A corollary to both—the WSJ also doesn’t say if Fort Myers has a minor-league team that would use it the rest of the year. That basic question led me on a quick search that found out something that should have been in the story. There is a minor-league baseball team in Fort Myers, but it plays at a different stadium—one the Minnesota Twins call home for a month before each season. The Journal does note that the Twins play in Fort Myers, but on first read I, and I assume many other readers, thought they played in the same stadium as the BoSox. They don’t.
So building this stadium will give Fort Myers three baseball stadiums, two of which will sit fallow about ten months of the year (And there are actually four baseball stadiums if you count Terry Park Ballfield, a national landmark that used to host major-league teams).
And although the story clearly is trying to show that this is a boondoggle, it succumbs to some false balance:
But the economics of such projects remain murky.
No they don’t. These projects don’t make economic sense. Almost all the research has found that.
The WSJ’s own reporting comes close enough to concluding that (keep in mind here that these economic-benefit studies are notoriously worthless):
Local supporters point to a Florida-funded study in 2000 estimating a county derives $25 million in annual economic benefits by hosting spring training. A study commissioned by Sarasota County last year estimated the Sox could generate $45 million in annual benefits.
Several academics dispute those projections, pointing to data showing tax and sales revenue have remained stable in counties after they secured or lost major league baseball teams.
Go with it next time, WSJ! Slide headfirst into second!
I referenced that poor ProJo story above, and it’s emblematic enough of a certain boosterish sort of sports journalism that I thought I’d give it a closer look, too.
First the dramatic lede, setting the scene with the visionary sports executive surveying his future fiefdom:
Red Sox Chief Operating Officer Mike Dee looks into the Florida underbrush and sees something that isn’t there.
In place of the scrawny trees and used-up gravel pits, Dee sees a ballpark filled with 12,000 people, surrounded by fields where minor-leaguers train. There are offices, and a sprawling rehab and workout complex. On the vacant lots around it, developers have built hotels and retail plazas.
Followed by the everybody-wants-a-piece-of-them graph:
The Red Sox had been talking with Lee County for several years to let them know that they wanted a bigger, consolidated facility. Then Sarasota knocked on the team’s door, trying to lure the Red Sox north to their city. That jump-started negotiations between the team and Lee County, culminating in an agreement to keep the Sox in Lee County for 30 years, provided the county builds a new complex for the team.
The ProJo doesn’t report what the Journal does: That Sarasota citizens rose up to knock down any corporate welfare for the team.
And the paper might as well have just let the Red Sox flack write the story:
A new complex is seen as an economic driver for the area, but the Red Sox believe it could mean big things for the team’s baseball operations, as well.
“Is seen as an economic driver”? By whom? The team and three county commissioners. Again, as I wrote above, it’s been well-established that sports stadiums don’t drive economic growth. You’d think sports desks would know this by now.
And now its time for the requisite “to-be-sure” graph:
Many have raised concerns, however. At packed local board meetings, residents have asked whether it’s right for Lee County, which had the second-highest foreclosure rate in the nation in the month of February, to spend nearly $100 million bankrolling a baseball complex for a New England team.
That’s all we get for skepticism in this long piece. And that half-hearted paragraph is followed immediately by this:
(County Commission chairman Ray) Judah insisted this is precisely the time to undertake new economic development projects.
Hi! I thought your blog was cool and will visit often. In the meantime I can recommend sports shops.
#1 Posted by rhyviens, CJR on Sat 4 Apr 2009 at 01:45 AM
Good followup. As a Lee County resident, it takes IV antihypertensives to keep from having a stroke when I read the usual puff-pieces about the "new Fenway."
A couple of points:
City of Palms Park is a fine stadium, but it's in a lousy spot. The then-mayor, Wilbur Smith, had what one wag called an "edifice complex" and rammed the stadium project through in a misguided attempt to shore up Ft. Myers's flagging fortunes. He did this though the city had a shrinking tax base and an exhausted bonding capacity. He demolished the center of a older but stable neighborhood of mostly working poor to create the site, in the hopes that the stadium would drive commercial development and allow for the demolition of more low-value homes. That never happened. So, there's not a hotel, bar, or restaurant within about a mile of the stadium. The city tried to use if for concerts but the noise was so bad that the city had to pass an ordinance effectively banning concerts to keep the residents from burning the place down. When the city could no longer afford the debt service, the county assumed it and renegotiated the terms witn the Red Sox, and promptly gave away the store: there is a clause which allows the Sox to buy out the last ten years of the agreement for $100,000 for each remaining year. The bonds won't be paid off until 2016.
There is no minor league team because the Twins, who've been down the road since 1989, had right of refusal on any new minor-league team within 25 miles, and they said "hell no." I still can't get confirmation if this clause is still active.
The Red Sox are pretty blatant in their desire for the Edison Farms site. This is the one where the developer is willing to give away the land (which is about what it's worth), but the county has to do the site improvements. No doubt they'll get development rights on the remaining 200+ acres as well. It also happens to be the most environmentally sensitive site, and the one farthest from any existing development. The area east of I-75 was, by and large, place off limits to development in the 1984 Comprehensive Land Use Plan, and the commissioners look for every chance to push out the urban service boundary.
Growth pays for growth, and you're a commie fruit if you don't believe it.
#2 Posted by The Thinking Man's Mel Torme, CJR on Sun 5 Apr 2009 at 10:37 PM