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May 17, 2011
Company’s Arenas Leave Cities With Big Problems
The New York Times
by Ken Belson
If Karl Marx were around today, he would be calling publicly funded arenas, rather than religion, the "opium of the people." Or at least of the political "leaders" elected by those people.
The plan sounded great during the real estate boom: build a midsize arena, stuff it with sports, music acts and monster trucks and create a centerpiece for the new city center being developed on a dusty mesa here, 20 miles north of downtown Albuquerque.
But trouble started almost from the day the doors of Santa Ana Star Center opened in 2006. Global Entertainment, the company hired to build and manage the arena, failed to book enough events, and the minor league hockey team it recruited folded. Attendance was light because of high ticket prices and the arena’s remote location. Unrealistic sales targets and high turnover among the arena’s staff added to the problems.
The arena, which Global Entertainment said would be profitable in a year, has lost so much money that Rio Rancho has had to spend millions of dollars each year to keep it afloat. The city fired Global Entertainment in 2009 and sued it to recoup hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills.
A new arena manager has brought in more business, but the losses have continued to mount, eating into the city’s already tight budget and pushing lawmakers to eliminate jobs and cut costs, including asking police officers to buy their own practice ammunition.
NoLandGrab: The "opium of the people" quote is particularly apt, since despite example after example after example of the failure of publicly funded arenas and stadiums to deliver on the promises made about them, politicians and developers and team owners continue to succeed in getting them built on the taxpayer's dime.
We also wonder what Marx would make of the fact that so many failed arenas end up as home to mega-churches.
Posted by eric at May 17, 2011 12:53 PM