Houstonians are currently enduring the rationalizations of a couple of boondoggles, a big one and a relatively small one. The Chronicle is always a good source for these rationalizations, such as this romantic interlude from Chron soccer writer Glenn Davis regarding the proposed downtown soccer stadium:
[A] downtown stadium will be an unparalleled vehicle for promoting soccer. Stadiums out in the hinterlands in MLS are still trying to prove them-selves as a magnet for fans.
Fans migrating to stadiums located in the inner city can become a part of a ritual.
When I was growing up in New Jersey, my father used to take me to sporting events at Madison Square Garden in the heart of New York. The ritual began as we left the house.
Take the train from the suburbs to Hoboken, N.J., then jump on the Path train (subway) under the Hudson River. As we exited the Path and scrambled up the steps to the street, a whole new world opened up.
The streets of Manhattan were alive with vendors, scalpers hawking tickets, and fans of the New York Rangers or Knicks. The air crackled with competition and excitement.
For a kid from the suburbs, this was like going into a new world. To this day, these impressions are indelible in my mind. Whether going to Madison Square Garden or to Giants Stadium to watch PelÈ and the New York Cosmos, I always felt that sense of anticipation.
[Dynamo CEO Oliver] Luck has told me his ritual with his father was taking public transportation to go to Cleveland Indians games.
Stadiums in the U.S. have in many cases become soulless, with their flight to the suburbs and attempts to woo fans more for the buildings and their amenities than why they were built in the first place.
Stadiums should be a meeting place for like individuals from all ethnic and cultural backgrounds who come together with the common bond of a sport.
I almost broke into a solo of Kumbaya over that one. At least Chronicle sportswriter John Lopez is more realistic, if not more persuasive, of the real basis for public financing of another downtown stadium:
The predominantly white fan base that follows the Astros got theirs. The largely white and black fan base of the Rockets got theirs, too.
What about Dynamo fans? What about the fan base that has been estimated at roughly 45 percent Hispanic, 45 percent white and 10 percent Asian? [. . .]
On paper, yes. It has to make sense. But in the eyes of many, it’s also about getting the same things the Astros, Rockets and Texans fans got. Acknowledgment.
Or, as Kevin Whited muses: “So, we need a new soccer stadium downtown so that Houston can be more like Manhattan, and so that fans of what is a minor-league sport in the United States won’t cry racism?”
Meanwhile, Dennis Coates, a professor of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, provides the following persuasive analysis of the lack of any economic merit to a similar initiative to build a downtown arena in Baltimore:
Studies like that done by KPMG about a new arena for Baltimore have been thoroughly discredited by independent observers. They are much like the predictions of psychics. While a psychic’s predictions of the future are rarely assessed for their accuracy, the predictions of stadium benefits have been thoroughly scrutinized by a wide array of independent researchers. There is almost no support for any of the predictions made by the stadium and arena benefit psychics when those predictions are compared to data on what actually happened. The bottom line is the feasibility studies are more a PR process than a fact finding one. I urge you to not buy into the PR as if it is objective science.
Thus, the local debate regarding another downtown stadium is off to an inauspicious start. If proponents of the stadium deal admit in campaigning for the deal that the economic benefits of the deal are questionable, but that the intangible benefits to the community override the financial risk of the deal, then most reasoned opponents of such deals would at least be satisfied with the debate of the issues. They might not be persuaded to support the deal on that basis, but at least they would have the comfort that the public’s assessment of the deal would be based upon an honest presentation of the issues. As it stands now, the presentation of the economic issues in most stadium campaigns is muddled by highly questionable assertions of direct economic benefits derived from such deals. Here’s hoping that the Chronicle will at least promote truth in advertising in regard to the debate over the downtown soccer stadium deal.
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One of the many curious aspects about the Houston Chronicle is that the local newspaper employs Richard Justice as a sports reporter and columnist. We already know that he has trouble evaluating baseball (see also here) and football. So, today Justice nails the trifecta of incompentence in evaluating Houston’s major sports teams with this post about Houston Rockets assistant general manager Dennis Lindsey’s decision to leave the Rockets to join the San Antonio Spurs front office:
