Raleigh moved up to 4. With St. Louis and Sactown already in advanced discussions with MLS for 28 and 29, this is still an uphill battle for the 30th spot. For those saying that MLS will expand past 30, that won’t likely be for a very long time. Even the 30th spot is probably looking at 5+ years.
Man, I leave town for ten days, and this is what I come back to! Next week I’m going to do some lengthy Twitter threads on why public financing for sports stadiums is a terrible idea, but you guys already know how I feel about that so, let’s jump into some of the other interesting stuff here…
When Malik crosses his arms and says that he’s going to walk away from this project if we don’t give $300 million, I don’t think there’s any reason to take that at face value. As noted above, until recently he was saying the exact opposite of that, and nothing about the value proposition of developing here has changed since he made those comments. The most likely explanation for his volte face is that they have polling that shows that there is very little public support for spending taxpayer money on a soccer stadium (the comments on the news stories about this would seem to bear that out), but that support goes up significantly if you say that the money would be part of a much larger investment.
As noted, this land is in an Opportunity Zone, and let me tell you the incentives for investing in an OZ are too good to pass up. The private financing for this will come from investors’ capital gains (if you buy a stock and then later sell it at a profit, those profits are called capital gains and you usually have to pay taxes on them). But under the new tax law, if you funnel your capital gains into an OZ, you can defer paying taxes until the end of 2026, and the IRS will knock another 15 percent off your tax bill if you hold the money there for that whole time. But even better than that, any profits you make on your investment are totally tax free. So it’s a chance to make a ton of money you never have to pay taxes on.
When you add in that this land is where the new BRT line is going, it’s simply not credible to believe that Malik and Kane would walk away from this project if they don’t get taxpayer funding. That’s simply a play to increase leverage, and Malik was telling the truth when he told the N&O that if they don’t get the stadium money they’ll just develop the land without a stadium. (I get the sense that John Kane is not hung up on the stadium part of this deal in any way.)
So if we give them the money, we get a soccer stadium, but if we don’t give them the money, we get no stadium, but we still get all the other cool stuff in these vaportecture renderings, plus whatever they do on the land currently set aside for the stadium.
This is a good looking proposal. I’m genuinely curious if there’s enough demand to fill those towers. It would alter the perception of downtown pretty dramatically if it were built. I personally think it’s a great location for a stadium/entertainment district, especially since it’s right on I-40 and the BRT.
I would not to concerned about building the office towers, it will be over a decade or more to build, like North Hills offices. Build one when have leases signed got most of building, start on next one. Would be more concerned about developers that will not start until have major portion of building leased, they are they ones that will be left setting around for a long time.
I don’t know that you can do anything to make walking along side that many lanes of traffic pleasant. Improved for sure. But with a development this size I would hope there would be a more pedestrian friendly route to DT. Thanks for making the walk @OakCityDylan , its got to be hot out there.
My wife and I are trying to get some training miles in for our 60-mile walks later this year. We started around 8:45a this morning and got a couple hours in but had to cut it short so we cut up Saunders from the Greenway. Very exciting to see that area down there in person and imagine what it’s going to look like in 5-10 years if this thing actually happens.
I have a friend that walked 3,275 miles from The Outer Banks to Sana Monica , Ca. in 6 months .
He walked 25 miles a day . His wife & their puppy traveled in their motorhome & took over 8,000
pictures .
I don’t know John but he found out the hard way that he had kidney stones . Also on the TV Show Survial , they had a father/son series show & Colon & his son came in 12th place but they took the top 10 to be on TV . There was 5,000 that applied for the course .
It appears they’re using the property for municipal fleet parking (outside) but I’d be shocked if anyone would be allowed inside in it’s current condition.
