Pro teams aim to score nicer stadiums—and maybe more—from the public

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While fans are busy celebrating Major League Baseball’s Opening Day or following the college basketball tournaments, pro sports teams are gaming out how best to build new or improved facilities.

This week, the Washington Wizards and Capitals landed a deal with the district to stay in downtown D.C., after floating a plan to move to Virginia instead. It is a stunning development for local residents, after team officials announced what seemed to be a done deal with Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin in December. District officials took advantage of political opposition in the Virginia legislature to the deal, and they offered the teams $515 million to modernize their existing arena. The agreement could help ease worries that the neighborhood around the Capital One Arena would deteriorate economically without the teams’ fans.

Washington officials have plenty of company in trying to satisfy team owners. Two teams in Chicago—the Bears and the White Sox—want state and local subsidies to build new stadiums. The Cleveland Browns are exploring new stadium sites. Las Vegas is building an armadillo-shaped stadium on the former site of the Tropicana hotel and casino to house the soon-to-relocate Oakland A’s. And Kansas City voters will decide Tuesday whether to extend a sales tax to build a new home for the Royals near downtown and renovate Arrowhead Stadium for the Chiefs.

The rush of stadium renovations is the long-term consequence of another stadium boom in the early 1990s, experts say.

When the Baltimore Orioles opened Camden Yards in 1992, it marked a sharp departure in stadium design. It is located near the heart of downtown, with skyline views and historic buildings nearby. Fans could enjoy the nearby bars or buy souvenirs at team-owned shops outside the gates. The brick facades and cast-iron gates marked a sharp departure from the bleak concrete boxes surrounded by parking lots that defined stadiums built during previous decades.

Other teams built their own stadiums to generate the same buzz. The leases they signed with local governments usually lasted 25 or 30 years, which means many of them are expiring soon. (In fact, the Orioles just signed a new lease for Camden Yards with the state of Maryland last year.)

That means many pro teams are scouting out stadium possibilities now for the coming decades. Often, they are demanding public subsidies to help pay for modern facilities, raising the possibility that they might move to the suburbs or even a new media market if they don’t get that support.

Their requests often include plans for mixed-use development near the stadiums. They’ve seen the popularity of the Deer District in Milwaukee, the Battery near the Atlanta Braves’ suburban stadium and Hollywood Park near SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. The Deer District, for example, became a gathering place for fans during the Milwaukee Bucks’ 2021 championship season and other playoff runs.

Erin Talkington, the managing director of RCLCO, a real estate consulting firm that has worked on several stadium deals, said the push for mixed-use development along with stadiums came in several waves. First, it was just team owners giving fans a place to go on game day to enhance their experience and easing parking lot congestion.

Then, several cities started using stadiums as the anchor for neighborhood redevelopment plans, but teams weren’t big parts of those efforts. San Diego built up the area around the Padres’ baseball stadium. Denver built up its LoDo (“lower downtown”) area around Coors Field, where the Rockies play. And Washington, D.C., sparked major changes along the riverfront near Nationals Stadium, she noted.

It was an “aha moment” for team owners, Talkington said. “Now they’re thinking about models that look more like The Battery where it’s built from scratch and the team has more involvement in the actual project. [They’re] thinking about the revenue potential for a venue beyond just what happens inside the walls.”

In a recent study, Talkington found that owners had only been involved in the development of 43% of existing mixed-use developments near stadiums, but they are part of the discussion for 68% of the projects now being planned.

Talkington said teams are mostly interested in generating revenues from their core business, and are pursuing real estate developments and other amenities to support that work. “They are teams, and their business is sports,” she said. 

Talkington cautioned that sports venues are not enough on their own to transform a neighborhood. A stadium can be a catalyst for more investment, but a thriving neighborhood needs more than one anchor to diversify the mix of economic activity there.

“A venue doesn’t change your underlying market dynamics. If you’re talking about a site that’s not viable for an office or hotel or retail or some other use today, just putting a sports venue there isn’t going to change that. You need to understand how a venue is going to change the underlying dynamics of a location,” she said.

Sometimes those dynamics are very specific to the location. She said the neighborhood around the Braves’ previous stadium in downtown Atlanta, for example, didn’t spark development because one person owned most of the nearby parking lots and had no interest in selling them to developers.

Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross who studies sports, cautions against subsidizing the building of new stadiums.

“There are no stadiums in the United States that are functionally obsolete,” he said. “There are stadiums where [team owners] would like a better stadium, but there’s literally no team in the United States that needs a new stadium.”

“There’s nothing falling down, and, quite honestly, even if it was, if my house is falling apart and needs a new furnace, there’s no reason the government should buy me a new house,” Matheson said.

The professor said teams often use economic impact studies that don’t hold up to rigorous examination in order to justify the public subsidies. “It’s not a piece of academic research, it’s a piece of advocacy. These consultants are being paid to put a shine on it. They’re like lawyers: They are representing their client, not representing the truth,” he warned.

Much of the economic activity that new developments take credit for is actually just relocated from another area, Matheson added. That’s been the case in Cobb County, where the Braves new facility is taking away business from restaurants and other venues outside the district. The problem for local governments is that tax revenue generated in the district is directed toward financing the stadium complex. “From a tax standpoint, it’s been a disaster for the county,” he said.

But stadium deals are usually more popular for local officials than for the public at large, Matheson said.

“When you put things before the voters, voters are about 50-50 on subsidizing billionaire owners and millionaire players. But when you put it just before city councils, the city councils will always approve it,” he said. “The entire city council can fit in the owner’s box. But the entire voting populace can’t.”

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News to Use

Trends, Common Challenges, Cool Ideas, FYIs and Notable Events

CLIMATE: EPA issues new emissions standards for trucks. On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would gradually limit the amount of pollution allowed from heavy vehicles, including school buses, tractor-trailers, ambulances, RVs, garbage trucks and moving vans. The new rule could mean that 25% of new long-haul trucks, the heaviest on the road, and 40% of medium-size trucks, like box trucks and landscaping vehicles, could be nonpolluting by 2032, The New York Times reported. The drawdown starts in 2027 and allows manufacturers to decide how to comply. Last week, the EPA finalized its rule to cut down on the amount of carbon dioxide pollution from passenger cars and light trucks, but it tapped the brakes on the implementation schedule, giving manufacturers more time to phase in electric and hybrid vehicles through 2030.

STUDENT DEBT: GOP states sue to scrap Biden’s student loan repayment plan. Eleven Republican-led states sued on Thursday to overturn President Joe Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, program. They said the scheme was similar to an earlier effort to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loans that the Supreme Court struck down last year. The federal lawsuit, led by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, largely mirrors the claims in that case, but the administration used different legal authorities to justify the SAVE plan than the forgiveness plan rejected by the high court, The Washington Post reported. Kobach argues broad debt relief is unfair to American taxpayers who did not go to college or saved to pay for school because it “forces them to pay for the student loans for those who ran up exorbitant student debt.”

MATERNAL CARE: Colorado working to better support addicted moms. Three years after Colorado stopped requiring doctors to report newborns who tested positive for drugs as possible child abuse victims, the number of families referred to child protective services for prenatal drug use is down 25%. But hospitals are still learning how best to support new mothers battling addiction. Procedures around reporting addicted mothers vary across facilities, as does patient treatment and getting newborns into a safe environment. Since the law changed, providers have had to make a mental shift from reporters to responders.

FORFEITURE: Minnesota to pay $109 million in property forfeiture. State taxpayers are on the hook for $109 million in recently settled class action lawsuits on behalf of Minnesotans who lost their properties to tax forfeiture and the counties kept the surpluses. As part of the settlement, most property owners who file a claim will be entitled to about 90% of the value of their property’s surplus, or the difference between what they owned in taxes and the price at which the county sold it. Because the counties were acting in accordance with state law and the properties were taken in the name of the state, Minnesota is responsible for the settlement, the state’s solicitor general said.

EDUCATION: Utah public colleges to try three-year bachelor’s degrees. Utah is the first public higher-ed system in the country to approve a faster path to graduation by implementing a Bachelor of Applied Studies category. Instead of the regular 120 credits, the new programs would require a minimum of 90 credits. The new category established by the Utah System of Higher Education would require national accreditation and need to undergo approval by the state’s Board of Higher Education before it becomes available. Areas of study would also be limited and tied to specific industry needs.

GRAFFITI: Washington looks at new ways to clean up graffiti along state highways. Washington state is taking to the air in its fight against graffiti, by using a drone to spray paint over graffiti along the state’s roads. Lawmakers this session set aside $1 million for the state transportation department to start a pilot program focused on finding new ways to erase graffiti from road signs, walls and bridges, including employing aerial drone technology. The amount the state spends on graffiti cleanup every year has been on the rise, hitting a peak of more than $700,000 in 2020. In the last two-year budget cycle, the state spent $1.4 million, according to the state.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE: Aging tech systems delay Connecticut’s “clean slate” law. Just three months after announcing plans for full implementation of a 2021 law to erase misdemeanors and certain low-level felonies for more than 80,000 people, Connecticut officials announced they have fallen well short of their promise. The state had expected to clear the “vast majority” of records by the end of January, but have only cleared the records of about 13,600 residents so far. The state blamed aging data systems and inaccurate data for the most recent delay. Outdated technology and outstanding legal and policy questions first pushed back rollout of the law last year.

TRUST IN GOVERNMENT: Maine considers reining in vague placeholder bills. State lawmakers are eyeing new rules for so-called placeholder bills that are routinely proposed with only a vague title and summary of intent—a practice that’s being increasingly used to unveil ambitious bills late in the legislature’s session with little public notice or transparency. The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram reported a significant increase in the practice and how it reduces transparency and fuels public mistrust. An analysis found that lawmakers submitted about 250 concept bills this two-year session. That is a 25% increase over the previous session and more than four times as many concept bills submitted about 20 years ago.

EDUCATION: Have Oklahoma virtual charter schools reached a “saturation point”? Seven virtual charter schools are currently operating in Oklahoma, and an eighth has been approved to open later this year. But as the number of virtual schools continues to climb and as even more apply for authorization, state officials have started to question how many more of these niche schools Oklahoma needs. About 5% of its 700,000 public school students are enrolled in a virtual charter school. That exceeds the national rate of 1% for the 2021-22 school year, the most recent year of data available from the National Center for Education Statistics. Only 36 states had virtual schools as of 2021-22. Among them, Oklahoma had the sixth-highest virtual school enrollment.

AI: A California city is training AI to spot homeless encampments. For the last several months, San Jose has been training artificial intelligence to recognize tents and cars with people living inside, The Guardian reports. In December cameras mounted on a city vehicle began periodically driving through the city collecting footage of public spaces to train algorithms. Some of the capabilities the pilot project is pursuing—such as identifying potholes and cars parked in bus lanes—are already in place in other cities. But San Jose’s foray into automated surveillance of homelessness is the first of its kind in the country, according to city officials and national housing advocates. 

LIBRARIES: Washington passes bill to protect libraries as other states target them. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed legislation intended to safeguard the state’s public libraries. The measure comes after a small city nearly became the first community in the nation to shutter its library over the book battles that have flared up across the country. The new law will make such attempts much more difficult, by requiring more signatures to get potential shutdowns on the ballot and then allowing a broader population of voters to decide a library’s fate. The move runs counter to a nationwide trend; legislators in 27 states proposed bills this year that could harm libraries or limit the books and services they provide, according to the American Library Association.

MENTAL HEALTH: Philadelphia police will notify schools about students found at traumatic events. The $1 million Handle With Care pilot program will train 300 police officers and 100 educators to sharpen their awareness of students’ exposure to violence and help them cope with trauma. Currently running in West Virginia, Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley and elsewhere, the Handle With Care program allows teachers and others to offer support, postpone tests or other academic work and refer the child to nurses or counselors, among other responses. It also educates police and school personnel about the impact of trauma on children and how to respond to it in school and when following up with families. The program will be piloted in 15 schools starting next school year in parts of North Philadelphia. 

Picture of the Week

Bullet damage to Roscoe the robotic dog. (Photo courtesy of Massachusetts State Police).

A robotic police dog was shot but credited with avoiding bloodshed. The Massachusetts State Police Bomb Squad sent a robotic dog named Roscoe into a Barnstable house after police were fired upon, AP reported. Controlled remotely by state troopers, the robot first checked the two main floors before finding someone in the basement who twice knocked it over before shooting it three times and disabling its communication. The suspect was arrested after police deployed tear gas. “The insertion of Roscoe into the suspect residence prevented the need, at that stage of response, from inserting human operators, and may have prevented a police officer from being involved in an exchange of gunfire,” state police said in a statement.

What They’re Saying

“There are members of my staff and legislature that have been roofied.”

—Long Beach, California, Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal, talking about Assembly Bill 1013 that requires bars and nightclubs to offer drug testing devices for sale or at no cost to customers so they can tell if their drink had been “roofied,” or spiked with a date rape drug. Research by the American Addiction Centers found that around 50% of nearly 1,000 women and men surveyed have had their drinks or food spiked. "For all of us, we want to provide a safe environment. Drink spiking has gotten to epidemic levels, not just in California but across the U.S., and this is something we can do something about," said Lowenthal.