taxpayer cash on constructing new soccer stadiums advantages the groups and the politicians who can tout in marketing campaign adverts that they lured a professional workforce to city, or stored one from leaving.
But there’s no profit for taxpayers — solely the ache of understanding that billionaire workforce homeowners are laughing all the way in which to the financial institution.
The McCaskeys have each proper to maneuver their massively invaluable franchise to Arlington Heights. But they shouldn’t ask the suburb’s residents for a dime for a brand new stadium. Neither ought to Mayor Hayes.
Join the dialogue on Twitter @chitribopinions and on Facebook.
Submit a letter, of not more than 400 phrases, to the editor right here or electronic mail [email protected].
()
Source: www.bostonherald.com