By statist arithmetic they made $2 million on deal.
Yes. $2,135,000! Aren't they fiscal geniuses!
The problem here is that they built something that could not sustain a profit or put people into the seats on a regular basis.
Around two decades in Koln, Germany...the city got its hands onto a major property in the middle of town, and wanted to build a opera house/convention center. The federal gov’t there was going to fund a major part of this. Early on, they brought in a business analyst to do a full report on “impact”. He did the report and it was filed, but no one read the report...where he admitted it’d never pay for it’s monthly operational costs or be used more than six days a month max. So the funds come in...they build complex...and around four years after completion, they are having trouble sustaining just the regular operating cost. Someone pulls out the original report and is shocked that this was accurately predicted but never stopped the construction.
The problem here is that tax revenue is just sitting there and people’s attitudes are to spend it on something...rather than let someone else get it and spend on something else.