By Ben Nicholson
August 18 – Newly awarded MLS franchise Minnesota United looks to have stumbled on its route to securing a stadium to begin play in the 2018 season, having missed an MLS July deadline to submit a state subsidy financial package, and with confusion over whether the team will play in Minneapolis or neighbouring St Paul.
Since Minneapolis, the largest city in Minnesota, received the coveted final MLS expansion spot – contingent on the provision of stadium plans – taking the MLS up to its desired 24 teams by 2020, the city has been searching for an appropriate home stadium for their inaugural MLS season in 2018.
The ownership group missed its MLS-imposed July 1 deadline to get a financial package approved by the State Legislature, who adjourned for a year without considering a public subsidy package for them.
Thus when MLS President Mark Abbott, and Minnesota native, visited St. Paul, Minnesota, last week for an ‘exploratory visit’, eyebrows were raised that Minnesota United, who were granted the initial franchise, would be relocating across town.
Suspicions are particularly acute when taking into account St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman’s, who served as Abbot’s tour guide, expression of interest in early July that St. Paul serve as the home for Minnesota United.
Abbott played down the competition between the two cities, though, claiming that development in St. Paul could not happen until after 2020, when presumably the MLS may look to expand further, suggesting that St. Paul could be home to an MLS franchise that is not related to the already granted Minnesota United franchise.
Abbott played up, however, the MLS opportunity and St. Paul capability for housing a stadium. He said that the site he visited “has an opportunity to be a tremendous site for a new MLS stadium.”
Coleman showed Abbott a 34.5 acre plot where he would like to see the stadium built, where there is already a nearby shopping center, freeway, light rail and bus transit, using the mixed-use development possibilities as a unique selling point.
Coleman believes that tax breaks would be available to the team if they were to build in St. Paul and, furthermore, that any loss of taxes on the stadium parcel would be made up for by the city by the increase in property taxes paid on adjoining property once the redevelopment is complete.
Contrast this optimism with Minnesota’s failure to put the subsidy question to legislature and inability to reconsider until March of next year.
Whilst Coleman is adamant that he is not simply being used as a bargaining chip to garner cooperation from Minnesota, Abbott is now speaking in terms of a post-2020 franchise as opposed to 2018.
Soccer specific stadia
During Don Garber’s tenure as MLS Commissioner 13 stadiums have been built, with more in development. Garber has strongly pushed for investment into soccer-specific stadiums, stating that they provide the “optimum environment” and their creation will “always be our goal…”
However, there is growing discomfort about publicly subsidising sports stadiums. An alleged $12 billion dollars of public money was spent from 2000-2010 on 51 new facilities.
Additionally, the oft-quoted findings of economist Dennis Coates that “the large and growing peer-reviewed economics literature on the economic impacts of stadiums, arenas, sports franchises, and sport mega-events has consistently found no substantial evidence of increased jobs, incomes, or tax revenues for a community associated with any of these things,” are serving to make it more difficult to convince legislatures that sports stadiums are worthwhile investments.
The impetus is being put on developers to privately fund. And sometimes even when cities are presented with private funding proposals there is still much popular resistance to the nuisance that building a stadium is often felt to be. (See David Beckham’s Miami travails http://bit.ly/1J0Daw5).
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