The Dallas Cowboys won easily their biggest victory of the season Tuesday as Arlington voters approved a $325 million proposition to help build the team a new stadium.
The proposition authorizes tax increases to pay for half of a $650 million stadium for the Cowboys. The proposition will raise the city sales tax by a half-cent, its hotel occupancy tax by 2 percentage points and its car rental tax by 5 percentage points. A tax of up to 10 percent on tickets and up to $3 on stadium parking will also likely be levied, but proceeds from those taxes are earmarked for retiring a portion of the Cowboys’ debt on the project.
Opponents of municipal funding for the stadium kept the race reasonably close despite being widely outspent by stadium proponents. The Cowboys funded a political action committee funded that spent $4.6 million on the campaign through the end of October. Opponents raised only about $120,000.
The site of the stadium, which is scheduled to open in 2009, will be in the area adjacent to the Six Flags of Texas Amusement Park and Texas Rangers’ Ameriquest Field. A couple of weeks ago, the Cowboys and the Rangers announced that they were working on a joint master planned development, similar to Southlake Town Square, for the area near the football and baseball stadiums.
Stadium supporters estimated that the 75,000-seat retractable-roof stadium would provide the city an additional $5 million in rent and sales tax revenue from spending at the facility, plus other economic activity throughout the city. Stadium backers pointed to a city-commissioned study by Economics Research Associates projecting that the venue would pump $238 million into Arlington’s economy each year.
Opponents of the stadium contend that the project would cost far more than it injects into city coffers and would hamstring efforts to attract other businesses. They also said that other economists have criticized the city-commissioned report for being unreasonably optimistic. Virtually all academic research — summarized nicely by Craig Depken here — has concluded that major sports facilities typically do little to boost local economies.
One of the civic motivations for the stadium project is Dallas’ desire to attract a future Super Bowl game, which was not possible so long as Dallas area relied on Texas Stadium as its professional football venue. Although Dallas stadium and convention facilities are not as well coordinated as Houston’s, the new stadium will undoubtedly attract a Super Bowl for Dallas, probably between 2010-12.