They basically propose that the city, county, hurricanes, Malik/Kane and nc state build a new area and a soccer stadium on the property along with the commercial stuff. Everyone puts something towards the construction of the whole project.
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Build a real sports district. And rather then plow 200 million into a 20 year old PNC, and then however much Malik is asking for. Build a new arena at penmarc now and start the rest of the district with a spot for a future soccer stadium when Malik gwets his MLS. What a novel concept.
With all the parties involved. City, county, canes, NCState, Malik, Cane etc. too many egos IMO to all play nice and make it happen. But it actually makes sense.
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Thanks DowntownRaleighGuy & Alan for this information ! So hope that this project happens !
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@dtraleigh
Leo, please accept my apologies as I was trying to do a short copy & paste while working out at the A. Y on Hillsborough street. Apparently I really goofed and selected all by mistake. 
Lesson learned…
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They actually say that we build a new arena first, and then let Kane do his commercial thing before even thinking about building a soccer stadium on land that’s set aside. It sure seems really drawn out to me and way more expensive. The presumption is that a new arena would cost the city 550 million and pull in the team of players from PNC Arena. Reading the article sounds like a ten year plan to me with the soccer stadium coming on the tail end. I’m sure that’s a non-starter for Malik.
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I don’t see why NCSU would be interested in that either. PNC works just fine for college bball. If the Hurricanes and State left the arena doesn’t really have an occupant that would warrant the maintenance.
If PNC was old enough to be obsolete, maybe they could redevelop the site for other university uses and move bball downtown, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
From a planning perspective, I’d love to see a new arena at Penmarc followed by a soccer stadium. I just don’t think it’s practical while we have the PNC in as good a shape as it’s in.
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I also do not see NCSU wanting to invest dollars in new coliseum. they used Reynolds as home court for 50 years and still use it for other functions after some modifications to reduce seating and add museum.
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So let’s examine the scenario TBJ is talking about.
- Raleigh misses on MLS this round.
- Kane buys Penmarc
- Kane sets aside a portion of the land for 2 stadiums
Now let me propose something…
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Malik builds 10k seat stadium w/ soccer dimensions. This stadium hosts NCFC, Courage, NC State Soccer, Shaw Football, Peace Football?, a few concerts, a few graduations, etc. Stadium is built with the ability to expand and add 10k more seats if MLS were ever to be awarded to Raleigh.
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Kane recruits MLB investor team, partners with them on land/stadium and uses district’s build-out to attract both MLS and MLB. With an investor team in place, land ready, and $1.9 billion district being built around it, Raleigh would be further along in the MLB push than ANY other market (that includes Portland and Montreal) and would be seen as a front-runner for relocation/expansion, having most of their ducks in a row.
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This puts Raleigh in the best situation for the only 2 pro sports remaining that have any chance of ever coming here. It also allows the city/county to not over-invest before a franchise is awarded.
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Your worst-case scenario is that Raleigh takes their best shot and misses on both MLS and MLB but ends up with a nice 10k seat stadium for minor league soccer and a really nice district around it. Since there was land set aside for a baseball team that didn’t come to fruition, we can then revisit uses for that piece of land. It could then be time to think bout building an arena downtown and leaving the PNC. Or it could be used for more district development.
Obviously, it’s not my land, so it’s not my call, but wanted to lay out an option that seemed low-risk and high-reward for all parties (given the situation the TBJ lays out).
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It’s funny how, when it comes to stadium subsides, the names of the cities change, but the conversations are always oddly similar. Last night in Calgary (Alberta, Canada) the city council voted to spent $275 million to subsidize the construction of a new arena. (The local hockey team at least agreed to go halfsies with them, as opposed to Kane and Malik’s ridiculous “you pay for 100 percent of everything” proposal.) But team promised that, and this may sound familiar, the city would recoup all of that money back in the form of increased property tax revenues from all the new development that’s going to prop up around the arena. I’m just going to let journalist Neil DeMause take it from here:
The biggest problem is counting future property taxes on the surrounding development as paying back the city’s costs. This would only be new development, yes, but there’s no way to guarantee that it would be new development that wouldn’t happen without the arena, at least somewhere in the city. (Studies of whether new arenas spur increased economic growth come down decidedly on the side of “What, are you high?”) Plus, as discussed here previously, property taxes on new development aren’t a windfall, because they’re already needed to pay the costs of all the city services new development requires — police and fire protection, schools for any children living in new housing, etc. — so counting them as available to pay off an arena is double-dipping.
If Kane and Malik really do end up putting 1,750 residential units in Downtown South, that really will increase the city’s tax revenues from that land, and that would be great. But the people who live in that housing are going to consume public services, and those services cost money, so the new tax revenue wouldn’t be free money that the city could use to pay off its stadium debt. And while there’s a lot of demand for office space in Raleigh, that demand isn’t infinite. If you build a lot of office space in Downtown South, that’s probably going to mean that less office space gets constructed in other parts of Raleigh, so it ultimately ends up being a wash for the city, except now the city is saddled with a ton of stadium debt.
BTW, the CBS Sports article that talks about our own @Loup20 had this nice little tidbit: "Victor Matheson, a professor at Holy Cross and an editor for the Journal of Sports Economics, offers advice for anyone who comes across one of these economic impact reports [purporting to show the benefits of new sports stadiums]: move the decimal to the left. [As in, the real economic impact is probably about only 10 percent of what the teams claim it is.] So it turns out that there is a Journal of Sports Economics, and editor of this journal thinks that economic impact studies touting the benefits of new sports stadiums are total junk.
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Here’s another thing that gets put into a lot of the deals that end up eating away at any/many of the benefits. It’s the dreaded state of the art clause that requires many of the entities that own the facility or related local governments to ensure the arena is “state of the art” in order to maintain the lease.
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This is a big deal, and it’s part of the reason why having the city/county own the stadium would actually be a terrible idea. NCFC is actually very enthusiastic about having the city/county own the proposed stadium, which is a huge tell about who would benefit from such an arrangement. Teams should own (and pay property taxes on) the stadiums they play in, that way if something needs to be upgraded down the road, it’s the team, not the public, that ends up paying for it.
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I don’t think anyone thinks these things pay for themselves. But sometimes the focus seems to be only on the price tag because it’s a definite number. The benefits aren’t always captured so neatly, and it will always lose if all you see is a ledger. A stadium like this would serve as a cultural improvement, a tourist draw, a national marketing tool, a way for the city to manage growth, and an opportunity to rethink transportation. It would be great if someone offered to pay for that, but otherwise we should have a long think about whether we can afford it and whether we want to. But those that only look at the account book are missing the point.
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I am surprised Calgary is doing this - as a rule Canadian cities are loathed to put money into areas like this, for pro sports teams. They will build arenas/stadiums for general purposes, but are loathed to build for private entities.
The argument against public funding of the stadium feels like the same arguments used for not funding transit.
Transit has to show how it pays for itself while roads don’t.
Stadiums have to have no public investment or ownership, while we pour money into parks and we make no such demands of them.
While others will assuredly disagree with me on this, I see both parks and this stadium as community resources that improve my experiences as a resident. I will certainly not use every park in the city, nor will I always utilize the stadium for every purpose, but that’s not a good enough reason to prevent us from having them. This is especially true when there’s a rather painless mechanism already in place to fund it that will only grow along with the city itself.
In short, these community amenities have a dependency on the city, and I’d argue that the city’s future has a dependency on these amenities. 
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I’m not saying they have to be some sort of windfall or even make money, my argument is more with the voodoo economics of studies that tout stadiums/arenas as some sort of godsend. They’re really not but they bring other benefits to the citizenry while private parties reap the majority of the financial benefits. I just wish the people begging for the money were more truthful about the cost and benefits of such expenditures.
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I think the hesitancy relates more to funding non-profit entities versus for-profit entities. Most people have no problem using public funds to invest in roads, parks, museums, etc. since those are publicly owned or run by non-profits (I’ll add that transit should be the same way, but we’re a car-centric society that has unfortunately developed a view that transit should be treated differently). Many people do have a problem using public funds to help pay for an asset that is either owned by or directly financially benefits a for-profit entity.
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Was not the Cary Soccer Park funded with public money and is being used by for profit entities? Or am I missing something?
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that cost 14.5 million and an additional 6 mill for renovations… you are comparing apples and aardvarks
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No I am comparing the exact same thing. Everybody else in trying to make it seem like it’s comparing apples and aardvarks…
It is not remotely the same thing. The Cary park has many more other uses, many of them public, and the amount of money is significantly different. The whole park was built for what is basically the year over year ask of Kane/Malik. It is not a serious argument.
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