We haven’t seen the fountain yet…
5 Likes
It’s not an accounting trick. How many real estate projects have you ever built David? I have developed property and I know how public-private partnerships actually make projects work…to the benefit of everyone. The tired, aged arguments of "don’t spend tax money on rich people’s sports stadiums is just that “tired”. it’s a great sound byte because if feeds on the class warfare that’s been around since the dawn of capitalism. It ignores however actual math as all it does is feed ideology. My tax dollars get used every day for things I don’t care for like more suburban roads and infrastructure to support far flung housing developments that require a car FOR EVERYTHING. I don’t like having to pay for additional and IMO unnecessary police, fire, etc to support these housing projects…but I do. And none of these yield the revenue/acre the stadium project will yield.
1 Like
Great question on the ROI of museums! I haven’t been able to find any good studies out there about this issue. (If anyone finds any, please flag them for me!) I think part of the reason for the lack of data is that it’s tough to set the boundaries for what qualifies as a “museum.” It’s pretty easy to say, “We’re going to analyze MLB stadiums,” or MLS stadiums, or a specified group of leagues, and get some good data. But delineating the relevant population of museums is a lot trickier. I would bet that the really famous museums in big cities generate a lot of economic impact. But the tuba museum in Durham, for instance, probably doesn’t generate much. (This is a real thing, by the way.)
In all honesty, when my wife and I travel - we find the fountains. A city with a great fountain is generally worth a visit. You can’t go wrong with a fountain.
8 Likes
Well, honestly, there’s probably no good study because they aren’t scrutinized in the same way.
IMO, Raleigh ought to be prioritizing what we don’t have first, and we certainly don’t have a downtown stadium of any sort.
Ask Durham how DBAP is working out for them.
4 Likes
Kane said he won’t move forward on the development without the stadium and the funding. He said he needs the catalyst so the answer to most of your questions is because “John Kane says he won’t”.
2 Likes
I know the museums in Raleigh creates some ROI, I have taken foreign visitors to Raleigh to visit. Took them to museums, tour NCSU campus and general tour around Raleigh, Net result was 2 hotel rooms and 20 meals at restaurants; along with some shopping. I’m sure not the only person to take visitors to Raleigh.
3 Likes
But what would Durham have been without the DBAP? No one can say and therein lies a huge issues with appeals to economic activity as a driver for funding of these stadiums. There’s really know what to know the true impact a stadium or arena has because there’s no way to compare what happens with the stadium vs what happens with out the stadium. If they were such great investments the teams would build them theirselves. I’m more for using this pool of money for a stadium than against it but only because it’s part of the larger Kane development.
2 Likes
Yeah, we’ve talked about DBAP a lot, and yes, I do worry that Raleigh is going to learn the wrong lessons from being in close proximity to one of the very, very few stadium success stories in America.
The crucial difference that makes DBAP different from pretty much every other project that’s been tried is that it happened to be very conveniently located next to a million square feet worth of floor space in existing historic buildings that had been lying fallow for years. Also, Durham as a whole, like Raleigh as a whole, has been booming for the last 25 years. Does anyone seriously want to make the case that the baseball stadium is the reason for all the development we’ve seen across that whole city? And for every one stadium project that superficially looks like it’s panned out okay, we find twenty that have proven to be complete boondoggles.
One other crucial difference: The DBAP cost $18.5 million in when it was built in 1995. That’s a little more than $30 million in today’s dollars, so it’s less than one-tenth the cost of the proposed soccer stadium. And, honestly, if we could cap the city’s total exposure to one-tenth of what Malik is asking for, I would be delighted to declare victory and call it day.
2 Likes
They’re probably not scrutinized as much because museums are generally non-profit entities. People have more of an issue with handouts to for-profit entities owned by billionaires.
3 Likes
Have you found studies that analyze specific sports stadiums and city ROI? I would be very interested in reading that. I’ve tried to find it based on a specific sport, but no luck (most are NFL related).
David, I know we’ve gone back and forth on some of the baseball stuff, but on this issue we are very aligned for the most part. However, I think there is just more to the story and I’m trying to think through that.
I don’t think stadiums are by default a bad investment for a city. I think most of them have been, but some have worked out rather well. Why is that? Was it about tenant? Was it about a stadiums flexibility on usage? It seems to me that if you built a stadium that was filled for a majority of the year, the city would have itself a good investment. But while history has proven there are a lot of ways to fail when a city/county invests in a stadium, there has to be a equation that can be put together that explains the ones that have succeeded. What is the recipe?
Isn’t finding that out the most important thing for us on this forum? So instead of complaining to the city about why it’s a bad investment, we’d be able to point out WHY the current proposal is a bad investment, but point them to that recipe that would make it a potentially good investment (or at least a less risky one).
1 Like
@john I really appreciate your big picture view. The stadium is part of a bigger thing called our city … not just part of DoSo or whatever nickname we used last. There are a lot of chickens and egg scenarios that exist in an expanding city. Someone has to step out first or you get status quo.
3 Likes
Gonna have to throw a LOT of pennies into that fountain 
1 Like
I think the NC Museum of Natural Sciences brings in well over a million guests a year, which is higher than some of the various visitor counts for stadiums in this thread. I think the Art museum is up there as well.
Just because all the visitors don’t show up on the same day does not mean they don’t have a big impact.
3 Likes
I like museums, but to play devil’s advocate.
How many museum visitors are school field trips?
Do people pregame a museum visit?
Do the stadium attendance numbers only reflect one sport (Panthers) when in reality there are NCAA bowl games and concerts that need to be added to those numbers?
I think the thing that you’re missing here is that the need for a stadium provided the energy needed to bring Kane and Malik together. It created momentum with the first downtown proposal that spread to available development sites and eventually Penmarc.
This property has been sitting there vacant for years. Do you think it’s purely coincidental that the family decided it was time for development at the exact time that someone is floating MLS proposals? When the Penny family has been told for the last 40 years that their site is the perfect candidate for a sports venue, and that if we ever get a downtown arena it should go there?
Raleigh isn’t built out by any means. John Kane can build skyscrapers for the rest of his life and he won’t exhaust the opportunities in downtown proper. There has to be some percentage of a surrounding mixed use development that gets attributed to the stadium. Trying to split out the “other stuff” seems like an argument someone would make when they’re grasping at straws.
There are definitely other factors that make this site attractive for development, the opportunity zone, BRT, the changing of ownership dynamics etc. To say that those factors were the only reasons the site was considered and discount the stadium impact isn’t very convincing.
12 Likes
This site has been sitting there forever. Without a stadium in the picture it would probably sit vacant for at least another boom-bust cycle. With the stadium, we have the potential for development to get under way by March (per Malik in his interview on Podcast Raleigh.)
I think we should negotiate to make the public contribution as small as possible. But we shouldn’t let this opportunity slip away.
10 Likes
Uncle Jesse , I really do not know where the council sits on these projects . I do know that a lot of Wake County Commissioners very much support both DowntownSouth & Friends Of Wake County / Raleigh
Stadium Projects . I just hope that city council follows the county commissioners thoughts .
2 Likes
Do those visitors generate revenues or are they heavily weighted with local visitors and school aged children that come by the busload for a half day?
2 Likes
The question is why are they successful? Wouldn’t we want to learn from a success story and mimic it instead of presume that they were a lucky needle in the haystack? I suggest that they are successful because they are immediately adjacent to that tobacco district project that provides a mixed use experience for those who want it. I also think that they are successful because Triangle residents can’t get a similar experience in Raleigh. Lord knows that Raleigh and Wake residents pump a lot of numbers and money into that stadium and district. Raleigh has sat on its hands for decades and let other Triangle municipalities siphon from it. Raleigh and Wake residents on average have more disposable income than most other places in the country and we aren’t doing much of anything keeping that disposable income within the city and county borders. We go elsewhere to spend our money. Frankly, it’s embarrassing.
8 Likes