An Arizona city's sports mania encounters a hard check (George Will hits McCain)

Washington Post ^ | April 9, 2011 | George Will

[inkling]

PHOENIX - Suburban Glendale is less a community with professional sports facilities than a sports enterprise with a community held hostage to previous improvident decisions. Now Glendale’s government may multiply its follies — unless Arizona’s constitution saves the city from itself.

Taxes provided $346 million of the $455 million cost of the huge (up to 72,200 seats) retractable-roof NFL stadium where the Arizona Cardinals will play 10 times this season, if there is a season. (The NFL is having labor problems.) But Glendale (population 253,000) has a more immediate problem with its hockey team, the NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes.

[inkling]

The City of Glendale, Ariz., already has $1 Billion in sports-related debt. And their mayor thinks the solution is to borrow $100 million more to bailout a bankrupt hockey franchise. Madness.

[henry_reardon]

I live about 100 yards outside Glendale, I’d often wondered how they had so many nice facilities despite their small size. I guess borrowing at 3 times the rate of comparable cities is the answer.

[pnh102]

Why can’t the Arizona Cardinals pay for their own playground.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Not madness, but in all likelyhood corruption.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Hockey in Phoenix = Madness

[HenpeckedCon]

Go back to Winnipeg where they belong.

[Cyber Liberty]

Because they’re losers?

Bidwell doesn’t staff the place to win playoff spots, he staffs it to win just enough to make a profit. If he fielded a consistently winning team, he’d have enough coming in to pay for that stadium, but why should he since he fooled Glendale into footing the bill?

[Cyber Liberty]

There is a pretty strong chance that is exactly where they will end up, and I hope it works out that way. Winnipeg wants them back.

[LADY J]

"A virtuoso of indignation, McCain is scandalized that the institute, “a non-elected organization,” is going to cause the loss of “a thousand jobs.” McCain’s jobs number is preposterous, as is his intimation — he has been in elective office for 28 years — that non-elected people should not intervene in civic life."

Just a bit of self interest here??? Sports stadiums sell LOTS OF BEER!

[pnh102]

Bidwell doesn’t staff the place to win playoff spots, he staffs it to win just enough to make a profit. If he fielded a consistently winning team, he’d have enough coming in to pay for that stadium, but why should he since he fooled Glendale into footing the bill?

Welfare issues aside, I have never understood why a losing never has that held against them when they insist on taxpayers to pay for their playground. Since stadiums are economic losers anyway (if they weren't, private investors would be paying to build them), why can't a city, state or other government simply say "You guys suck, and are thus not worthy of a new stadium."

[Admin Moderator]

Would you please quit placing articles you post, into the activism sidebar?

[Caipirabob]

Glendale can't squeeze more blood from rocks. Glendale residents are tapped out. Home values have been crushed here as hard as anywhere else. The empty to occupied home ratio is atrocious and there's hardly any other industry outside of that retail and restaurants. The sports industry can't sustain itself after all of these years of bailing them out.

I don't see a promising future for this city. I see a potential disaster as they are damned if they do, damned if they don't.

[inkling]

Okay. I knew the local tea party was active in this situation, so I thought it was activism. Sorry about that.

[HenpeckedCon]

Either Winnipeg or Moose Jaw, either works.