That’s a fair point, and I agree it’s an important consideration. That said, I don’t think either of us is in a position to fully assess Nashville’s financial capacity or will to pay. It’s also worth remembering that Detroit still managed to build publicly subsidized stadiums even while going through bankruptcy, sigh
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“Listen to what he’s saying…”
My phrasing above, in the context of the original poster saying he didn’t believe there was ‘anything new’…was taken by most to mean “if you read into what he’s saying…”
The reason most took it that way, was because I did not follow that phrase with an actual quote. I went on to dissect the point he was making.
Now, how do I know that is the point he’s making? Because I sit with him every month, and it’s a point he continuously makes. It’s a talking point he’s continuously used in private and he is now making it in public. That is important to understand for the people who keep wanting to see articles with Raleigh being mentioned (which is why I pointed it out).
Now, as for me ‘not caring’ but then going on to rebut your post…
I respond not because I want to argue with you, but because I believe you constantly dilute the conversation with debate over semantics (many times, ignoring the overall context). And when you are doing this to points I am making, I feel the need to provide a counterbalance for those following along (since we are posting on a public forum.)
All of that said, I do not believe you argue in good faith, and I also do not believe you come off to people on this forum the way you think you do.
This response is going to frustrate you, but I want to be very clear and transparent with my words so I don’t have to do a whole separate post breaking down a sugar-coated rebuttal.
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Note that the consultant who closed the Nashville deal on the new Titans stadium was consulting with us for a while a few years ago. We got a ton of insight into what Nashville has in terms of public money over the next 3-6 years.
Nashville is tapped out right now.
It’s why you have the Mayor of Nashville saying this…
And even if they propose raising that money by upping taxes…the community already is ramping up the fight against…
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Please believe me when I tell you that nothing you have posted in the last six-plus years on this thread has ever frustrated me in the slightest. (And what position would you be in to know, with certainty, what emotional response your post would induce in me?)
Anyway, literally while we were arguing about this, Bob Nightengale, longtime MLB writer for USA Today, just wrote this:
“Major League Baseball believes the strongest two expansion markets remain Salt Lake City, Utah, and Nashville, with no plans to put an expansion franchise back into Oakland.” (Link) This follows Rob Manfred’s comments that MLB would be happy to entertain bids from just about anywhere, including Oakland.
Bob Nightengale didn’t write this because he’s bad at his job. He’s great at his job. I assure you he has no anti-Raleigh bias. And I assure you that you are not better informed about the situation in Nashville than either Nightengale or his sources in the MLB front office, the very people the Dundon group would ultimately need to win over. His reporting simply reflects the current reality of the situation.
Sure, the Nashville bid could fall apart over stadium subsidies. In fact, I think Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell makes some excellent points. Any stadium ought to be privately financed. But the same opposition that is ramping up to fight tax raises to pay for a stadium in Nashville will also surely ramp up to fight taxes raises to pay for a stadium in Raleigh. And you make a great point: publicly financing a stadium will certainly require either raising taxes or cutting public services, or both. And that’s not popular with the public anywhere right now. Don’t take my word for it. Just ask the Kansas City Royals, after voters there shot down a stadium subsidy proposal. But, also, if publicly financing stadiums is such a great idea, why are voters there “fatigued” of it? If the experience of publicly financing stadiums was going well for them, you’d think they’d be eager to do more of it, not tired of it. Why would we want to do a thing that other cities are now fatigued of doing, having tried it out themselves?
Also, what was on the final verdict on the media thing? Is it inexplicable that the media (which is actually a constellation of entities that compete directly against one another) haven’t figured out that Raleigh is a better candidate than Nashville, or is Dundon’s group purposely trying to stay out of the national spotlight? It seems like it would be hard for it to be both.
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You make some good points and then somehow can’t fathom a world where the media might miss something.
Except there’s also a strong case against…
- no ownership group that actually has money or power to make it happen
- The city is spending millions on the titans new stadium and officials have stated they will not spend more on an MLB stadium
Meanwhile, Raleigh has ownership with money & power and both city & state officials have said they are willing to contribute money.
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I don’t really have any interest in getting into an argument over a hypothetical scenario where a baseball franchise would move to Raleigh (as much as I would love that to happen one day), but Nightengale might have been the worst national baseball writer to use to try and prove a point.
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Our source that Raleigh is legitimately in the running for one of the spots is better than Bob Nightengale’s 
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I don’t believe for a second that you are better sourced on this topic than the president of one of the local chapters of the Baseball Writers Association of America, and “legitimately in the running” is entirely consistent with “not currently one of the favorites,” but since everyone is hiding behind anonymous sources (or “source,” singular, in your case), we’re at an impasse here.
Anyone else think this back and forth is actually constructive for the thread? Arguing who has more clout or if one person’s opinion is better than another’s seems unconstructive, but that’s just my opinion. I just find myself seeing updates in this thread and being disappointed when it’s just the same back and forth.
FWIW, I’m on team @Loup20 and hopeful we have a real chance with this and I’m looking forward to more actual news, not banter.
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Yea, it’s kind of odd to see people spend their free time signing onto this forum to root against our chances of landing an MLB team and then proceed to nit-pick one of the closest members to the inner workings of this deal.
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I’ll concede that not all of it is productive, all of time. But the end game here, potentially, is that taxpayers will be asked to spend hundreds of millions on dollars on a stadium, and I do think that having that debate is productive. Should it get that far, that would be a very consequential decision. That’s the debate I’m far more interested in than whose anonymous sources are more reliable. But when I posted about the Nightengale story and the substantive issues of whether a stadium subsidy is a good idea, notice which one of those things got responded to. That part I can’t control.
I don’t think that presenting more than one side of the debate in anyway “dilutes” the thread, or that a very unrepresentative sample of the local community posting about how much they all agree with each other is necessarily a great thing, either. (Some posters brag about what a great echo chamber this thread is, except when I come in and ruin it, and it’s an extremely weird flex.)
But more than six years after this thread was started, MLB hasn’t even announced a timeline for when it might even begin to entertain expansion bids, so for six years there’s been very, very little actual news to talk about. So it’s very easy to banter and get bogged down in tangential issues, and you get the sort of thoughtful rebuttals (sometimes literally word for word) that The Onion perfected 22 years ago.
Look, I really don’t want to nitpick over anonymous sources or whether Nashville is a frontrunner for a franchise. I want to have a serious, ideas based debate over whether this is worth massive taxpayer funding. (If Dundon wants to entirely privately finance an MLB stadium in Raleigh, I will literally go grab a shovel and start f’ing digging the hole where he wants it.) But to quote Ian Malcom, your PR people were so preoccupied with whether or not they could do it, they didn’t stop to think if they should do it.
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Yeah, sorry for getting baited there. A big part of this campaign has been changing perspective using real data (and then being unapologetic in defending the idea). We felt as if those were the two main pillars we needed to focus on to get this from ‘just an idea’ to a ‘groundswell’ that demanded action.
I had my ‘correct the record’ hat on.
As for things worth discussing that this forum might find interesting: We have found out that MLB’s internal metric for a market is DMA (Designated Market Area) and they define that as being a 150-mile radius around a stadium.
When you look at it that way, you realize the sheer opportunity MLB has. Everyone here is arguing Raleigh vs Charlotte while MLB is looking at Raleigh AND (part of) Charlotte in a single DMA.
and…
Now, you can argue that this isn’t a good way to measure if you want to, but this is MLB’s metric that they use internally and at the end of the day, they own the product that we are trying to bring here. So I’d argue, there is no more important metric right now than this one.
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…
I’m not sure I understand the juxtaposition of these two quotes, and I am trying really, really hard to understand it. Can you explain?
By the way, I saw the content of the post you made and deleted last night. I appreciate your decision to delete it. Thank you. I’m happy to discuss ideas with anyone who wants to, even, or maybe especially, people who disagree with me. This community is “a space for open discussion about life and change in downtown Raleigh,” and so we can come to these threads, including this one, expecting to encounter a range of opinions, including ones we disagree with.
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The key word being “actual news” and not hyperbole.
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You do not want there to be taxpayer money used to fund a stadium, or for the site of the stadium to potentially relocate a church. You are taking the stadium being placed here personally instead of objectively listening to one of the most connected people in the MLB Raleigh space.
There’s no reason to doubt what Lou is saying here other than the fact that you personally do not agree with a stadium being built in Raleigh (with taxpayer money or on certain properties). Opinions aside, whether or not you agree with it doesn’t really change what is going to happen. It either is or it isn’t. If you don’t agree with taxpayer money being used to fund a stadium, you could have just said that to begin with instead of trying to nitpick what Lou is saying here.
So, taking that into account, the juxtaposition between the two items I quoted should be clear. There’s a difference between having a constructive discussion and attempting to poke holes in any and all items Lou brings to the table here.
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Oh, I don’t doubt that smart, competent people working hard to bring an MLB franchise to Raleigh, or that they genuinely believe Raleigh is a strong candidate. That’s only table stakes, but I accept all of that. And, yes, the guy who runs the MLB to Raleigh X account is very knowledgeable about Raleigh’s efforts to land an MLB team, also agreed. If Lou says Brian Fork told him xyz, I do believe him, seriously.
But obviously the people working on these efforts have no incentive whatsoever to be objective about the national picture, and every incentive to spin everything in the light most favorable to their case and poor-mouth other cities’ chances. For the journalists covering MLB as their vocation, it’s exactly the opposite. I’m objectively listening to Lou. I just don’t agree with him about most things. (It’s easy to miss, I know, but he and I actually agree about more than you might think.)
I’ve made this analogy before, but getting your news from just the Raleigh people, or the SLC people, or the Portland people, etc., would be like getting your political news from just the Republican Party or just the Democratic Party and expecting it to objectively reflect reality.
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Can you point to a fact that Lou has been objectively incorrect about when it comes to the facts he’s laid out comparing Raleigh to Nashville? Putting random writers’ opinions aside.
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I tried.
BTW it’s hot today.
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