[Mpls] Stadium

[Terrell Brown]

--- "Leurquin, Ronald" <Ronald.Leurquin at walkerparking.com> wrote:
> Amen to a referendum.
> My vote would be for the businesses to support themselves or sell out
> to someone else.  Baseball and football are businesses.  If Carl and
> Red can't make "enough' money with them then they can sell to someone
> that will be happy with the profits they can achieve.  A taxpayer
> funded stadium is nothing more than corporate welfare.
> Ron Leurquin
> Nokomis East

[TB]  Professional sports have a strange business model, a model that
requires a business premises with at either no or nearly no cost to the
business owner.  Few business can pull that off.

It's also a model that generates extremely large amounts of money,
most, something in the area of 60% of which flows to the players. 
Given the revenue split, a subsidy to either football or baseball
likely benefits the players as much or more as it does the owners.  I
don't think either of those groups needs a subsidy.

Unfortunately, if we don't put some money into stadium(s), someone else
likely will and baseball and/or football will leave.  What is the loss?
 How much is it worth to us to avoid that loss?

I can't say I know what that value is.  While my history says I'm not
going to spend much, if any, money going to games, I may take advantage
of some of the things that are available because the 80 some days a
year when there is a baseball game enables them to do enough business
to stay open.

I'm not convinced that a hundred or two million dollars is well spent
keeping those places open, it would cost us less to just send them a
check.

I've been to Denver since they opened their baseball stadium and do
think the area around it has developed reasonably well.  I think the
area around the Rapid Park site is developing reasonably well without a
stadium.  I'm not convinced its worth a couple of hundred million
dollars to keep baseball in Minneapolis for the next couple of decades.

That being said, I'm not in favor of a referendum.  We elect City
Council members and Legislature to make decisions.  If they make bad
decisions, we elect someone else at the next elections.  I've seen
enough California referendums that I don't want to start that here.

Let our elected representatives do their jobs.



Terrell Brown
Loring Park

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