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November 15, 2009
The Yankee’s Hoggish New Stadium Monopoly Taxes The Rest of Us
Noticing New York
A report from WNYC on October 28 spotlights how the new Yankee Stadium sucks up economic activity from the surrounding neighborhood. This is the jumping-off point for this exercise to demonstrate that the economic benefits from subsidizing professional sports facilities are illusory. Although not a perfect parallel with the proposed Atlantic Yards development, some of the same schemes would be used to subsidize an arena for the Nets.
Topics covered include:
- How Yankee Stadium sucks up economic activity from the nabe.
- How the new Yankee Stadium contains fewer seats than the old one in order to drive up prices.
- How monopolies seek to appropriate local culture.
The concept of Atlantic Yards as a "mega-monopoly" is also covered:
Mega-monopoly probably describes Atlantic Yards better than any other single word given that:
- The gestating seed of Atlantic Yards was a big league sports franchise. These franchises are exempt from antitrust rules and if you search the Atlantic Yards Report site you will find a lot of discussion of their monopolistic nature by economists and other experts.
(You will also find a lot of our own comments about Atlantic Yards as a monopoly.)- Atlantic Yards’ birth was midwifed by another monopolistic expedient, the award of the project to Forest City Ratner on a no-bid basis, which was essential to preclude any possible competition.
- Its succor and the basic of sinew composition is the eminent domain abuse that chases away all other competitors and transforms what was the competitors’ into Forest City Ratner’s.
- Atlantic Yards has been further coddled by government agencies that have lavished on it additional hundreds of millions of dollars from the taxpayers on a no-bid basis, given its extraordinarily valuable naming rights and exempted it (and these many gifts) from the requirements of appraisal and bids under the Public Authorities Accountability Act
You can also read how the Yankees have managed to avoid what would be the usual tax obligations while, at the same time, taxpayers pay for the new stadium.
Posted by steve at November 15, 2009 7:15 AM